A cactus is a very strange plant. Some varieties look just like rocks; others are covered with stickers. Some of them are downright ugly. Others actually look dead. You seldom see one bloom.
Cactus or other succulents store up all the moisture they can get, then use it up during the dry season. Sometimes the dry season will last for years. But the cactus, though barely alive, somehow manages to survive on a very limited amount of moisture. After one of these long stretches of drought, when the spring rains finally come, the cactus bursts into bloom using all its energy, sending forth its seeds just at the right time for them to sprout and reproduce.
When the spring rains come, providing the desert with much needed moisture, those cactus that look like rocks, the ugly, thorny, dead-looking cactus, suddenly bloom. The desert, the wilderness, the barren waste, where only cactus grow, will blossom like a beautiful English rose garden.
The “rain” of the Holy Spirit is here now. We have lived through hard times, barely surviving on just a little moisture, just enough to stay alive. Some of us are dead looking, thorny, ugly, but we have survived and now it is time to bloom.
Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit is like a river of living water pouring out of our innermost belly, John 7:38. He has caused the airwaves, the magazines, bookstores to be flooded with His Spirit. There are more Christian books, songs, magazines, TV programs, and movies being produced than ever in the history of the world. Every ladies’ magazine has an article on spirituality in it. The Internet is being taken over by Christians.
“The desert shall blossom like a rose.” Isaiah 35:1
The drought has ended. The spring rains have come. What has God given you to do in the last “rain of the Holy Spirit”? It is time to get the Word of God out where it can reproduce.
It is time to bloom.