Without the water of the Holy Spirit filling us, our souls quickly become a parched wilderness, and there will be no victories in the battles that we face. The armies of Israel, Judah, and Edom were wasting away in the wilderness, along with their livestock, because of the lack of water. When Elisha gave them God’s strategy for victory, he simply told them to fill the Valley with trenches. Elijah then told them in verse 17 and 18 that the trenches would be filled with water but not because of storm that would bring rain. Instead, he said the trenches would be filled with water and that God would give them the victory over the Moabites. He said, “this is but a slight thing in the sight of the Lord.” The Hebrew word for “valley” is actually the word “wadi.” A wadi is a dry channel or ravine that can be as wide as a valley. The literal word is “torrents.” It is a place built to contain torrents, but now dry and parched. God’s instruction was the make the wadi deeper by filling it with trenches. Verse 20 says that the water came by way of Edom, and the country was filled with water. If the water did not come because of rain, and they were in a wilderness, then the water had to come up from beneath the soil. The water was already there, and God released the water to fill the prepared trenches. The body of water was so great that when the Moabites awoke the next morning, the body of water looked rather like blood as the dawning sun shone on it. They said to themselves, “this is blood; the kings have surely fought together, and they have slain each other.” In light of their conclusion, they charged the camp of Israel, Judah, and Edom only to find that the armies were intact and the Moabites were slaughtered. Two things happened as a result of the trenches being filled supernaturally with water that was just below the surface. First, the armies, and the livestock were satisfied. Their thirst was quenched, and secondly, they were victorious in the battle they were facing. Every time we open ourselves to the Lord with a fresh disposition of digging new trenches, of going deeper in the place of repentance and surrender, the Lord always fills us with a deeper measure of the Holy Spirit, and with the fresh filling, there is a fresh and deep satisfaction in our souls. It’s not that we get water we didn’t have. It’s that the water that was there is able to rise up in us with a fresh experiential “more,” and the result is the victorious life of the risen Christ is released through us as the great Overcomer as we walk through the battles of life in this fallen world. A healthy spiritual practice is to always look for new places in your life to dig trenches. This is not a call to some kind of morbid introspection, but an invitation to go deeper, so that you can steward MORE. Deep calls unto deep. The deeper we go in surrender, the deeper He fills us with presence and power.
