The Dry Times

Hey Guys,

I’m excited. In the last five days, I know of 10 or 11 people who have come to Christ. Last night at the Encounter Group, I was at a table where a guy stepped across the line, and his wife was doing the same thing at the same time at the next table. Then one of the guys who was just baptized brought his wife and she gave her life to Christ. What’s happening?

What’s happening traces its origin and power to the prayer room where people prayed around the clock for 250+/- hours. You should hear their stories! Many of them did this for the first time and God ambushed them.

The previous two paragraphs were written on Wednesday morning of last week. On Tuesday night, I had gone home with a sense of Joy, of God’s presence. It was a relief because the last few weeks/months have been “dry.” But on Wednesday night (First Wednesday), I struggled again to feel God emotionally. I want to desperately, but even fervent prayer doesn’t bring the emotional pleasure I desire.

It causes me to reflect on God, and on me. Maybe that’s the point. When God is close (or more accurately, when I’m close to God), I don’t reflect—at least not in the same way. My theology is placed back on the anvil and God (using life) continues to shape it and sharpen it.

It’s not fun, but I suspect it is necessary. It forces me to assume certain things about God (Hebrews 11 calls this faith) and to respond in certain ways to those assumptions.

My tendency/temptation is to not talk about my dryness because it feels like weakness. Indeed, not too long ago, someone wrote that because I had admitted such dryness I was disqualified to be a spiritual leader and should step down. To be true to Jesus’ description of a spiritual leader, I should always be stepping down so He can step up. And that’s one of the benefits of the “dry” times—they cause me to seek Him more, to depend on Him more, to love Him more, and to choose to do those things. No, the feeling isn’t as strong, but the argument could be made (Jesus made it) that love is the purest when it is not felt but loves solely for the sake of the beloved—because the beloved is that desirable and worthy of love.

Many of the great devotional masters of the faith recount such “dark nights of the soul.” Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Henry Nouwen, William Cowper…the list goes on. They only follow in the footsteps of figures in the Bible: Job, David, Peter, Paul, and even Jesus (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

How am I to respond? Should I stop praying until new life enters my prayer? All of the spiritual masters answer “no.” That approach becomes self-reinforcing. To act as if God is not real is to move away from Him, not toward Him.

As many Christians have discovered, the habit of not praying is far more difficult to break than the habit of praying.

So I continue to seek God and, honestly, there is an anticipation of the new places God wants to take me to. He has never done me wrong, only right.

“The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” Proverbs 4:18 (NIV)

Woody