DRAINING FOR FILLING!!

When a person is at the bottom of afflictions and exasperated about his condition, he finds himself in utter hopelessness. His situations drain him off his courage and strength. He then becomes a prey to miserable and agonizing thoughts. It is often like a desert experience of a pelican with anguish for a drop of water to wet its parched throat. It is the bottom of loneliness in its extremity, with no comforting words from anyone around. An owl among the ruins is never an experience sought after by anyone for any reason. But we hear the Psalmist singing a prayer to the Lord even in such a situation. It is a song of a faint heart and the lament of the forsaken and the afflicted. When we sing such painful songs to the Lord, we are amazed to see that He is already with us and listening to our lamenting prayer song in our miserably painful situations. He walks with us on the scorching desert road and among the ruins and ashes of our lives. When no one wants to come near us, our divine travel companion never forsakes us. First, He enables us to sing a prayer to Him. Second, He alerts our souls to pray. Third, He helps us to understand the depth of our situation and to know that He will never leave us alone. It is this understanding that makes us sing our prayers of lament to the Lord. This song of prayer is the confirmation to our souls that even when we look abandoned, our Lord has not and will not forsake us. He is so near as to hear even our whispers and our loud cries. Our groaning is heard by Him and our waning and draining strength is understood by Him. When we are thus made to drain ourselves of all our strength, His strength comes to us so that it is no longer we who keep going, but He who makes us going forward.

Dear reader, are you experiencing a time of loneliness and thirst in your soul? Is life treating you unfairly and making you feel like you are wasteful and on a heap of ruins? When no one else wants you, the Lord wants to continue to cherish you as His precious child. He draws you close to Himself to comfort you in your misery. As you grow weary and weak, perhaps you will realize that all your strength is draining out. This is how He makes you understand that you are sustained only by His strength. The Lord is not interested in giving you some strength so that you can add it to your own strength. His discipline for you is to help you learn that you are fully strengthened by Him and that you are not a mixture of something from the world and something else from heaven. Unless you are totally drained of your capacity, skills, efficiency, ideas, knowledge and smartness and become zero, the Lord cannot fill you with His strength, capacity and thoughts. The only way you can receive this grace of utter humility is to help you to drain all your natural capabilities and made like a pelican of the desert and an owl of wasteful places. Only when your self is in ruin and totally wasteful will you be able to get all the blessings of the Father’s House. When you admit your total depravity and are truly humble before Him in utter brokenness, He will send you His shoes and robes and make you a prince with Him. This was what He did to Jacob, Joseph and David. So dear reader, today the Lord wants you to be drained of all that you are and have and become like a pelican of the desert and the owl of ruin so that He can bestow all His best on you. Then all that you have and are become totally His which is the way by which He takes glory in and through your life. Desert and heaps of ruin are the starting point for God’s best for you to sing to the power of God in your life.

Psalms 102:13 – You will arise and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to show favor to her; the appointed time has come.

Thought for Today