Imagine an extended period of drought that goes unnoticed. Streams dry up. Rivers and lakes recede, leaving muddy bogs and dry, cracked earth. The grass turns brown. It withers and dies. The crops also. And what were once times of joyful harvest become days of dust and death.
Shortages of food and water abound. People begin wasting away. Whole populations begin to decrease at an alarming rate.
But nobody seems to notice. Or maybe more likely, the effects of drought are observed, but the reasons for the drought have nothing to do with the fact that there is no rain.
Climatologists are divided. Among them, gifted speakers and writers begin to attract large groups of followers. Scapegoating becomes a primary theme of their explanations for the drought. “Others” are blamed, ostracized, and excluded. Large amounts of energy and resources are devoted to passing laws, making changes in policy, and electing leaders who will advance our solutions to the drought ravaging the land.
But the drought continues with very few recognizing that the obvious answer is to seek the rain.
Jesus rebuked the religious leaders of his day, saying, “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”1 The apostle Paul clearly taught that the things of God are spiritually discerned and hidden from those lacking spiritual understanding.2
We are living in days of spiritual drought. Individual churches, as well as entire denominations, are drying up. Many are convinced that the solution to this drought is doubling down on doctrine. Being “right” will bring the rain. And, of course, being right means excluding those who are wrong. After all, they’re the reason for drought in the first place.
Among the “being right” proponents are those who blame the sinners, a long list of people and lifestyles that can only bring about God’s wrath and judgment. Their theology mirrors that of the Pharisees in Jesus’s day. God had judged Israel in the past because of the sinners in the land. Therefore, we must separate ourselves from them and do everything possible to rid ourselves of them.
But Jesus rebuked these exclusive separatists. Israel had undergone God’s judgment, he told them, because of the adulteress relationship between the religious leaders and godless rulers, who had rejected the true prophets sent by God.
Addressing them in the temple courts in the presence of all the people, days before they exercised their political clout and had him crucified, Jesus said,
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.” Thus you witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.3
And fill it up, they did. Days later, standing in the courtyard of the Roman governor, they revealed the truth about the nature of their secular religion. “We have no king but Caesar,” they shouted.4 And with those words, they condemned to death the one who promised the living water of God’s Spirit to the drought-stricken people of the land.
There is an obvious answer to the spiritual drought in which we find ourselves in these days. But the problem is too many Christians are blaming the drought on everything but the lack of rain in our lives and churches.
We’ve substituted the secular for the spiritual, sacrifice for mercy, eloquence for wisdom, and rules for righteousness. Scripture is being fulfilled before our very eyes. We are witnessing a form of godliness that lacks real spiritual power.5
These are the issues I address in my newest book, “Where is the God of Elijah? Overcoming Spiritual Drought.” Here’s the link.
The signs of the times are all around us. The spiritual dehydration of God’s people is real. And the answer is not found in religious rules, celebrity pastors, or scapegoating others for our declining, dying churches.
But Jesus continues to promise living water to those who thirst for it, for those willing to seek it.
My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. (Jeremiah 2:13)
In Christ,
Dan
Matthew 16:3.
I Corinthians 2:14.
Matthew 23:29-32.
John 19:15.
2 Timothy 3:5.
Once again- so well put!