Welcome to all who may be reading my blog for the month of August. I pray all is well with you and that your joy is complete!!! This past Sunday at our church, I felt the Lord lead me to deliver a message that was birthed while my family and I were on vacation. As I was thinking and praying about what it was that the Lord would want me to write in my blog for this month, the Holy Spirit gently spoke to my heart and said share what you said last Sunday.

To do that I would need to explain a bit as to how this message was birthed. We had the opportunity, as a family, to travel to Eastern Canada so that my wife could meet some of her relatives that she had either not met before or had not seen in a very long time. My wife Gail was born in Windsor, Canada. The last time she remembered being there was as a very young little girl. We went and saw the home where she grew up and that always brings its own memories, right.

I personally had never been to Canada and the region of Canada we were in, Eastern Canada, was full of fields where farmers grew their crops. While we were in Canada it seemed like we had to do a lot of driving as Gail’s relatives were scattered all over the place. As we traveled in the country areas, I saw nothing but one large green field after another where crops were growing; some about ready to be picked for eating. Living in Las Vegas, Nevada, about the only green you see comes when you walk into a casino and look at the green felt on the roulette tables (Just kidding) Las Vegas is built in the desert, so to get any sense of green in your yard or place of business, it requires a lot of pumped in water for rainfall is but a novelty in Las Vegas.

I mentioned to Gail’s cousin how strikingly beautiful the green fields were and how fortunate they were to get so much rain and snow. About 99% of the farmers there rely strictly on the rainfall and snow to water their fields; only a very few farmers have mechanical ways of getting their fields watered. As I mentioned to Gail’s cousin, Kathy, how beautiful and green the fields were, she said don’t be misled by all the green, for they were currently in a very serious drought because of the lack of rain and they snow they have received as of late. WOW a drought I thought, you sure could have fooled me that they were in a severe drought.

Jesus spoke some very harsh words to the teachers of the law and the Pharisees in Matthew 23:25-28 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like white-washed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”  Can anyone say OUCH!!!! Too often as believers we find that we are more concerned as to what we look like on the outside, what others see, than we are of the inside; yet the Scripture says that the Lord looks at our heart.

As I thought about the severe drought the area of Canada we were at was facing, as I said earlier, to my naked eye, it was very difficult for me to grasp that thought, for I could not see the root system and the ground the crops were planted in. Only a skilled farmer who knew the field and who could see the ground up close, could see the danger. As I thought more about the drought, the Holy Spirit began to reveal to me that in some ways I had allowed a severe drought to come to my soul and I needed a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit to flood my soul. Psalm 42:1-2 “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says in Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Many of us have seen that famous beer commercial where at the end, the man says, “Stay thirsty my friend.” How many of us have experienced times where we were so thirsty that nothing but a glass of cool water would quench our thirst?  In John 7:37-39 we read where water is referred to as a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

My friend, how is your inner man? Have you felt very dry as of late? Maybe a thunderstorm of the Holy Spirit is what your soul needs right about now; a fresh in filling of the Lord sounds real good about now. As we closed our service this past Sunday, we sang a chorus that simply said, “Let it rain, Let it rain, Open the floodgates of heaven.”  The Lord is ready to open the floodgates of heaven and rain down a fresh outpouring of His Spirit on your life but you must first desire that. Remember, Stay thirsty my friend!!!