Hello and many springtime, sunshiney blessings to all the dear ones reading the blog! I pray this season finds your heart as cheerful and beautiful as the bursting flowers, chirping birds, and glorious noonday sun. But if  that is not the case, it is okay. God is able to keep renewing our hearts and minds. He is the happy Worker in the vineyard of our hearts and souls. He will not stop until we are the dream of His heart, until we look just like Him. Oh the long suffering, the patience of Jesus!

A lesson He has been teaching me lately is “It is okay to be real”. He loves our honest hearts, even if they are not exactly like His just yet. Pure honesty is our escort to being changed, to really seeing His hand move. He sees through to our deepest parts anyway. If we try to hide it from Him, we’re only making the process more difficult and hurting ourselves.

In all honesty, I have to say that I’ve been in a very trying season as of late. Nothing has turned out as I anticipated. I am tired, weak, and my prayers feel dry and dead. Disappointment can do a number on a heart if she doesn’t stay focused on the True Prize of Jesus, and ask for grace to keep trusting. Daily time quiet at His feet, meditating on His beauty and glory and worth which births pure worship, feeding on the Word, and listening for His voice is the only way out of such a dungeon. We must ask Him daily to give us grace to walk in the Spirit, not our flesh. We don’t go by how it looks or feels. We go by what He says. When we keep coming back to Him, whether we feel like it is making a difference or not, He is eventually and surely found by us-when we search for Him with all of our hearts. (Jeremiah 29:13)

These droughts of the soul, He uses to refine us and bring us forth as gold (Job 23:10). He will take any attack the enemy meant for harm, and use it for His glory and our best. He will use it to remove the junk inside that keeps us from being as close as we can be to Him. (Romans 8:28, Psalm 126:5)

In the barren, desolate times of nothingness… that is when the most profound, eternal works are being performed on the inside, in secret where no one can see but the very Gardener of Hearts Himself, Jesus. And no drought lasts forever. In Isaiah 58:11, The righteous are compared to a well-watered garden whose waters fail not. He promises to guide us continually and satisfy our soul in drought! What hope beams from this one Scripture!

May we REMAIN in Him, that the work He has began will be completed in us and that our joy may be full and overflowing (John 15:4-8). It is His delight to (as gentle as possible)  prune away branches in us that do nor bear fruit so that our lives flourish with God-beauty and purity and the likeness of Jesus the older we get! And apart from Him, dear friends, we can never bear any good fruit at all. He alone is our Source.

So if this is a dry season for you, take heart! He is preparing you for something great! The unseen work yields the greatest harvest and if you trust Him and remain in Him, you will come out changed yet again. He loves taking us from glory to glory!

Do ask the Lord what He wishes to teach you during this time and listen for His answer. Do not get into a pit of self pity and “woe is me”. Be careful of the words that escape your lips in times of discouragement. The power of life and death is in your tongue. It is very easy and comes very natural to speak death and negativity into an uncertain time or season. I know this because I’m just as human as the rest of us and struggle with the temptation to carelessly say things that have no “life weight”. Ask Father to put a guard over your lips,  but most of all to transform your heart. I pray this every time I think of it!

I came across an article from a past issue of Watching for the Morning. I thought it would encourage you to keep singing and trusting even when you cannot see anything with your natural eyes.

In Desolation . . .

I’m not sure if I would have even thought to use the word “desolation,” except the Lord has been singing so many beautiful Scriptures over me that include it, the value of it, and the promised restoration that follows. Sometimes, with the sickness and every day stressors I see in my parents, I also see a lack of hope and a lack of life in our home, a weighing down that tends to steal joy, if allowed to. Seeing this hurts me deeply, as I long for them to rest in Jesus and not be so given to the temptation of despairing. Seeing it also makes me feel like the “black sheep” because I so desire to have the joy of the Lord even in dark circumstances, and it can be very difficult being the only joyful one. There is certainly desolation in our home right now. Dry deserts that need pools of Living Water. Ruins that need Godly restoration. People who need to know that Christ has come to set them free. There is hope deferred, things that need to be laid at Jesus’ feet. In the middle of this desolate time and place, I choose joy and I choose worship. I choose to be His handmaiden at all times, not only when I may “feel” like it. The Lord has sung to me the most beautiful of songs lately. I’d love to share it with you;
Isaiah 54:
Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes… (1,2) Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more. For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called. For the LORD hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer (4-8). O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children (11-13). No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD (17). Wow! How absolutely timely, precious and refreshing to the weary soul!
I must add this: If we do not appreciate Christ in His fullness as our Husband, the Lover of our soul, and our utter Satisfier, then we will never, ever be truly joyful or fulfilled. Even a “dream come true” earthly marriage and a houseful of merry children will never satisfy us if we do not grow both content and overwhelmingly “lovesick” in Christ alone.
I also found a lovely quote by C.H. Spurgeon based on this very Scripture [emphasis below is mine]:
“Prayer is lifeless, love is cold, faith is weak, each grace in the garden of our heart languishes and droops. We are like flowers in the hot sun, requiring the refreshing shower. In such a condition what are we to do? The text is addressed to us in just such a state. “Sing, O barren, break forth and cry aloud.” But what can I sing about? I cannot talk about the present, and even the past looks full of barrenness. Ah! I can sing of Jesus Christ. I can talk of visits which the Redeemer has aforetimes paid to me; or if not of these, I can magnify the great love wherewith he loved his people when he came from the heights of heaven for their redemption. I will go to the cross again. Come, my soul, heavy laden thou wast once, and thou didst lose thy burden there. Go to Calvary again. Perhaps that very cross which gave thee life may give thee fruitfulness. What is my barrenness? It is the platform for his fruit-creating power. What is my desolation? It is the black setting for the sapphire of his everlasting love. I will go in poverty, I will go in helplessness, I will go in all my shame and backsliding, I will tell him that I am still his child, and in confidence in His faithful heart, even I, the barren one, will sing and cry aloud.
I pray you are encouraged and blessed by this amazing word, whether you are in a desolate season or a rich one.