The Hidden Reservoir

The journey begins...

Welcome! This the inaugural post of The Hidden Reservoir, and I thought I would share a bit of the story of how this got started.

Each year between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I take some time to reflect back on the current year and also look forward to the upcoming year. For several years I had a sense that God was stirring me to write, but I never really knew what to write about and the result was that never did anything at all. The next year would unfold and then, over the holidays, I would again get that sense of a desire towards writing.

At the start of 2020 I decided to actually do something about it and made plans to write a 40-day devotional series for Lent. (that’s the 40 day period leading up to Easter). I invited some friends to sign-up to get the daily devotionals sent to their in-box, and then I started writing. I wasn’t sure whether that was precisely what God was trying to stir me towards, but at least I was stepping out and trying to respond to the prompting to begin to write.

That Lenten series was very rewarding (and a LOT of work!). I followed that with an Advent series in 2020 and from there I wrote a weekly series in 2021 on the topic of Growing in Prayer. During 2021, I became aware of Substack as a place where people could share their writings in a broader way, and I decided to try to use Substack as a platform for my upcoming 2021 Advent series, Embracing Hope. My plan is that The Hidden Reservoir will help me to write even more consistently and broadly in the future.

Why call it The Hidden Reservoir?

Well, the answer is that my writing focus will be primarily related to the interior Christian spiritual life. Jesus said that

“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture as said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” -Jn. 7:38

The vitality of our spiritual walk with Jesus flows from the inside of us, from a place that is hidden from view. The outworking of that inner reality will become visible, but it is nevertheless a hidden reality. Also, I love how Bernard of Clairvaux used the term ‘reservoir’ to describe the Christian inner life, indicating that our spiritual walk with God should be full and overflowing.

My hope is that the articles and devotionals that I will write will serve to strengthen and deepen your own ‘hidden reservoir’ of spiritual reality with Jesus. So that’s a bit of a summary of why I’m called this ‘The Hidden Reservoir’.

I’m excited for the journey ahead and I hope that you will consider joining me along the way!