God can fill our empty bottles

“The water in the skin was used up...Then God opened

[Hagar’s] eyes, and she saw a well of water.”
Genesis 21:15, 19

Hagar was sent away by Abraham into the wilderness. After traveling a long way with her son, Ishmael, she found that the contents of her only bottle of water were depleted.

She was in a desert place. There was no hope. She sat the child under a shrub and then sat down across from him “at a distance” and wept. It seemed that the child was lost. A thirsty child, an empty bottle, a scorching sun. She expected him to die.

But, there was one factor she had forgotten to take into account. We also tend to forget this when we pass through difficulties. There is a God. He revealed a well of water to the woman who went about with an empty bottle. God may have deprived you of small possibilities in order to give you great ones.

We carry bottles; God has wells. Let us draw from the wells of salvation.

Excerpted from Reaching Toward the Heights by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, VOM’s founder.

Want to read more? Reaching Toward the Heights is a 365-day devotional in which Pastor Wurmbrand draws upon his own experience in prison and the testimonies of other persecuted Christians to encourage us to elevate our relationship with the Lord. Find out more here.