Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation. Ps. 85:6-7
Dear Lord Jesus, it’s amazing what a few really good rains can do to transform my brown, crispy yard into a garden of fresh, green life. I begin this day grateful for the showers of the last few weeks. I can run my sprinkler endlessly, but there’s just something about the water that falls from the sky that brings restoration and renewal like nothing else.
Jesus, our hearts are no different. When we grow brown and crispy on the inside, our rejoicing in you is displaced with complaining about you (and others and anything); our delighting in you fades into detachment from you (and from others, and eventually from our own heart); our love for you atrophies into fading memories of you (and then into all kinds of hideous thoughts about you).
It’s a sad and dangerous thing when our hearts grow mute to the thrilling and invigorating music of the gospel—when spiritual drought sucks gospel-delight out of our marrow of our bones. There’s no hose, fire hydrant, waterfall or reservoir of our own making that can even begin to make a brown heart green.
So we cry out with the Sons of Korah, “show us your unfailing love, O Lord, grant us your salvation.” Jesus, just as it was your unfailing love that first brought life to our deadness, so it will be your unfailing love that brings fresh green to our current brown. You have promised to “satisfy our needs in a sun-scorched land” and “strengthen our frame.” You have promised that we will be “like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” (Isa. 58:11).
We come boldly before you praying the promises of the gospel—promises which claim us more than we claim them. You have never lied to us, Lord Jesus, never. You suffered the ultimate thirst of the cross so that we will never thirst again. So revive us that we might rejoice in you. Restore to us the joy of your salvation, that we might offer fresh fruit—grace fruit, to our family, friends, the community, and the nations. Renew in us the love we had for you when the gospel first blossomed in our hearts with life and freedom. So very Amen we pray, in your verdant and vital name.
