God's Remedy for Life's Dry Streams
And in that day all the stream beds shall flow with water. (Joel 3:18)
Joel 3:14-18 and 2:28-32; Acts 2:17-21; Isa 32:15 and 59:19-21; Lk. 24:49; Jn. 6:63
What Is God Saying?
Joel is a prophet of doom, yet he also sheds the light of hope on the future. His warnings are severe, but he assures us that the God of justice is also a God of mercy, ‘He is not willing that any should perish.’ This fact is interwoven like gold threads in a somber tapestry. Words of hope shine all the more because they are spoken against a backdrop of trouble and woe, ‘For the day of the Lord is near, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness’ (Joel 2:1). The swarming locusts consumed everything in their path and left people without food. Hunger stalked the land. Their anguish seemed to have no cure and no end.
Joel tells it like it is. Sin, like a relentless army of locusts, brings a bitter, barren harvest, an emptiness of spirit, a paradise lost, but there is hope. Listen to Joel's impassioned appeals and then his words of bright promise (2:21, 23, 25). It all depends on their choice in The Valley of Decision (3:14). ‘All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved’ (2:32). God wants to send showers of blessing if His people will forsake their evil ways and return to Him. They could not stop the locusts but God can restore the years of the locusts. Eden can be theirs again, threshing floors full of grain, and the stream beds flowing with water. In repentance there is hope; in returning there is rest; in the true worship of God, there is healing and peace. With God's Justice, there is mercy.
How Does This Apply To Us?
The analogy of dry streambeds makes its point in most of our lives. When life seems desolate and our spirits are dry, we can hold to this promise, ‘I will pour out my Spirit.’ He wants to bring life into our deadness. He wants to bring light into our darkness, but we have to forsake the kind of living that brings locusts. We have to open the gates of our hearts to receive the refreshing fullness of His love and truth. We have to make the 180-degree turn from our sin to His forgiveness, from our need to His grace, from our dry life in the desert to the good life in the Garden of God's blessing. "Yet even now says the Lord 'Return to me with all your heart"' (2: 12).
Pray With Me
Lord, You are the source of all joy and strength. Only You can give the fullness that never wanes and the joy that never surfeits. I have seen the dry stream beds of Judah. I have felt rocks that were in the heat of the sun when they might have been cooled with flowing water. I have seen scrubby, leafless trees sending out their thirsty roots to find water that is not there. Many times I have found my soul to be like the bed of a desert creek, waiting for showers of blessing. I thank You for Heaven-sent mercies that fill the dusty channels of life. Yet, O God of inexhaustible grace, I ask for more. May my life be like a stream which, though flowing through deserts, has a spring at its source, perhaps cresting at higher levels in days of insight and obedience, at lower levels in those times when faith is tested, but always flowing by day and by night, through sunshine and rain, through laughter and pain. Let there be less of the unusual and sudden. Let there be more of the steady and dependable until the life I live is none other than Christ.
In the name of Him who has promised that those who believe in Him should become as rivers of living water. Amen.
Moving On In The Life of Prayer
Every time we kneel in prayer, we should claim the promise spoken by Joel and repeated by Peter on the Day of Pentecost, ‘I will pour out my Spirit.’ Prayer is a time of stopping our fretful pursuit of things or success as measured by the world. It is a time to be still in one place for one reason, to receive the Spirit God is pouring out. How can God fill a vessel that is moving fast? How can God pour the fullness of His blessing into a vessel that is not fully open? Prayer is the time to leave our agenda behind and start listening to His.
