“In the light of the king’s face is life, and his favor is like a cloud of the latter rain.” – Proverbs 16:15
“But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever. I will praise You forever, because You have done it; and in the presence of Your saints I will wait on Your name, for it is good.” – Psalm 52:8-9
It seems odd that the sign of God’s favor over a saint’s life is the “cloud of the latter rain.” Clouds filled with rain tend to dim the sun’s light, sometimes even to the point of making it as dark as night. Sometimes they hover for quite some time as we tense for the coming rain. Sometimes the rain never comes, other times it pours and floods the streets. Still other times we feel one drop and wonder whether it was just our imagination, or had the anticipated rain begun? Sometimes we enjoy the light of the King’s face like the warmth of the sun and seem to thrive spiritually. But then the clouds come and we wonder “why is it so dim?”
In beholding Christ we are filled with His light and are content to bathe in His warmth because we are the “olive plants” that David spoke of. We look for His rain to be poured out onto our ground. In beholding His radiance we see His heart and are assured of His love and plans but we do not see these come to fruition until the rain from heaven descends to the earth. Throughout the Old Testament the prophets saw the salvation of God in the promised coming of the Messiah. Revelation of God’s promise sustained and preserved a remnant of His people by His grace. The intercession and prophecies of God’s people had gone up (they prophesied by “the Spirit of Christ” it says in 2 Peter, so that wasn’t to their credit). After the last recorded events of the Old Testament, there was a two hundred year period in which “nothing happened.” There was nothing else written until the account of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. He came as a drop from heaven in the body of a newborn after two hundred years of cloud cover. Many missed the time of their visitation when He came. His people were oppressed by Roman rule and had little hope. They believed God would rain down in judgment on their enemies. Yet He didn’t come with the fire of heaven, but He came humbly as one drop from heaven. He came down from heaven and spent the better part of His years as a carpenter who grew in favor with God and man. At the proper time, He was released to do His work and it was quick and powerful.
When Christ rose from the dead, before He ascended into heaven He told the disciples to tarry in Jerusalem until they were baptized with the Holy Spirit. The clouds overhead aren’t a sign of despair but favor, if we will wait, just wait for the Holy Spirit. I’m not suggesting laziness, the disciples prayed together as they waited on the Lord. As David said in the above written psalm, “I will praise You forever, because You have done it; and in the presence of Your saints I will wait on Your name, for it is good.” Christ has done it all, it’s our duty to receive, walk and give. The light of the sun gets blocked out because we would be content to sit all day like fools staring at the heavens. Christ desires to pour out His Spirit into us – we need light and water to grow. Don’t be moved away from your hope and neither should we strive anxiously to bring the rain down before God desires to pour it out. Our works and striving will not hasten the rain.
Wait, knowing that it is finished, the work has been completed by Christ. Our redemption is in Him and His Holy Spirit is our only hope to work out our salvation and to live out God’s calling on our lives as children of the King. God prepares us for His outpourings by cleaning out our temples by the inner dealings of His Spirit. As we surrender and repent, He purges us of the remnants of sinful strongholds in our minds. He does this so that His grace can labor in us effectively so that we can be sent out as laborers by His grace “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). There are few laborers who labor with God’s strength. I have tried in my own strength often but God is growing me in His grace. It takes surrender, it means putting your hope in God as the olive tree in psalm 52. The plant’s only hope is that God will rain on it, our only hope is God’s mercy. That is to be the picture of our lives, even to the extent that people don’t understand our hope. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:19: “if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.”
We are waiting for the resurrection of God’s Spirit in revival, which should point us to ultimate resurrection at the return of Christ to rule this earth. This will be preceded by the darkest times the world has ever seen. The patience and hope of the saints for the “latter rain” of the King of kings, which the Spirit guarantees us of, will be our only strength. The antichrist will war with the saints and will be allowed to win for a time (Revelation 13:7). It will appear that hope is lost and our only hope will be God’s mercy and the promises of His coming kingdom. Our trials and afflictions now, I believe, are exercises of that. Revivals are a small picture of the greatest revival that is yet to come at the return of the King of kings and Lord of lords to reign and rule with His spotless bride (the church).
Paul also wrote in 1 Timothy that godliness has promise for this life and the next. We cannot sever the connection between the two. I’m not suggesting we sit and wait until Christ returns, we must see the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit break through into this life. God desires to work miracles among us to show that He is presently the resurrection and that He is returning with a kingdom in which there will be no suffering or death and it will be forever. The point is to be heavenly minded and knowing God’s plans and seeking God in even the most mundane circumstances so that His life will be exalted in all that we do. The point is the reward of the kingdom and not the pursuit of the world or its passing pleasures.
The clouds hanging over our present circumstances in our individual lives and as the body Christ hold the rain that God wants to pour out so that we can ever be more effective witnesses of Him and His power. Remain in Him. Sometimes God lays a promise or a divine commission before us, neither of which we can fulfill by ourselves. Before the promised desire is realized we must tarry and wait to be imbued with power from on high by the Holy Spirit so that all the glory, honor and power in the church will be unto the Head - Christ Jesus our Lord and Bridegroom.