Surviving a Spiritual Dry Season

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord~ Amos 8:11

Spiritual stalls or desert experiences typically begin with a disturbing sense that God is far away and our prayers are not being heard. The sense that God is far away and the logical conclusion that He is deliberately ignoring us predictably leads to a lack of spiritual direction and an overwhelming sense of confusion. We feel lost and may begin to believe we have been forgotten or abandoned by God. Every obstacle and disappointment feels like a spiritual rebuke and becomes a verification of our deepest fears.  

Some Christians react proactively. They step-up church attendance, pray with greater fervency, and work their spiritual tails off in a valiant effort to make God happy and get Him back on their side. A few become depressed and despondent. Others become irate and bitter, supposing erroneously that God has turned on them. Spiritual pity parties and noble attempts to placate God are natural responses. However, these responses will not fix anything and may even lead to spiritual regression or rejection of the faith altogether. 

If this describes you, there are a few things you need to understand. First, you are not the only believer to experience a dry season or stall. Some of the very best and most committed of God’s people suffered through a dry season at one time or another. Naomi, David, Elijah, Jonah, Jeremiah, Esther and even Jesus (Matthew 27:46) went through periods where they felt God was remote and uninterested in their situation.

No matter how you feel at this moment, you must understand that God has not stopped loving you, nor is He punishing you. His silence is not evidence of desertion. He still cares. He has a plan for you and He has no intention of allowing your pain to go on forever. Hang on to that. Memorize and meditate on Isaiah 42:3:  “A bruised reed He will not break, and a dimly burning wick, He will not extinguish; He will faithfully bring forth justice.

A spiritual stall is not the time for self-pity but it is a good time for some healthy self-examination. God never moves away from us. He is steady and unchanging. We on the other hand are prone to wander, sometimes without realizing it. I have learned that when God feels far away it’s a good time to ask some hard questions:

Am I making a daily effort to connect with God through prayer and Bible study?

Is there some area of my life that has become a foothold for the enemy (Ephesians 4:26-28)?

Have my personal dreams or desires become demands that I make of God? 

Am I harboring resentment in my heart because God has not answered a prayer to my liking?

   

 If the honest answer to any of the above questions is “yes” then change direction as rapidly as possible. Make a determined effort to connect with God, repent of wrong attitudes, deal with sin and spend some additional time in prayer realigning your dreams with God’s will. If, on the other hand, none of the above seem to apply to your situation then you should assume that God is taking you through a season of refinement and growth.

Because we live in a fallen world, spiritual growth rarely comes easy and is always incremental. Growth comes as we shed old behaviors and change the mindsets and attitudes that allowed those wrong behaviors to flourish. Letting go of old behaviors and attitudes empowers us to reach new levels of spiritual understanding.  The process is agonizing because our flesh longs to hang on to the old ways of functioning and looking at life. This painful process is the only way we can be transformed into the likeness of Jesus.

We can fight growth or we can embrace it. We fight it by willfully refusing to see the issues in our life that need to be addressed. We embrace growth by asking God with a sincere heart to show us what exactly needs to happen in our lives for us to become more like Jesus. It is this place of humility and submission that allows God to do in us what needs to be done and frees us up to reestablish our sense of connection with God.