The Lean Years – Wasted Moments

Based on Spurgeon’s Morning Devotion 7-3-2015:

“The ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven wellfavoured and fat kine.”
Genesis 41:4

Pharaoh’s dream has too often been my waking experience. My days of sloth have ruinously destroyed all that I had achieved in times of zealous industry; my seasons of coldness have frozen all the genial glow of my periods of fervency and enthusiasm; and my fits of worldliness have thrown me back from my advances in the divine life. I had need to beware of lean prayers, lean praises, lean duties, and lean experiences, for these will eat up the fat of my comfort and peace. If I neglect prayer for never so short a time, I lose all the spirituality to which I had attained; if I draw no fresh supplies from heaven, the old corn in my granary is soon consumed by the famine which rages in my soul. When the caterpillars of indifference, the cankerworms of worldliness, and the palmerworms of self-indulgence, lay my heart completely desolate, and make my soul to languish, all my former fruitfulness and growth in grace avails me nothing whatever. How anxious should I be to have no lean-fleshed days, no ill-favoured hours! 

This message offers a most powerful indictment of the tends (tendencies) and chords that draw us away from task. While rest is an absolute necessity, how careful are we to watch for the leanness creeping in the guise of a blessed moment of peace? Appearing in the form of a blessing yet there is a startling difference and a dangerous persistence embedding itself.

In the passage there are two cows, both at work, but an important difference the lean worked to devour the fat. As Spurgeon espoused and the word informs of our leanness, slight indifference, our neglect even in the guise of rest – it works to devour all that is accomplished in his name while we traverse the lands of Egypt. Whether you fare as sumptuously as Joseph or as trodden as a slave.

While we’re here God is sustaining us. Yes you’ve been washed and reborn – regenerated into the promised land of Zion yet until the physical day you set foot in Canaan there is a vigilance to educate, to nourish the body as we share learn and discover the elements of faith. There is a vigilance that we need to go often to the well, to the rock – to the Word of God that it may always be as He said. My soul, Psalm 63:5 (HCSB) You satisfy me as with rich food ; my mouth will praise You with joyful lips.

Let us remember today and always the lesson of the dream and the dream itself.

God speaks that we may understand and DO! The dream doesn’t change situations it’s up to you to heed its thoughts and follow through.