Rain In Due Season

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Rain In Due Season

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Mankind can have a tremendous impact on the natural world around us – such as animal species that have become extinct through mankind’s behavior, changed weather patterns from destroying natural ecosystems, fertile areas teaming with life turned into deserts through deforestation or overuse.  Some say that our chaotic weather conditions are a result of manmade global warming, and are one more example of mankind having a negative impact on this planet.  Whether or not you believe in the Global Warming/Climate Change argument (I don’t), there is no doubt that world-wide weather patterns are not as stable as decades past.  But if Global Warming is not the reason for extreme weather what else could be?

The answer that most of the world refuses to look at is that God is removing His blessing of proper weather conditions.  Make that statement when the topic of strange or violent weather comes up and watch the eyes roll.  God tasked mankind with caring for His creation (Genesis 2:15) and to be good stewards.  In Leviticus 26:4 God also told Israel that if they obeyed His instruction, He would bless them with “rain in its season,” (NKJV).  We are seeing the result of not having rain in its season here in the U.S.: we have forest fires out of control in Colorado; we have a heat wave parked from the mountain states deep into the eastern Midwest region; we saw a violent storm come from nowhere in the Washington D.C./Maryland area that has left millions without power going on a week since that storm; where my family lives here in Wisconsin we have not had measureable rain in two months (the crops in the fields are showing it).  I have not heard anyone say, “Are we doing something wrong before God?”  Meanwhile, in England, they are being flooded out with too much rain and there is growing concern this rain will negatively impact the upcoming Olympics.

We have digressed (especially in the western nations) to a point that we have forgotten what God said in Leviticus.  As maker and sustainer of all life, God can certainly change the weather to bless or to curse.  God made clear in Leviticus 26 and in Deuteronomy 28 that there would be blessing for obedience to His law and conversely cursing’s (punishment) for disobedience.  Modern humanistic thought rejects even the possibility of God’s involvement in the affairs of mankind, but God will not be mocked (Galatians 6:7) – and we are reaping what has been sown the last 4 decades in this nation.

What most miss in God’s mercy is that He still sends the rain for the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45) because He desires to show all of mankind His mercies (Psalm 145:9) so that all will come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).  We know this from verses such as 2 Chronicles 7:13-14, “When I shut up haven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

Let us always make sure that we are humble before God, seeking His face and forsaking our wicked ways, so that God will hear us and forgive our sins.