Showers of Blessing

Went to revival with my buddy the other night.

The first song we sang?

Showers of Blessing.

I just smiled.

Thought yeah, about to be :-).

Sunday during Bro Joes sermon, he mentioned the Desert Fathers.

Desert Fathers

"Much of Eastern Christian spirituality, including the Hesychast movement, had its roots in the practices of the Desert Fathers. Even religious renewals such as the German evangelicals and Pietists in Pennsylvania, the Devotio Moderna movement, and the Methodist Revival in England are seen by modern scholars as being influenced by the Desert Fathers

Kinda odd.

First time I had ever heard them brought up in a Sunday sermon.

Read about them in the book The New Mystics.

 "The solitude, austerity, and sacrifice of the desert was seen by Anthony as an alternative to martyrdom, which was formerly seen by many Christians as the highest form of sacrifice."

There is absolutely nothing wrong with solitude, austerity, and sacrifice if that is the way one feels led to be in communion with the divine.

"Much of  Eastern Christian spirituality...had its roots in the practices of the Desert Fathers."

This is a point John Crowder makes in his book The New Mystics. The Western church pretty much discounted this type of spirituality, mysticism, etc and continues to do so to this day. The Eastern church was much more accepting of it.

I believe, as Crowder ststes in his book that these types of movements will be brought back and that the time is ripe now, or in the not to distant future for more spiritual movements to take place.

Job 14:7-9

“At least there is hope for a tree:

    If it is cut down, it will sprout again,

    and its new shoots will not fail.

Its roots may grow old in the ground

    and its stump die in the soil,

yet at the scent of water it will bud

    and put forth shoots like a plant.

Think of the desert fathers as  a tree that was cut down.

In the end times?

It shall be renewed.

One might ask how is that going to happen?

Joel 2:23

Be glad, people of Zion,

    rejoice in the Lord your God,

for he has given you the autumn rains

    because he is faithful.

He sends you abundant showers,

    both autumn and spring rains, as before.

The rains spoke about here are the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The Spring rains usually thought of on the Day of Pentecost 

and the Autumn rains the outpouring of the Holy Spirit during the end times.

Joel 2:28-29 

The Day of the Lord

“And afterward,

    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,

    your old men will dream dreams,

    your young men will see visions.

Even on my servants, both men and women,

    I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

So Monday we went to work.

Looked like rain all morning.

All morning I'm thinking

"Showers of blessing,

Showers of blessing we need:

Mercy-drops round us are falling,

But for the showers we plead."

Late in the morning?

It rained :-).