It Cannot Make it Rain
Titus 3:5-6 - He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is one of the driest places on earth. Years pass without any measurable rain, making it look like the surface of somewhere else. Gravel, salt crust, almost nothing. But in certain years when enough rain does fall, the desert can turn purple. They call it the desierto florido, the flowering desert. More than two hundred kinds of flowers come up out of seeds and bulbs that waited underground, running in sheets of pink and violet toward the horizon. The seeds were down there the whole time. The soil held them and fed them and kept them safe. But the one thing the ground could never do for itself is make it rain.
Paul says: “...whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.” That “whom” is the Holy Spirit from verse 5. That “he” is God our Savior from verse 4. And the pouring comes through Jesus Christ. Father, Son and Spirit completing the rescue, together.
Then the verb. Execheen. He poured out. The exact same form of this verb turns up in one other passage about the Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, Peter explains to the bewildered crowd that God raised Jesus from the dead, exalted Him to His own right hand, and, having received the promised Spirit from the Father, Jesus poured out the Spirit onto the saints. The Father is the source, the Son is the One through whom it comes, and the Spirit is the Person given to live inside God's people.
That same verb, in a different form, also shows up in the upper room, where Jesus lifts a cup and speaks of His blood, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Blood poured out at Calvary. A body raised on the third day. A Son seated at His Father's right hand. And then the Spirit poured out on a crowd in Jerusalem. The Savior who poured out His blood is the same Lord who pours out His Spirit, and He does it from a throne!
And notice how Paul adds one word we can read straight past: richly. The Spirit is a Person. What God gave you was Him. And the word is telling you something about the One doing the giving. He emptied out heaven's best gift onto the same people He had just finished describing in verse 3: slaves to sin who are passing their days in malice and envy, hating one another and hated by others. Nobody talked God into this. This is what He is like when He is most Himself!
See, some of us don’t actually believe God is like that. We’ll say it about the God in the sermon, or the one our friend seems to have. But ours feels more careful. Ours feels like He’s watching to see whether this week earned last week’s kindness. So we ration. We ration patience. We ration forgiveness. We get to the end of the day and think, well, that was all I had. And it probably was. Your body gets tired and your mind gets full, and you still need sleep and food and quiet. None of that is failure. Your own supply was simply never meant to be where this life came from.
This is where a believer becomes a Surrendered Servant, available to Jesus and obeying out of a life He hands over. The desert can’t make it rain. It receives what it could never call down, and then the blooms show everyone driving past what came out of the sky. You were never asked to be the rain. Only the ground it falls on.
Head: God did not hold anything back when He gave me His Spirit.
Heart: Ask God where you have been living off your own supply.
Hands: Name the person your patience runs out on, and ask the Spirit for what you don’t have before you see them next.
Prayer: “Father, show me where I have been running the Christian life out of my own thin supply. Thank You that through Your crucified, risen and exalted Son You poured out Your Spirit on me without measure and I am not the source of the life You ask me to live. Make me available to Jesus today, and let whatever grows out of me point back to You. In Jesus' name, Amen.”
-PK