Bring the Rain

Well, what a roller coaster of a week it has been for me. This past week was one of the difficult ones. Maybe because I was gonna be preaching today, maybe it was just a post vacation let down, or whatever – but this was a rough week. I’d normally think the devil was trying to derail me from being focused on today’s message, but I’m getting away from that train of thought. I think too many times he gets underserved credit. Suffice to say it was an emotionally and physically draining week.

This past Monday morning, a Journey church friend posted on her Facebook page the following brief message: “bring the rain.” Since I am the guy who has a song for almost everything, I quickly posted a link to a video on YouTube for MercyMe’s song also titled Bring the Rain. I probably listened to this song about 30 times this week. (Yeah, I every now and then I get a bit obsessive-compulsive.)

I encourage you to listen here to the song before proceeding. Now look at the chorus –

“Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain.”

You know, my week had more than its fair share of rain, at least in my eyes. But who am I to judge how much rain my life needed this week, or any week? I know for a fact God better understands how much I can handle, and gives me more than that so that I have to rely on Him and not just my own power.

So fast forward back to this morning…. Our final song leading up to me preaching was – surprise, surprise – Bring the Rain. I knew this since Wednesday when our worship leader Andy (read about this great guy here) sent out the schedule for the service. This was not something we spoke about or coordinated – it was a coincidence. Only with God there are no coincidences, only opportunities for Him to be glorified. And as the worship team led us into this song, I wept. Not because of the rain, but because of my opportunity to praise Him.

I then got up and spoke about how God uses people – committed people, courageous people, and common people. I shared how God allowed Gideon and 300 soldiers to kill 120,000 hostiles without raising their swords. We talked about how an 80-year-old guy named Daniel entered a pit with ravenous lions to be punished for not worshipping a false god, only to come out unscathed but covered in lions hair (because I think they really shed, and I know Daniel played with those lions – I would have).

I now get this song – completely. Kinda like -I once was blind, but now I see. It has taken on a whole new meaning after today’s service. It reminds me of a quote I discovered reading the book In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day by Mark Batterson in preparation for my message today: “When you worship, it produces shock waves that register on the Richter scale.”

“Jesus, bring the rain”.