Rivers in the Desert

Have you ever been at a place in your walk with Christ where you feel like you are wandering through a desert? You feel defeated, broken, and all dried up. Your heart used to be a gushing spring for the Lord and now it feels like you are barely squeezing a drop out of it. Your heart has started to get brittle and it's as cracked as the desert floor as the sun scorches it. The circumstances in your life are beating down on you like the harsh rays of the hot desert son and there is no shade in sight. 

I've been there. I am there. And yet the Lord keeps providing me rivers of life even as I am spending time in the desert. 

I was reading in Isaiah 43 the other day as I was doing my Bible study and I stumbled across these jewels of wisdom :"Thus, says the Lord who makes a way in the sea and a path through the mighty waters, who brings forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power (they shall lie down together, they shall not rise; they are extinguished, they are quenched like a wick): 'Do not remember the former things, Nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The beast of the field will honor Me, the jackals and the ostriches, Because I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to My people, My chosen. This people I have formed for Myself; They shall declare my praise. "-v.16-21. 

I love the beautiful imagery of the water seen in this passage. Not only does the Lord make a way through the sea (like He did for the Israelites when He parted the waters of the Red Sea); He also makes rivers in a place where water is hard to find. 

Notice the author didn't use the word stream or pond. This was no hole of water you would be lucky to stumble upon in the desert, but rivers. Flowing. Moving. Gushing. Rivers.

The imagery of the water is even revealed in the verb usage when it comes to a new thing the Lord will do in our lives. "Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth" from verse 19 uses the word spring to paint the picture of how the Lord will accomplish a new thing. 

This is no trickle of water. It's a spring. Is it any wonder the Lord had the author use this verb? It means to jump up or arise suddenly as a verb, but when it comes to water a spring comes from groundwater that has emerged from the Earth's surface.

That's how the Lord works. He starts on the inside. Underneath the surface of our lives, our appearances, and the faces we wear. He begins in our heart and He takes those places that have dried up in our lives and causes His Living Water to flow through them once again.

Do you need a fresh, new work from the Holy Spirit? It's yours for the taking, all you have to do is come empty with your bucket. He will fill it to overflowing.