Get Me a Shovel
This is the time of year everyone seems to make new year's resolutions. It's also the time of year everyone breaks those resolutions! I've never been one to make a lot of resolutions myself.
This year though, in looking at my life, I came up with two things that are important to me. Instead of resolutions, I prefer to call them my intentions.
My first intention concerns my interaction and judgements of other people. This year I intend to offer grace to others as readily as I seem to want it for myself.
I've always been way too quick to judge and at times held others to a higher standard than I hold for myself. I seem to have no problem accepting or receiving grace for my own actions, but I'm far more reluctant to want to extend it to others. So this year I'm going to try to offer it to others as easily as I desire to accept it myself.
My second intention is to dig more ditches.
What?
That's right, I need to get into the ditch digging business.
In one of my favorite Old Testament stories, the prophet Elijah needs God to show up in the most powerful and supernatural way. He faces a situation that in the natural world seems impossible. His prayers and petitions to God are asking for miraculous intervention.
Not only that, but Elijah's back is against the wall. He has staked everything on God hearing his prayers, and then being moved to act
Don't you and I often find ourselves in the same situation? We desperately need God to show up in a most powerful way. And yet we're tired, frustrated, and discouraged- so sometimes we falter in our efforts to keep pressing for a breakthrough.
It's easy to give up. It's easy to lose faith. It's easy to say our dreams are just too big, too audacious, and too big to really have any chance of being answered.
Not Elijah.
Elijah, surrounded by 450 armed false prophets, needs God to actually send fire from heaven in a powerful way. So powerful that he needs the fire to consume an alter and a sacrificed bull.
Elijah was such a man of faith that he dug a ditch around the alter and filled it with water, confident that the Lord would answer his prayer in such a mighty way.
Not only does God answer but the Bible says the fire was so intense that it dried up all the water in the ditch.
What about you? Is there something in your life where you need a prayer breakthrough? Is there something you have prayed for so long to no avail and now you're on the verge of quitting?
Is there something, or some area of your life, where you need God to show up supernaturally? Some impossible area or seemingly impossible request.
Have you dug a ditch yet?
Pray like you never have before. Press in on heaven's door. Pray without stopping. And show God you believe. Show God you are expectant. Show God your faith that He is who He says He is, and can do what He says He can do.
Grab a shovel and start digging that ditch.