Have you ever, like,
been in a time of prayer or been in an intimate
time with the Lord? Yeah. And when you're sitting
in your office, I'm just asking for a friend, when you're sitting
in your office and you're like, Yeah, Lord,
I'll absolutely do that. Yes, I will.
And then you walk out the doors and you're like, what was I thinking?
Has that ever happened to anybody? Has that happened to you
this week? 'Cause I really would like to not feel alone here. Anyway,
so in prayer time this week, you know, last week we
talked about wells and my encouragement was to dig
another well, you know, as we continue forward. And I can't tell you how
many people have gone, What does that mean? What does that
mean? Tell me what it means to dig a well. And what I
felt like the Holy Spirit said to me was,
show 'em how you do it. Show 'em how you do it. And
so we're all gonna go to my office. Now, since I
can't do that, I'm gonna bring a couple of things out here, if
you'll— this is what reluctant obedience
looks like. Okay. All right, here we
go. You know, there's an exit sign right
over here. I wasn't considering it. Oh,
yes, I was. Move that. Okay. The
audiovisual team is like, somebody help her, get her off of there.
Okay, so Courtney, if this rug looks familiar,
it's because I stole it out of yours and Caitlin's office. But
I admitted it, so. This is what I
do. So I'm gonna take you into my office
with me and hopefully show you how
to dig a Word well. This is the way the Lord does it with
me. And I just want to invite you because he's making me.
Anyway, I just want you to go with me and allow the Holy
Spirit to— I'm just gonna show you the process through which I
dig a Word well. When I begin to— when there's something in the Word
that just grabs my attention, and
I want to go further in it. I want to know what this looks
like. This is the, the way he does that with me.
So anybody want a piece of carpet just right here? You're welcome to. Grab your
Bible, it's going to be right there. Never study
without tissue. Or coffee.
Usually, there's music, so would y'all hum a little bit just for something?
Not really. Okay, so, when the Lord begins to put something on my
heart, I just— I grab my weapons.
And I usually have a couple of Bibles, a couple of translations. I
always like to have an Amplified, an NIV, and just to make
Justin happy, you know, a KJV or something like that.
I will grab my notes from the last time I taught
because I feel like it's gonna be relevant to where we're going the next time.
I will grab that, and I know that he was gonna give us something else,
so I'll grab a fresh notebook. This one's not so fresh because I
have been studying just a little bit, but I will grab those.
Never underestimate the resource power
of an Old Testament survey book or a New Testament
survey book. There is richness in here. If you want to go a little bit
deeper, get you a survey book. Yes. Get yourself a couple of
these. Plus, they're really impressive when you're walking down the street, and you're like,
that's a big book. Anyway, really
good resources. Always
have highlighters, 'cause that— you can't do
anything without highlighters. And I have
my glasses, which I didn't have in First Gathering.
And I have online concordance. My Strong's Concordance
is so huge. The Lord has graced me, allowed me to
find one online, and I use that. It has the Greek and Hebrew lexicons
in it. That sounds like leprechauns, doesn't it? So, I will
gather my tools. I was gonna drag a shovel
out here, but I figured Hal would go, what are you doing with my shovel
anyway? And it just disappeared
from the house. All right, so, here's what we're
gonna do. Father God, I thank you for your Word. I thank you for
your truth. I thank you, Lord, for the way that you reveal yourself to us.
And so, Father, I'm asking today that you teach us to dig a well. Teach
us, Father God, to just take your Word
and go deeper with it, Father God. Teach us, Father, the way to just
come after you. And so, Father, I thank you for this resource in my
life. I thank you, Lord, that you are the master teacher. I thank you
that you are the rabbi who teaches. And so, Father, I pray that that be
the impartation in this room, Father, that— Amen. You teach us
to seek you, to make the wells deeper
in our life, Father, as you supply the resource. In Jesus' name,
amen. Amen. So, this is always, almost always
prompted by something when I'm reading the Word. And so, this time,
as I was going through the scriptures and I was studying about wells, and I
had just left— we had just left last week Genesis 26. And so, I
was reading on over in Genesis 27, and I came across this phrase.
The Dew of Heaven, the Richness of Earth.
And it was the blessing, and it said this, ah, the
smell of my son is like the smell of the
field that the Lord has blessed. May God give you heaven's dew
and earth's richness, an abundance of grain and new
wine. And I'm like, Lord, you know, we can skip right over
that. But the thing that stuck out to me were those 2
things, the— The dew.
Heaven's dew and earth's richness. Heaven's dew and
earth's richness. Here's the thing, guys, God's Word is never just a
word. It's never just one syllable. It's never
just letters. It is life and breath, and there is a pulse
in it, and there's a message in it that if our hearts and our
spirits are open to receive, He will pour into that. And if we just
dig, we will find it. That's right. a little deeper. And so let's dig a
well. Let's dig a well.
And I'm gonna take you to the— so the first thing I do is I
ask the question, what is heaven's dew
and what is earth's richness? And I begin to assemble all of
my options. I begin, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna need to find out. I
wanna know the origin of the word. There's something about that that always gets me.
And there's also something about the Hebrew language that always draws me in. It's like,
talking to someone in their native tongue, you know, whatever it might be. But the
way that it was written in the very beginning, there's a richness to that.
And so, I'm always— that's probably almost always the
first place that I will go. And so, I'm going to need a few options
for that. I'm gonna need my Strong's Concordance. It's got the
Greek and Hebrew lexicons. Sometimes, I'll use
biblegateway.com,
elia.com. There you will find A really
rich resource. It has the Strong's Concordance in
it. It has the Greek. It has the Hebrew. And it will take you
into study tools that I have been able to
utilize this for years now. Blue Letter Bible,
etc. You probably all have your own that you begin to study
from. So, we're carrying that forward. And as I go
to find out what this means, it literally means— What?
Heavens do, in Hebrew, is tal samayim.
Tal samayim. It's masculine. That means it almost comes
from a male point of view. It's like, there's something about
that that gets me. And it— yeah, I get excited because I think about anything
that God's doing and his life force being a part of that.
The do, tal, from heaven, samayim, that's
created by God. And when you look at that right there where it says
created by God, it prompts me always to go back to the Genesis of the
Word. Yes. And what do I mean by that? I
wanna know where it was first mentioned in scripture. I want to know the
first place that it's going to be mentioned in scripture. And it
tells us the first time we hear this word, taal,
shamayim, the first time we hear shamayim is in Genesis 1:1,
and it says, in the beginning, God created the
heavens and the earth. In the beginning, God created the
heavens and the earth. And then I'm like, okay, all
right, we have the origin. That's the first time we said it, and it was,
It is a place of creation. It is where God just
spoke the blessing of,
let there be heavens. Let this be, as all of these things
became, as He breathed and everything came to be.
And so now I wanna know what taal is. I wanna know what the dew
of heaven is.
But— and it is this. It begins to give us characteristics of
this dew of heaven. Yes. And then it begins to tell
us that it sustains life. Now, wrap this up
in what He did in Genesis 1:1. What He did in
Genesis 1:1 is when He threw those heavens out there, when
He created this canopy over the earth, He filled
those heavens with resource. He filled those
heavens with everything that was going to be
needed for us in this time. The dews, the rains, the The idea is
there's a hair. Anyway, all of these things, when he threw them out there,
he threw them out full. And these are the characteristics, if you research
this dew, it says it sustains life, it
arrives quietly. Let me give you that. Gently,
without thunder, without lightning, without
announcement, the morning is touched by heaven.
Think about that, guys. We wake up morning after morning
and the dew has coated the ground. The dew has covered. It
didn't announce itself when it happened. And it was a natural
thing for us just to expect that when we wake up,
the earth would be covered with dew, right? Didn't
announce itself. See, that's the God that I know.
Now, can he thunder? Absolutely he can
thunder. Can he send the lightning? Oh yeah, and he does.
But those moments where you expect him in the lightning, but you
find him in the dew— That's right. In the morning.
In the morning. See, when you're— when you are Him,
you don't have to announce yourself. You don't have to have a
trumpet. You don't have to have that.
Then— oh, there we go. And then it says—
I'm just taking you— everything you see written up here is off
me sitting at the computer going, oh wait, I'm excited! Wait a minute!
What was that passage? When I read this, it comes gently, it comes quietly, it's,
you know, it wasn't lightning, it wasn't thunder. And it triggers
something on the inside of me that goes, wait a minute, I've heard this before.
Wait a minute, where have I heard this before? It wasn't lightning, it wasn't
thunder, it wasn't in the wind, it wasn't in the earthquake. And I'm like, oh,
that was Elijah! That was Elijah! And so, I
wanna hear about that. And so, I will grab my Bible and I will go.
I wanna see what it says. So if you have your Bible, Turn to 1
Kings 19.
You know, this is nothing like my office because I've been sitting here for a
while and I haven't heard once,
are you in there? And I'm like, yes, I am, but I'm
pretending not to be. Okay, 1 Kings 19.
Go down to verse 11. It says, the Lord said, go
out and stand on the mountain. He's talking to Elijah,
and Elijah's had a rough day. Elijah has retreated into the caves,
and he says, the Lord said, go out and stand on the mountain in the
presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. Then a
great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered
the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in
the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the
Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle
whisper. When Elijah heard it,
he pulled his cloak over his face,
and he went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a
voice said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah?
What are you doing here, Elijah?
And he goes down to verse 15, and the Lord says to— Elijah tells him,
you know, they're trying to kill me, Lord. And the Lord says,
go back the way you came. Go back the way you came. And
in the middle of this study, as I'm learning about dew, and I'm learning about
the richness of earth, and I'm learning about all of this, I'm looking back and
going, oh, wait. He wasn't in the lightning. He wasn't in the fire. He
wasn't in the wind or the earthquake, but he was in that gentle voice.
And I'm like, oh, that's— then that's the element of part of that, that
dew that he brings into our life morning by
morning, his voice. But you know
what's even better?
If you've got your Bible, go to Hosea. Yes.
14:5. Hosea 14:5,
and it says this, I
will be like the dew, the tall, to
Israel. I will be like the dew to
Israel. I'm like, oh God, you are so faithful! All
of those elements that we just read about, you are that which
sustains life, you are that gentle voice, you are the truth,
Without lightning, no need to announce yourself. You are
dew that we wake up to every single
morning. Every single morning.
But you know what's cool too? I know, but
wait, there's more! There's Ginsu knives!
I will be the dew that falls to Israel.
He is the Ta'alel. He is the
Ta'alel, the dew of God. Or
Ta'alei, the dew of the Lord. The
refreshing of the Lord. This constant source that pours
into our life, that gives and pours and is there
for us. And see, now it just begins to
take shape. When— now when you look at it and you
go, The dew of heaven. The dew
of heaven. The well's a little deeper. The well's a little deeper. It has a
little bit more context. You're like, oh, wait a minute. When,
when that is spoken, and you are the dew of heaven, Lord, I hear you
saying you will sustain me. I hear you saying that you supply
me, that you speak to me in gentle voices and lead me
in places, that you beckon me to come out when I want to hide.
all of these things that are wrapped up in that
blessing of the Lord. And so now when we read it,
when God created the heavens, He placed within them a
life-sustaining provision. And, and the prayer is that
may He release over you what He established from the beginning,
coming gently, quietly, without
thunder, like His whisper to Elijah.
Horeb. May it fall upon your life morning after morning, quiet,
constant, and never exhausted in supply.
And you dig a little deeper because in Him there is
always more. Always more.
Okay, ready? Let's dig a little deeper. Let's go to Exodus.
Let's go to Exodus chapter 16. Exodus chapter 16.
Exodus chapter 16. Oh, I love His Word!
It's just, oh, it is water to me!
It is water to me! Okay, we are in Exodus. The children of
Israel have been complaining, and grumbling, and they're upset. What they would
really like are the leeks and the garlics that they had back in Egypt,
and God is getting ready to supply something for them that they didn't even know
that they needed. And in verse 11 it says, The Lord said to
Moses, I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell
them, at twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning
you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord
your God. Now, 13, the evening— that evening
quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there
was a layer of dew around the camp. When
the dew was gone, Thin flakes like frost on the
ground appeared on the desert floor. When the
Israelites saw it, they said to each other, what is it? For they
did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, it is the
bread the Lord has given you to eat.
When the dew lifted, the manna appeared.
When the dew lifted, the manna appeared. So now that goes back to
sustaining and resourcing. Here's the cool thing to me.
Let me give you this. The provision of God was
lying beneath the dew. And guys, it always has been.
It always has been. The dew, the
impartation that the Lord has made into our
lives, that He's poured, that He's given, His provision is there.
And what's really interesting to me, and And I have this
tendency to, you know, I'll do this and then I'll have my takeaways
over here, and I'll write those down so that I remember. And my takeaway
from this one is sometimes
God does not reveal what we need until we need it, and even when
we may not recognize it.
You ever come up against somebody that you know the Lord has called them
to something, and they're like, oh, I can't do that. I cannot do that.
Well, you've never needed to before. So you might not have
what you needed in order to do what he's called you to do, but
the moment you step in to do what he has called you to do, he
resources you. He equips you. And
I just find this interesting because they didn't even know
what it was, and sometimes God resources us and we do not recognize
it. We do not see that he has already provided what we
need For this time. I love that. I love that they called it
manna. What is it? Sometimes we live in those places
of manna. As we add
these layers, as we add these layers, these stones of truth,
the well begins to take shape. It gains strength, structure, depth,
and beauty. See what I'm saying? It's like when you're adding all of
these elements to it, it begins to take on— oh, I
didn't see that there. Oh, you were trying to tell me what? What? And
his resources are right there. All right,
but grab the shovel. We're
gonna go a little bit further because see, the deeper you take the well,
the colder the water. Grab the
shovel, there's still work to do. Why is there still work to do? Because
Isaac didn't stop with this. He didn't stop with, you will give you heaven's due.
He went deeper and he said, there's also the richness of earth. Yes. So, we
need to know what that means, too, because these are complementary
issues, elements that he's bringing into
our realm. And so, we— what do we do? We go back to the references
that we did in the beginning. For me, I would go back to the lexicon.
I would go back to the resource, and I would go, okay, show me what
this means. Show me what this means. And back to the genesis of the word,
earth's fill— earth's richness. Mashayim.
Mashmane hayaretz. What does that even
mean? Well, I'm going to tell you what it means because I looked it up,
and it means this. It's a Hebrew expression, and it
speaks of the fatness of the earth, extreme
agricultural fertility, fruitfulness, and abundance of all He has
created and supplied. And my favorite part in this,
that He has supplied For our access.
For our access. He put it there for you.
And he put it there for you. And he gave this
richness, this— the dew of heaven and the richness of earth
for you. For you to access. Not just to walk by
it and go, oh, that's cool. I'm so glad that that's there. But to access
it. It is for your use. And this happens all the
time. And so, don't be surprised if it happens to you.
A squirrel came into my office. And I'm like, oh, wait a minute, wait a
minute, squirrel! Sometimes a squirrel sounds like this, and
sometimes it sounds like a phone ringing, and sometimes it sounds like
this. Words that go neon and go,
okay, make a note to yourself because you are gonna go back and
you are going to look up how you access
How do I access
this richness? How do I look? And
I will mark that as a side note so that I know I wanna
go back and add to this well at some point because it's gonna be important
and I don't wanna forget it. And I will forget it if I don't write
it down, so I'll write it down. All right, so back to
the concordance. I look at this earth's richness, and the next
question I normally ask is, does this appear anywhere else in
Scripture? And if it appears somewhere else in Scripture, what is its
context? And is it consistent with what I'm seeing
here in this context? Move the
squirrel back to concordance. And yes, it
does. It does appear in Scripture in Genesis 27. We've
just been in Genesis 26. Yes. Go to Genesis 27,
and if you go to verse 38 and 39, it says,
Esau said to his father, do you have
only one blessing, my father? Because see, Jacob just
received his— the blessing that should have been his, and Esau
realizes the blessing has been taken. And he goes, and he goes in
tears to his father, and he says, do you not have another blessing for me?
Yes, I do.
Bless me too, my father!
Then Esau wept aloud, and his father Isaac
answered him, your dwelling will be away
from the earth's richness, away
from the dew of heaven above.
That just broke my heart. It broke my
heart to go away
from all of those things we've just talked about. It will be away from those
things. And the
powerful contrast between the same 2 elements being
present and being absent from someone's
life, that tells you there's the possibility of that, right? Yes.
If you look into it, if you begin to look at it.
And then scripture takes us to Genesis. It takes us back to
Genesis 49:25, Jacob's blessing spoken
over Joseph. Blessings of heaven above,
blessings of the deep that lie below. So we know
that it's there. And then again, in the blessing over
Joseph in Deuteronomy, it says, may the Lord bless you—
I'm sorry, may the Lord bless Yes. His land with the tal
samayim, with the dew of heaven above.
That's Deuteronomy 33:13-16.
Here's the thing, guys, as I'm looking at this, and I'm looking at Isaac, and
I'm looking at Jacob, and now I'm looking at Joseph, and all of a sudden
it hits me. These are generational wells! These
blessings are generational blessings that are being passed down on the
breath of the fathers, and, and And so, there's another element
to that, that blessing of above and beneath as he's
pouring into Joseph. And now I get it. And guys, we need to
understand that the wells that we dig can
become generational wells. The blessings that
we walk in, in our life, we need to be speaking over our
children and over our grandchildren so that they
understand that these are for their access as well.
Dig the wells so that your children can rest by them
until it's time for them to dig another well. Like
Joseph, we are blessed with blessings of the deep
waters that lie below. I so love his
Word, his truth. But then there are these other things that
if you dig just a little bit deeper, kind of
like in Marvel, you pick up things if you stay for the credits
and you're like, oh wait, that's part of the next. And There are
Easter eggs that— they're hidden treasures that you only discover when you
slow down, look closer, and dig a little bit deeper. And that is
what the Lord took me to in this next passage. You think you've
learned it, so we're gonna go back to Deuteronomy 33.
And who wrote Deuteronomy? Moses.
Moses. Absolutely. This makes me feel like,
you know, who was it? Oh, I can't do it
because I'll get busted because I don't know the name.
Justin will know the name. What's the name of the dude that wrote all the
Marvel stuff? Stan Lee. Stan Lee.
You know how he always found a way, or Alfred Hitchcock, they found a way
to be in their own movies? I see Moses do this.
'Cause seriously, if you go to Deuteronomy 33,
it says, he's telling Joseph, may the Lord bless his land
with the precious dew from heaven above and with deep waters that lie below, with
the best the sun brings forth and the finest the moon can
yield, with the choicest gifts of the ancient mountains and the
fruitfulness of the everlasting hills, with the best gifts of the
earth and its fullness. And the
favor of Him who dwelt in the
burning bush. And I'm like, oh, Moses, no
you didn't! You just told him about one of your own experiences here! It's
like, the favor of Him who
dwelt in the burning bush. Let all these rest on
the head of Joseph, on the brow of the prince
among his brothers. Yes. I love that
Moses is telling the story of Isaac blessing Jacob, who would
later bless Joseph, and woven into that blessing is something
from Moses' own encounter. His own
encounter. I love stuff like that. I love it, and I miss it
if we don't just dig a little bit deeper and slow down and listen
to what he's saying. The favor of Him who dwells
in the burning bush. Guys, I pray that for you,
that you would know the favor of Him who
spoke from that burning bush, that you would know His
favor! The breath blessing is so
important, guys, because I can think all day.
You all are so blessed, but you don't know it yet. Yeah. Because it
hasn't passed on breath yet. And a breath blessing
comes out, it releases something into the universe that is
Bless me and I will be blessed. That's what the Word—
Sidebar, the research that they are doing now about sound
waves, and sound waves being trapped to the point that
they will hit something, an inanimate object, and they will just begin to spin
there. And they are looking now at technologies that can
go and literally retrieve sound waves from
forever ago. That are trapped to be
translated. You know why that's true? Because he spoke and it
came to be. There was life in his words, and
life has never left his words. When he sends
them, the scriptures say they will not return void unto
him, but will accomplish everything that they are sent to do.
So when a blessing is spoken over you,
receive it. Yes. Receive it! Receive it! Allow it
to begin to just spin in your heart, in your
soul, in your spirit, and come to life! The favor
of Him who dwelt in the burning bush!
Here's the thing, the do—
oh, did I go back?
The dew is His blessing. The richness is His
provision. But the water in the depths of the well,
that's Him! That's Him!
The water in the depths of the well, it's Him! And if we
will go deeper, if we will dig into His truth,
we're always going to find Him there! We're always going to find Him there!
You're always going to find revelation in the depths of Yes. Of
the well. And that's what— when I say dig
a well, that's what I'm talking
about. To allow things to come to
light, and to come to life, and to dig a little deeper
until you find the water that sustains you. And
whatever it might be, whatever the word is, whatever goes
neon to you in Scripture, to go, Lord, show me what this
Show me what it looks like throughout the Word. And allow the Lord— it's
like having a stick figure with no cover, no
clothes, no hair, no nothing. And then the Lord starts putting
layers on. Connie, you're an artist. You can start with nothing
and create the most beautiful universe. That's what He does
with His Word. We are the blank canvas.
If we will just let Him paint, if we will just let Him do
what He does. That's right. And teach us. He is the master
rabbi. He is the one who has the answers. And
so now, now when you take that from the very beginning
and you go, may God give you heaven's
dew and the earth's
richness, the blessing of the tal
samayim and the mishmani hayaretz. May
God give you those. It's a whole
different body of water. Yes. There's depth to it,
that you have frame of reference, you have context, you
have all of the beauty of the Word and the life
in the middle of it. And that's the power of blessing
as seen from the depths of wells that we purpose to dig.
There is blessing in digging deeper
into the Word. There is blessing and there is life. And as the
Lord is calling us in this body into deeper places
in the Word to become people who are
grounded by the Word, not by circumstances, not
moved, not changed, because the Word doesn't change. And the God
behind the Word, the living Word, does not change. And so the
Lord is inviting us, I believe, to dig deeper wells. Amen.
So that when the waves come, or the wind comes, or the
earthquake comes, or whatever comes, we hear Him in the
stillness of His voice. We know the gentleness of His
whisper, and we know who it is who's calling us to
the edge of the cave. And so we're getting ready— hold
on, I just shut that and I wanted to give you some— one
more thing. We're getting ready. Worship team, if you'd come out, feel free to sit
right here next to me. Because we're going to dig
another well, but this time we're going to do it with worship
in a different way, with the understanding— let me move that—
with the understanding that the well
can be deeper. We're getting ready to sing The Blessing,
and I know the last few times that I have taught, we have
just really praised as we went out. Yes. Today, because
of the strength and the power of the blessing, I'm inviting you, and I'm
gonna join you right here. They're getting ready to sing the blessing, and
it is a breath blessing. And
as you release it, recognize it as such that you
are sending a living word into the
room with the people that you love and that God has called you
to minister to. So speak it with authority. Yes. Speak it
with truth. Speak it with truth and sing it. And guys, we're going to gather
right here and we are going to stand under this blessing
because let me tell you, it starts, it says, the Lord bless
you and keep you. That's Deuteronomy— I'm sorry,
Numbers 6:24-26.
They're going to talk about a covenant to a thousand generations,
Deuteronomy 7:9. He will never leave you.
He'll go before you and behind you. Deuteronomy 31:8.
Psalm 139:5. Within you. Psalm
30:5. Exodus 33:14. May his
presence always go before you, behind us,
around us. Be with us. Deuteronomy 28:6. In your
coming and your going, he is with you.
He is with you. This is the blessing.
If you need a blessing of any of those Amen. I'm
inviting you, we're going to stand right here, and when it goes,
amen, amen, we're going to sing it.
We are saying, so let it be. So
let it be. May Your presence go before me. May it be
behind me. Encircle this house, Father God. I'm
praying the blessings of the Lord, the covering
of God The dew of heaven
in this house. So Father, we
thank you for sending us the dew of heaven
and the richness of earth. We thank you for the provision that you have made
and your still small voice that draws us to the edge of the cave
every single time. Jesus' name. You
want to join me? Yes. Amen. Guys, let's pronounce that blessing.