Refreshments - Devotion for 6/5/07

Refreshments – Devotion for 6/5/07

It has really been quite dry here in Fayetteville recently. Last week it was becoming painfully obvious how dry as you looked at my yard. My neighbors have a sprinkler system that waters their yard to help keep it nice and green. I don’t. So you could clearly see the dividing line between my yard and theirs, as my yard was brown, and theirs was green. If you had not been watering your yard, everything was brown. But then Saturday afternoon came. Rains from a tropical storm that was heading north fell, and you could almost hear the sighing of relief from the grass – even the weeds seemed happier. That inch of rain that we got brought such relief and refreshment to the yard that by Sunday morning, it was already starting to look green again – and the weds were already blooming L .

Sometimes we get into a spiritual dry spell. Sometimes we just sort of get away from God, and it is not always on purpose, just sometimes it happens. We may fall away from a prayer time because of so many other time commitments. We may ignore the opportunities our churches may offer for us to learn more about God because we are simple so worn out from the rigors of life. We may even want that extra hour or two (or three) of sleep on Sunday morning just so that we might have the energy to get through the week. And before we know it, our spirit has become dried up. And it becomes quite apparent to us and our neighbors just how dry we are. We aren’t satisfied with anything. We are angry at everybody. We don’t have the motivation to do anything for anyone. We even start to wonder about this whole God thing.

In Acts 3, Peter and John have just healed a lame man, and people are crowding around because they are amazed at what they have seen. They have witnessed a power that they had not seen before. Peter begins instructing them where the power had come from, and he helps them begin to see how dry their spirits had become. He tells them, “therefore, repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that time of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19). I think those are words we need to hear every now and then – especially when we are in one of those dry spells. Return to God’s presence to be refreshed by His Spirit. Become revived by being washed in His Spirit.