Tuesday, July 19, 2016
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Life wasn't easy on the little farm where my wife grew up. The land was hard to farm, the money was pretty hard to come by, and the water was sometimes even harder to come by. In fact, on several occasions, Dad tried to dig a well. Again and again, they dug but they ended up only with dry wells. Thankfully, though, there was this spring not too far away. My wife actually remembers her grandfather hitching up Jack and Betsy – that was two mules, not cousins, and going down to this amazing spring that just gushed horizontally out of the rocks. And with each trip, they'd bring back two large barrels of water.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Many Dry Wells And One Gushing Spring."
That's not just the survival story of one farm family I know. That's the spiritual and emotional survival story of a whole lot of people over the years. The wells they were depending on were dry, but there was still one gushing spring. That story may be your story right now.
In 1 Samuel 30, beginning with verse 3, our word for today from the Word of God, we can see from a tragedy in David's life a flesh-and-blood example of how to make it when all your wells go dry on you. David and his men have been out on a military mission and now they're returning to their base camp at a place called Ziklag. The Bible says, "When David and his men came to Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive." The things they owned and the people they loved – gone.
The Bible goes on to say that "each one was bitter in spirit" and David's own men were even "talking of stoning him." It was a dark, dark moment. Yet, as everyone else was turning bitter and angry, God says, "but David found strength in the Lord his God." Here he is standing amid the rubble of everything he had, having lost the people he loved most, with the guys he thought he could depend on turning against him. All the wells he could go to for strength are dry.
That may be just the point you feel you're at right now. All those places that you would normally turn for the strength and encouragement you need just aren't able to meet your need at this time. You're feeling pretty alone. Bitterness, discouragement, anger, depression are starting to creep into your soul.
But at a moment like this, David remembered the spring! There is a spring that never runs dry, that's gushing water for your soul even in the midst of an unrelenting drought. David turned to the infinite resources of the Lord his God and found strength when it seemed no strength was possible. How much strength? David rallies his troops to defy the enemy who robbed them and to take back what the enemy has stolen. It says, "David fought them from dusk until the evening of the next day, and not one of them got away...David recovered everything the Amalekites had taken." All the ground that had been lost was retaken because one man downloaded strength from the Lord who was his God when all human strength was gone.
This is no time for you to give up, or withdraw, or slip into the darkness. This is a time for you to fight back! Especially if there are other people looking to you, depending on you, like David. You'll need strength you don't have – that no one else can give you, except the awesome God you belong to. If you're defeated, it will only be because you went to one of those dry old wells to get some help instead of the gushing spring of the strength of Almighty God, whose strength and provision and joy is not rooted in our circumstances, or our feelings, or our finances, or human beings. He is the Lord who rules a hundred billion galaxies, and the Lord is your God! That's all you need to bounce back and win this one! He's your Source.
Yes, the wells you've counted on may be dry. But no matter what you've lost, no matter how dark it looks, you have got a spring that never runs dry!