When I think of my childhood, some of my favorite memories are those times when my siblings and I would run around and play in the rain (of course we got in trouble for it!). I loved playing in the rain; it was such an exhilarating feeling to feel the raindrops on my face and get all soaked up while running around playing.<\/p>\n
I still love the rain \ud83d\ude42 . Rain signifies many different things. One of the significance of rain is blessings. It could signify God’s blessings on the earth or on his people. Sometimes, when we pray we even ask God to open the gates of heaven and let his rain come on us.<\/p>\n
Well when the rain comes, what next? What do we do while it’s raining?<\/p>\n
When God’s blessings are upon us and we are flooded with an abundance of it all, what do we do? These blessings could be an abundance of knowledge and wisdom, wealth, ideas, skills, spiritual gifts, etc.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, the rain of God’s blessings come upon us but we do not make ourselves benefit from it as much as we should. Think about a farmer, for instance, if he goes to God praying for rain to come without first planting some seed in the soil, when the rain comes and goes he’ll still have no harvest because he didn’t prepare for the rain. The thing about rain is it’s seasonal – it’s going to come and go – it doesn’t last forever. There’s going to be times when there’ll be an overflow of God’s blessings and other times when it feels really dry. There’s going to be times of abundance and times of lack because there is a season and a time for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1<\/em>). That’s why during our times of abundance, we have to prepare for the times of lack. During the time of rain, we have to store up for the time of dryness. This is what a wise and discerning person will do – as Joseph was (Genesis 41). So how do we do this, how do we take the most advantage of the rain when it comes?<\/p>\n Sometimes, God sends his blessings upon us but our hearts are just not ready to receive them yet. Maybe because we have our own idea on how those blessings should come which is totally different from how they actually come or maybe because our hearts are just hardened. Either way, if our hearts are not prepared to receive God’s blessings, they’ll come and go and we’ll just miss them. So we need to prepare our hearts by opening them up to God.<\/p>\n Just as we harden our hearts sometimes, we also limit God by having barriers in our minds. These barriers are most times fed into our minds by the things we let get into it – through what we listen to or what we see. If our minds are full of things that make us doubt and have unbelief, then we are really limiting God and he wouldn’t bless us as much as he wants to because we don’t let him (see Matthew 13:58).<\/p>\n\n
Prepare Your Heart<\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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Prepare Your Mind<\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n