“You have brought a vine out of Egypt; You have cast out the nations, and planted it. You prepared room for it, and caused it to take deep root.”                                                 Psalm 80:v8,9

Room to grow.
We have a tree in our garden which we planted too close to the house. After a few years I cut it down level with the ground and thought that was the end of my problems with that tree, but that was just the start.
What I didn’t see, was what the roots were doing under the ground. At least twice now I have had to lift a nearby man-hole cover to try and find what was blocking the drain from our house, only to discover that it was a root from this stump, traveling far and wide and deep to search out water for the tree that I thought was dead.
God has prepared places where our roots can go deeper into Him than we have ever imagined. These places are not just physical, in the sense that He plants one in this place and one in that, but also He has prepared works and experiences for us, some very hard and dry, where our roots are driven deep into Him, deep into His Word, in search of life. Psalm 1 tells us that the tree planted by the river bears fruit, but bears it ‘in season’. There will be spiritual seasons of cold as well as warmth, wind as well as calm and drought as well as rain and God uses them all to bring forth His fruit in our lives, the fruit of the Spirit, the character of Christ.
Like the Israelites and like that tree, to get to the place of growth, we too have got to move in the direction where the water of life is flowing, the direction where the purposes of God and the presence of God are moving. In fact we have no authority from God to do ‘what we please’ but only to agree with what we see the Father already doing. (John 5.v19) This is the key to bearing fruit for Christ; we must remain or ‘abide’ in Him (John 15.v5). Jesus said to abide in Him was to abide in His Word, in other words to be in a relationship of obedience, a moment by moment communion with His person. This is more than an intellectual knowledge of scripture or a dogmatic adherence to the ‘letter of the law’. This speaks of a heart that seeks Him, seeks to know Him, not just seeks His blessings. To seek him in such a way, to press into his presence, will both require and result in the death of self. To be such a friend of Jesus, will result in Him increasing in our lives and we,
(our self lives) decreasing. This is what John the Baptist taught his disciples (John 3.v26-36) John carried the anointing of God on His life and so when He spoke, he did so with authority and yokes and bondages were broken in the lives of his hearers leading thousands to repentance. This is the same anointing of His presence that the Church today must carry if we are to see the same repentance prepare our nation today for the coming of Jesus. What was John the Baptist’s secret? Why did his life carry such an anointing, his words carry such spiritual power? It was for the same reason the early Church ministered in power, for they “had been with Jesus”. (Acts 4.v13).
This brings us back to the necessity of seeking Christ, to be found daily in His presence, close enough to hear his Words which are life to us. The spiritual life that others see in us, will only ever be to the measure that we are receiving from Him, for we have no power of our own to bring anyone to repentance.
When we begin to understand the necessity of this intimacy in the life of a believer, we can look back and gain understanding as to why God allows us to go through such desert experiences that would cause us to cry out for and seek His living water. Was it not the desert that prepared John the Baptist and so many others of God’s servants for ministering in His power, for carrying His anointing? Was it not the Spirit of God who drove Jesus Himself into the desert, from which He emerged in “the power of the Spirit”? (John 4.v14)
In this day of such distractions, when there is hardly a place we can go to escape the noise of men and the technology of our modern communications, has the Church in the West forgotten the most powerful technology in the world to communicate the presence and reality of God to a people dead in their sins? That power is the anointing of the Holy Spirit? Is the reason for the lack of power and authority in the lives of so many believers simply because we “speak with such familiarity of a God we hardly know”?
Let us not be afraid of the desert experience, but rather open our eyes and see that the Lord is calling us not so much into the dry place but into the quiet place, where He can share His heart with us, feed us His words and break the yolks on our lives. (Matt 11.v28). Only then can we arise to speak to this generation as true witnesses of the risen Christ, with His anointing on our lives as the confirmation of the truth of our message that Jesus is risen and we have been with Him.