Rock On!

who turned the rock into a pool
Psalm  14:8

Do you have any circumstances in your life that seem to be impossible? Are there people that make your life hard? Do you live in a nation where the government is opposed to your way of life? Take courage from this tremendous truth: the presence of God turns the impossible into provision. 

What would be a less likely source of water than a rock? My humanist friends will be saying, ‘You see, the water was there all the time, and the rock simply obscured it, so Moses probably carried a crowbar, and shifted it to get the water.’ 

Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, 

 who turned the rock into a pool, the hard rock into springs of water.

The nature of things changes in the presence of God. Rocks can become not just liquefied, but a pool, a spring for the refreshing of a nation.

God still changes rocks into water. If you are like me, you will admit that there are aspects of your life that somehow have not turned from rock to river. There are aspects of my life that are far from flowing, more stagnant than spring.

There are believers in Jesus who are as hard as a rock. They are in God’s river, but they are bouncing along the bottom, still getting their rough edges knocked off them. They are moving in the same direction as God, but with lots of resistance. God can turn them into flowing liquid.

Then there are those lodged at the edge of God’s flow; they can tell you all about it, they have comments on those flowing by, but they are going nowhere. They appear to be part of what God is doing, but they are stuck. God has ways and means of getting them flowing, but they must read his ways correctly and pray for a softening of heart, otherwise, they will misinterpret the pressure to flow as an excuse to stay.

The amazing thing is that God can also touch rocks out in the desert, disconnected from everything he seems to be doing, and turn them into pools. These are leaders or businesses or nations unengaged in God’s purposes. God can crack them open and take what they thought was for them, and transform it into a spring of water for the refreshing of others. They can go from fortress to flow in under 60 seconds if…

What changes us from hard to soft, from stuck to going, from foolish to flowing? 

 the presence of the God of Jacob

If we are experiencing the presence of God we are less likely to become river rock—smooth, well-rounded, moving a little, but still rock. If we are experiencing the presence of God we are less likely to become stuck spectators with religious opinions on the flow of God, but no personal experience of his power. If we are inviting God’s presence into our work and business, we will become focused on maximizing flow-through; we will be cognizant that blessings banked tend to become rocks on the bank. Calcified blessings are precursors to hardened hearts. If God’s presence is invited into a nation, it can become the lender and not the borrower, the blesser and not the beggar, flowing water instead of a backwater. What’s it going to be: rock or river?

Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, 

who turned the rock into a pool, the hard rock into springs of water.

Reflections

• Where are the hard places, the rocks, in your life?
  
  
• Invite the presence of God into these places—see them become pools just because He is there.