COUNSEL IS DEEP WATER

Welcome to a month of divine direction. Solomon gives us a picture that every village understands: a deep well. The water is real, present and abundant, yet it lies far below the surface. Nobody ever quenched their thirst by admiring a well; someone must lower a bucket and draw. In the same way, the counsel of God has been deposited in the heart of man, and it benefits only the one who reaches for it.

The Scriptures explain how it gets there. When you are born again, the Holy Spirit takes up residence within you (1 Corinthians 6:19). He brings the words of Christ to your remembrance (John 14:26), and He renews your mind so that you can discern the good, acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:2). Divine counsel is therefore not something you must chase across the earth. It is something already within you, waiting to be drawn out.

The proverb says a man of understanding will draw it out. Understanding is the rope and the bucket. It is built through meditation on Scripture, through prayer that includes listening as well as speaking, through the humility to admit that you do not have every answer, and through the discipline of stillness. Deep water cannot be drawn in a hurry, and many believers remain thirsty simply because they are always rushing past the well.

As you begin, decide on a fixed time and place each day for this devotional. Keep a notebook beside you and write down what you sense the Lord saying, then test it against the Word. By the end of October you will hold a personal record of how God speaks to you, and you will discover that the water was never far away.