Did you get rain last night? Yesterday afternoon we saw the dark clouds roll in. We heard thunder, and I said a little prayer: "Please, Father, give us a little rain." The amazing thing about rain is that we can spend hours and gallons of water watering our lawns and not come close to what the heavens can do for us in fifteen or twenty minutes. It's nice in a world that fights against us all the time to get a few minutes of refreshment as the rain comes down.
That's the way God is. We can give 110% our whole lives and not accomplish what a few minutes of God's work can do in our lives. What's worse is that without God telling us, we don't even know what his blessing looks like. I love what the psalmist writes:
O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Psalm 63:1 NIV
Are you thirsty for God? Do you know what thirsty feels like? What if you think that feeling is loneliness or stress or a midlife crisis, when you are actually feeling a deep, deep thirst for God? When I was a teenager, Jesus told me something that changed my life. Through the Apostle Matthew, he said:
But seek first [your Heavenly Father's] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Matthew 6:33 NIV
Jesus says it's that simple. We seek God. He meets our needs. He sends the rain. So, how do I seek God's kingdom? In John 3 Jesus tells us that there is one way into God's Kingdom:
In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again... For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
John 3:3, 16 NIV
Belief in Jesus. In Jesus we have God's water--his refreshing spring--within us. He meets our physical, emotional, spiritual and relational needs.
I'm excited that I don't have to water my lawn today because God provided a better solution. If only the heavens' rain was as abundant as the water Jesus provides...
but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
John 4:14 NIV
