Word of Encouragement (04/11/2024)
"When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you, if they pray toward this place and acknowledge your name and turn from their sin, when you afflict them, 36 then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of your servants, your people Israel, when you teach them the good way in which they should walk, and grant rain upon your land, which you have given to your people as an inheritance. (1 Kings 8:35-36)
Solomon offers this petition because one of the curses God promised for Israel’s disobedience was drought: “And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. The LORD will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed” (Deut. 28:23-24). Again, Solomon sees this coming true not as a question of if but when.
Drought was a devastating disaster in the land of Canaan. The LORD said about the land, “For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the LORD your God cares for. The eyes of the LORD your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year” (Deut. 11:10-12).
Why was the land so great? It was a fertile land, flowing with milk and honey—as long as the rains came at the right time, the early rain and the latter rain. Because there was no large river like the Nile of Egypt, and because of its particular topography, there was no irrigation in the land. What was so great about the land, then? Because it forced the Israelites to depend on the LORD to give rain in its due season.
Such is the perspective of God, who loves us. Do you agree? God took His people out of Egypt and brought them into the land of Canaan. But do you have your eyes longingly directed to Egypt? Would you rather live in the land of Canaan or in Egypt where you don’t need to desperately seek God at all times? Would you rather live in the valleys of humiliation and the hills of scarcity with your eyes fixed on God or in the irrigated land of Egypt with the Nile of worldly comfort and security?
What has been the confession of God’s people throughout history? “O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be; / let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wand'ring heart to thee. / Prone to wander--Lord, I feel it--prone to leave the God I love: / here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above” (“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”). Who would want to be fettered and bound? But do you remember how this hymn begins? “Come, thou Fount of every blessing…”! Why would anyone not want to bind himself to the Fount of every blessing? How foolish it would be to abandon the Fount of every blessing and hew out a broken cistern, which cannot hold any water? May your prayer be, "[L]et that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wand'ring heart to thee!"