It’s spring in Illinois. After months of snow, ice, and freezing temperatures, nature is waking up from its deep wintry slumber. The trees are budding, the birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, and the warm sunshine is a very welcome reprieve 🙂
However, spring also means rain. Regularly throughout these months, gray skies move into showers. The rain is a good thing – without it, everything living would cease to do so. However, sometimes rain can be damaging too, when the floodwaters start to rise. As more and more rain falls, low-lying areas can become submerged beneath the waters, and when that happens, people and animals living in those areas need to move to higher ground.
Life can be like that sometimes as well. Just as there are seasons in nature, there are also seasons in our lives…and some of those seasons bring showers. Just like in nature, the showers in our lives can be a good thing. But they can also cause the floodwaters to rise.
There is a difference between the rains that God allows to happen in our lives, and the rains that our enemy brings. God’s rain serves to help us grow, develop, and blossom, while our enemy’s floods try to drown us.
When our enemy starts to rain down lies, deceptions, questions, doubts, worries, fears, and feelings of insufficiency, discouragement, and depression, we know what’s coming – we can see the storm brewing. When the sprinkles start, we need to move to higher ground. To climb higher. Just as in real life we don’t wait for the flood waters to start swirling around our feet before we start climbing, so too in our spiritual lives we should start climbing before we become drenched with the waters of discouragement, depression, and helplessness.
But, how exactly do we climb higher? Paul tells us in Philippians 4:8 – “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” When we offer praise and thanksgiving to God, we climb higher. That doesn’t mean that the rains won’t continue to fall. What it does mean though, is that rather than focusing on the rain and allowing it to flood our soul, we focus on the One who has promised to walk with us through all of life. And when our enemy realizes that his attempts are proving fruitless, he will leave us in an attempt to find an easier target.
My prayer for you, is that when the floodwaters start to rise, that you would climb higher. And when you are sitting safely beside your Savior, that He would wrap your soul in the blanket of His Love, your mind with His Peace, and that He would place His Arms around you and hold you, until the sky breaks into warm sunshine once again 🙂