Recently, my community has been flooded. Thousands of homes were affected by the high water. As you drive through the neighborhoods that were hit, you will see piles of trash out by the road. Sheetrock, furniture, clothes, electronics, and anything that the water touched are thrown out into these piles. ThIngs that once cost so much and meant so much to these families are now worthless as they lay in those piles.
As I see those piles, I can’t help of one of the songs we sing at church: “Open up the Flood Gates of Heaven”. In this and many other songs, we pray for God to flood our lives with His goodness and rain down blessings. I’m not sure we really understand or think about what we are asking for. Floods are devastating. Floods destroy. Floods are very costly. If we are going to ask God to flood our lives, we need to count the cost.
When God floods our lives, our dreams get devastated. We realize that they were too small. God has dreams for our lives that are so much greater than we can comprehend. Through Him, we are able to accomplish and be more than we ever thought. The flood of His Spirit in our lives means that our perspective changes and often our purpose. When His flood comes in, our lives get displaced from complacency.
Another thing that happens is we lose the things we once held dear. Suddenly, we realize that the things we hold onto the tightest are really worthless when compared to what He wants to give us. When We invite Him to flood our lives, all the junk, clutter, walls, and things not pleasing to Him will need to get dragged out to the street and chunked. In order to fill our lives with the things we wants to give us, we need to get rid of things from our old lives. This flood invites change.
If we truly want revival to come, then we do need God to come flood our lives, our nation, and our world. We need Him to help us get our junk out and become renewed first. As Paul said in II Corinthians 5:17, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (NLT) God wants to give us new life, but we have to let His flood bring about the change necessary. We have to be willing to be displaced from our old lives, to get rid of the things in our lives that tie us to that old life, and adopt the new life He gives. The next time we sing and pray for God to open the flood gates of Heaven, I hope we mean it.
If you want to hear that song, click here.
Devotions by Chris Hendrix 