Morning By Morning #183

Water will flow out from Jerusalem…
in summer and in winter.

Zechariah 14:8

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

The streams of living water flowing from Jerusalem will not be dried up by the oppressive heat of midsummer any more than they will be frozen by the fierce winds of winter. My soul can rejoice that I will never need to testify to a lack of God’s faithfulness. Seasons change and I change, but my Lord is eternally the same, and the streams of His love are as deep and wide and full as ever. The heated stress of business concerns and scorching trials create in me the need for the cooling effects of the river of His grace. And my thirst may be immediately quenched from His inexhaustible fountain, for whether summer or winter, it continues to pour forth abundantly.

“Blessed be the name of the LORD” (Ps. 113:2 KJV), for His high mountain streams are never meager and His underground springs never cease to flow. Elijah saw the Kerith brook dry up, yet Jehovah was still the same sovereign God. (See 1 Kings 17:1 – 7.) And Job said, “My brothers are as undependable as intermittent streams” (Job 6:15), but he found his God to be an overflowing river of consolation. Egypt places great confidence in the Nile, whose floods are quite unpredictable, but our Lord is evermore the same. Cyrus conquered the city of Babylon by diverting the course of the Euphrates (see Isa. 44:27 – 45:1 for a prophecy of this more than 100 years in advance), but no power on earth, whether human or satanic, can divert the river of God’s divine grace.

Ancient riverbeds have been found totally dry and desolate, but the streams that find their source on the mountains of the Lord’s divine sovereignty and infinite love will eternally flow. Generations of time melt away, but the course of His grace is unaltered. The river of God will sing with greater resolve and truth than the brook in this poem:

Men may come, and men may go,

But I go on forever.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809 – 1892

How blessed is my soul to be led “beside [such] still waters” (Ps. 23:2 KJV)!

Never wander to other streams, lest you hear the Lord’s rebuke, “Why go to Egypt to drink water from the [muddy Nile]?” (Jer. 2:18).

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

Every believer will partake of the eternal river of God in heaven, but what about today? In this life that blessing is tied to our love of His Word.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.

Psalm 1:1 – 3

As a result, the believer becomes a vessel of blessing to others, for Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him” (John 7:38).

“Oh, how I love your law!” (Ps. 119:97).