Digging Wells

This is a repost from two years ago, but I needed to read it today, maybe you will be encouraged too.

Have you been pursuing something diligently only to encounter contention and opposition? Perhaps you have been praying for someone you love for a long time, with seemingly no answers from the Lord. Perhaps you have been pursuing a dream that the Lord has laid on your heart of writing or establishing a ministry. The more you put into it, the more you encounter obstacles or opposition. People doubt your calling, or you doubt it yourself. Or they oppose it, or get in the way...


Genesis 26:17-22

17 So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. 18 Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them.


19 Isaac's servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there. 20 But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen and said, "The water is ours!" So he named the well Esek, because they disputed with him. 21 Then they dug another well, but they quarreled over that one also; so he named it Sitnah. 22 He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarreled over it. He named it Rehoboth, saying, "Now the LORD has given us room and we will flourish in the land."

What the Lord showed me in this passage is how Isaac persevered in seeking the water until he found it.

The first well was named Esek (contention).

The second was named Sitnah (opposition).

and finally the third Rehoboth (Broad places of fruitfulness)

This is a common experience for God's people in their journey with Him. If we think of stories of Joseph,

Moses, Nehemiah, David, Ruth, or modern ministers like John McArthur, or missionaries like Hudson Taylor...we find the same story. In any pursuit or calling there are wells of contention and opposition that come before the broad places of fruitfulness.

Hang in there! Press on, sister! Keep going! Never stop!

Psalm 138:8 The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O LORD, endures forever— do not abandon the works of your hands.