Called to make Springs

Dear friends,
I pray that you are well. I have not written in a while, but we are well. We have seen God wonderfully answer some of our prayers that we had persistently prayed for a long time. I am thankful I have a Father who hears and answers our prayer at the appropriate time. Though these are difficult times for many in the body of Christ I believe we are on the threshold of a great spiritual breakthrough. He is calling us to Himself, calling us to prayer, and when He calls us to pray, we know He will answer. I hope you will be encouraged by this message today.

As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a spring; the rain also covers it with pools.
Psalms 84:6

How often I have read this psalm and on many occasions have sung parts of it, but the passage about the Valley of Baca never meant much. The Lord really spoke to me through it recently. I had never really thought about the Valley of Baca. As this passage of scripture was illumined to me I began meditating on it and looked up the Valley of Baca. Baca is actually a type of plant known for its ability to survive dry places. So what we see being described in Psalms 84 is the pilgrimage of life for those who have found the intimacy with God that the psalmist begins the psalm yearning for. It describes those who intimately know their God and are continually praising Him. In this pilgrimage of life heading toward the New Jerusalem we pass through dry places. Some of you may be in a wilderness or dry place in your lives right now.

A year or so ago, I was visiting a church in another city and I was complaining about how dry the area where I was living was. One of the elders who is very prophetic said that he was familiar with the area and that it was indeed a dry place and that the Lord was calling us to dig new wells. How do you dig a new well? As I pondered on that, I felt that it was pressing into God, seeking Him whole-heartedly, and developing an intimacy with Him. I believe that is true, but oftentimes the natural is a picture of the spiritual. To dig a well, you have to remove a lot of dirt to get to the water; sometimes you have to move or go through stone.
One morning in my quiet time, the Lord asked me, "Is it Middle Georgia that's dry or is it you?" I thought about it and came to the realization that it was both me and Middle Georgia that was dry, but it was not the fault of Middle Georgia that I was dry. Maybe it was dry because I was dry. I could give many reasons or probably better said excuses like hurts and disappointments in ministry, unfulfilled prophetic words, betrayals, and misunderstandings that had made me less and less intimate with the Lord. My prayer life was not what it had been at one time. It was necessary to redig the well in my own life that I might begin to dig new wells in Middle Georgia.

I cannot say that it is my responsibility to bring revival to this area, but I do have a responsibility to be a conduit through which the Spirit of God flows. Jesus said, "He who believes in Me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." John 7:38 It is obvious from what Jesus said that other scriptures make reference to this. There are many scriptures that talk about rivers and water. In Ezekiel 47 we see the small stream of water flowing from the threshold of the temple that became a huge body of life-giving water. Are we not the temple of the Holy Spirit from which this live-giving water flows? In the Psalms 46:4 it says "There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God." Are we not tributaries of that river?

The kingdom of God came in power when the Spirit of God was poured out at Pentecost. The kingdom is in the Spirit. Jesus said the kingdom of God is in you. He told his disciples that when they entered a place to heal the sick and to say that the kingdom of God has come nigh. If we have become conduits of the Holy Spirit then the kingdom comes wherever we go. We must all pass through our Valley of Baca and we will either impact it for the kingdom or we will be impacted by it. If we are not flowing in the Spirit we will be drained dry and become like our surroundings, but if we are flowing in the Spirit we make springs in it. I have heard it said that water attracts water. We make it a spring, but look at the second part of the verse. The rain covers it with pools. The Spirit of God within us attracts the presence of God. God promises to make streams in the desert and pools in the wilderness and He chooses to pour Himself out through you.

You may be in a very dry place. God has put you there to make a difference. You may have redig old wells or dig new ones. There may be a little dirt or a lot. There may be some stones that have to be removed, but there is an abundant source of water sufficient to turn your dry place into a well-watered garden. You may be the stream that your dry land is waiting for. We had close to a nine inch rainfall deficit since the first of the year and over the past three weeks we have had so much rain we made up the deficit. Last Wednesday at our prayer meeting a young man said, "The drought is over." I inquired as to whether he was talking about the natural or the spiritual and he said the spiritual. The next night the local meteorologist declared that the drought was over. I could not help, but believe that was a confirming word. If the Spirit of God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead dwells in you, He can change the environment through you. May God fill you with Himself today that all who encounter you may encounter life-giving water.

In his love,
Herb Dean