Record Heat and Extreme Spiritual Drought

Sam Rainer

My yard is crispy fried. We are going through an extreme drought in Southern Indiana. This August was the hottest on record, and we are over eight inches under normal amounts of rainfall year-to-date. The grass has not grown in two weeks and is beyond brown, an eerie color which makes for a conspicuous “striped” look since we have a septic system and lateral lines that cross the backyard.

We are praying for rain.

Another drought is occurring in our great country, and one that has been in effect for some time – it is the one in our churches. With almost 4,000 churches closing their doors every year and 150,000 walking away from the church weekly, this parchedness stretches from coast to coast.

We must pray for a pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

Our society needs water, but it has abandoned the fountain of living water and dug cisterns for themselves – a double evil because the Lord is abandoned and people resort to their own pursuits. The powers of darkness are bringing the heat and causing extreme spiritual droughts.

But a fountain of living water is available from a well that quenches eternally the dryness of desiccated, sinful flesh. Our anhydrous lives can become soaked in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. The damage brought by the revival drought can be reversed. Planted seeds dormant in dusty soil can germinate in the true light.

But we needed sowers, pray-ers, and warriors. We need churches unafraid of gospel boldness. We need pastors willing to live out an evangelistic fervor, modeling a soul-winning attitude for their congregation. We need a body of believers unafraid to ask the Holy Spirit to wake up their community. We need natural, God-given unity in denominational politics, not a coerced and forced uniformity. We need accountability in all aspects of our Christian lives. We need a fresh crop of humble seminarians willing to take the country churches of 6 and lead them to become the country churches of 25. We need more shepherds and less bloggers. We need a renewed focus on the total reliance of our Sovereign God. We need a throng of Christians willing to lay down their lives for their fellow brothers and sisters. We need more backyard missionaries. We need more multicultural churches.

The list continues, but perhaps most of all we need to love the Giver of living water with all our heart, soul, and strength. The drought can be broken – the record heat doesn’t have to continue. We can bemoan the macro dearth of spirituality – the stats all point to continued dryness on a national scale. But revival rainstorms always begin in one heart first – a tiny drop of spiritual awakening. From individual churches it spreads across the land.

The national problem of churches closing doors and people leaving congregations will never be solved from the top down. National campaigns and denominational resolutions have their place, but the solution begins with you. Revival comes from the bottom up. Once all the individual seeds begin to grow, then we’ll all look around and see a field ripe for the harvest.

Pray for workers.