August 14, 2023

Heb 6:7  For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, (this is a powerful summation the outpouring, the “rain the cometh oft”; the moves of God, the rain of His Spirit; those spiritual microbursts that drenched you in His glory; you, like the earth, used to drink in the rain of the Spirit; it nourished your soul; it opened your wells of understanding; it unloosed you from the sin-banks and carried you in the flow of overflowing faith; it helped you reap things you never thought possible in the realm of spiritual success; it instilled in you a desire to go deeper, to climb higher, to overflow the banks of your limitations and believe God for anything; it soaked you in truth and heaped up crops of goodness and established new boundaries of supernatural possibilities and often drenched you in the powers of God’s presence during prayer…) and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: 

It used to be a blessing to go to church; it used to be blessing to break bread with your spiritual family; it used to be a blessing to be involved in ministries and soul winning; but the fruit is no more; and the soul’s desire is cold; and the heart is hardened for lack of rain, a dry parched ground, a hard indifference to what God is doing now; it used to be a prolific field of thanksgiving in your heart for the things He had done for you, but now it’s empty and cold and barren and bitter.

The word received in this text means to participate not just receive. That means one took ownership of the blessing, but now it seems it’s in the garage sale of religions, no longer needed, no longer fitting the aberrant lifestyle stubbornly chosen. The participation has become critical observation. The input of truth has now become the output of lies and self-deception. The blessings are now blamed for your heartaches and religious miseries. The blessings are now subject to new interpretations based on lawless judgments now perceived. It’s like certain Israelites in the book of Numbers who errantly identified their past days in Egypt. They said that Moses had brought them from a land that flowed with milk and honey…Numbers 16:13. Really? The old territory of torture was flowing with milk and honey? The days of whips and harsh words from slave drivers was better? Egyptian bondage was better than Canaan’s promises? But this is the sad refrain of those who live in the lingering pain of a missed Promise. It’s God’s fault, not their flesh. It’s God’s lack of answers, not their blind attempts to fix things themselves; it’s God’s cruelty, not their own stubborn headstrong collision with dead ends in life. Listen now…

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