LET IT RAIN!

 

My former church used to have missionaries in Niger, Africa. During an intense season of drought, I prayed for rain often. I discovered that singing along with Michael W. Smith’s “Let it Rain,” helped my focus. As I listened and sang, I also prayed for and claimed both spiritual and material rain for Niger – “Let it rain; Let it rain; open the floodgates of heaven.” 

 

One day I was doing this, and God gave me a new thought. This time America, not Africa, came to mind. I thought of the storm drain at the curbside in front of my house. Often, I could hear water tumbling through it after a rain. As I thought of it, I was happy and remembered my church and how God had sent “rivers of living water” into our souls.

 

But suddenly I saw something else – an opposite interpretation that ended my happy reverie. This time I saw in my mind’s eye spiritual storm drains. These drains, far from being a blessing, were a work of our enemy. He had constructed these out-of-the-way, subterranean channels, and through them he contained, confined, and concealed heaven’s divine life-giving flow and conducted it away from God’s people. Unbeknownst to those who needed it most, who lived aboveground and were unaware of God’s provision, the precious supply simply passed unseen, unspent, and unproductive out to some wasted sea of oblivion.

 

I thought about how the devil labors hard to hamper the Holy Spirit’s activity. One effective strategy is to keep it inside the church – underground and under wraps – where it does little to impact our culture and world. Who can miss our enemy’s increasingly fervid efforts today to remove every vestige of God’s imprint from our public arena? Not only does he systematically flush the Ten Commandments down the drain, along with every other true acknowledgment of God and His truth, but he keeps the church content with our emaciated condition. We have our trickle, and that’s enough, we think. As long as we have just enough spiritual life to sustain us, just enough to quench our thirst, we accept it. Meanwhile, the whole spiritually parched land pleads for the water of life!

 

In light of this, I felt led to pray. I prayed that the Lord would send a storm of His Spirit to completely overwhelm the enemy’s storm drains. I could see that this holy storm would only be destructive to the enemy’s work. Instead of devastating the land, it would bless and renew the land, leaving it pure, radiant, sparkling, alive, and fragrant.

 

Here is how I prayed: “Lord, send us a downpour of righteousness. Let a torrential “storm of the Lord” gush from heaven with such overpowering force that the devil’s schemes are helpless to contain it; that it inundates his storm drains so they no longer swallow up Your waters but are swallowed up in them; that the water-level rises, forming swift-flowing, ferocious currents of holiness; that they surge over the land –  rushing, drowning, swilling, sweeping – until enemy strongholds are demolished. Let your waters swamp, ruin, drown, completely wash out every resistance to Your will in the whelming deluge of your manifest glory! Rain on us, O Lord! Flood our hearts, immerse our lives, saturate our land! Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven -- Yes! Come, Holy Spirit, COME! For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. AMEN!!

 

As I concluded my prayer, I got out my daily Bible reading schedule and turned to the corresponding passage in my Bible – Ezekiel 43. As I read, these words astonished me: “Then the man brought me to the gate facing east, and I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east. His voice was like the roar of rushing waters, and the land was radiant with his glory” (vss 1-2). This was too much! This couldn’t be coincidence! The God who spoke the world into being, chose to confirm my prayer and declare that He can, indeed, “roar” from heaven like “rushing waters,” cleansing our land and leaving it “RADIANT”!

 

Many of God’s people believe that before Christ returns, the earth will experience one final, massive, worldwide revival. Let’s cry out for this manifestation of God’s kingdom and power! Let’s pray, live, and believe for such a flood of righteousness, of truth, of salvation. Let’s claim the devastation of the demonic strongholds of this world. May we live to see our land radiant with God’s glory. Amen, Lord Jesus!

 

-- Cheryl Ford -