Why do I feel dry? How do I get the joy back?
By Elizabeth Prata
I am so encouraged by women who ask how to regain the joy of their earlier walk. And those who who care that they feel they are not walking as closely with the Lord as they might! So much better than apathy! They inspire ME to walk more closely with Him, or to be making sure to.
I am sorry if you, dear sister and reader, are having a dry season. During these time when you don’t feel the impact of the Lord’s word as much, it’s the time for faith to to into high gear- because you just have to trust that the Spirit IS impressing it in you. That is His ministry. As long as you are absorbing it, trying with fullest attention as you can, He WILL illuminate it.
Remember, our feelings are deceptive. Emotions are fleeting. Who can know our own heart? We cannot, it is desperately sick. We might feel dry, we might feel distant from the Lord, but HE is the fountain, HE is always with us till the end of the age. HE hasn’t moved.
Yet, the dry season might be real. It might be like this, from 1 Peter 1:6 KJV,
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations…
Do you feel a heaviness instead of lightness in joy?
You’ve repented, asked of the Lord, and that is a good thing. Keep inquiring of the Lord. Remember the Persistent Widow. She sought justice, and we seek release from your spiritual drought, but the point is, Jesus praised that she kept asking. So did Hannah, in her time of sorrow and confusion.
John 4:12-14 NASB – Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never be thirsty; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.”
You have a fountain in you! It might feel frozen, but it’s there because the Spirit is in you if you are a believer. The rivers of living water are promised in John 7:38 and given to every believer.
Remember, your dryness is just a feeling. Feeling dry doesn’t mean God was neither present nor at work. John 5:17, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.“
Spurgeon preached on the 1 Peter text in a sermon called The Christian’s Heaviness and Rejoicing–
“I was lying upon my couch during this last week, and my spirits were sunken so low that I could weep by the hour like a child, and yet I knew not what I wept for—but a very slight thing will move me to tears just now—and a kind friend was telling me of some poor old soul living near, who was suffering very great pain, and yet she was full of joy and rejoicing. I was so distressed by the hearing of that story, and felt so ashamed of myself, that I did not know what to do; wondering why I should be in such a state as this; while this poor woman, who had a terrible cancer, and was in the most frightful agony, could nevertheless “rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory.”
“And in a moment this text flashed upon my mind, with its real meaning. I am sure it is its real meaning. Read it over and over again, and you will see I am not wrong. “Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness.” It does not say, “Though now for a season ye are suffering pain, though now for a season you are poor; but you are ‘in heaviness;'” your spirits are taken away from you; you are made to weep; you cannot bear your pain; you are brought to the very dust of death, and wish that you might die. Your faith itself seems as if it would fail you. That is the thing for which there is a needs be. That is what my text declares, that there is an absolute needs be that sometimes the Christian should not endure his sufferings with a gallant and a joyous heart; there is a needs be that sometimes his spirits should sink within him, and that he should become even as a little child smitten beneath the hand of God.”
Spurgeon surmised a reason for this sinking joylessness:
“Yet again; if the Christian did not sometimes suffer heaviness he would begin to grow too proud, and think too much of himself, and become too great in his own esteem. Those of us who are of elastic spirit, and who in our health are full of everything that can make life happy, are too apt to forget the Most High God. Lest we should be satisfied from ourselves, and forget that all our own springs must be in him, the Lord sometimes seems to sap the springs of life, to drain the heart of all its spirits, and to leave us without soul or strength for mirth, so that the noise of tabret and of viol would be unto us as but the funeral dirge, without joy or gladness. Then it is that we discover what we are made of, and out of the depths we cry unto God, humbled by our adversities.”
He assures his listeners,
“I think I have said enough about this heaviness, except that I must add it is but for a season. A little time, a few hours, a few days, a few months at most, it shall all have passed away; and then comes the “eternal weight of glory, wherein ye greatly rejoice.”
He goes on to the joy after that!
Apostle Paul felt joy in hard circumstances but he wasn’t joyful every second. We know he was frustrated, perplexed, and angry at times. In Psalm 42, David felt spiritually dry.
Adrian Rogers advised on how to get the joy back: (How to Experience God’s Joy Every Day)
“One of the keys to experiencing joy is to cultivate the habit of thankfulness. To regularly remember and reflect upon all the blessings that God has given us and then to pour out praise and thanksgiving to God. Psalm 9:1 says, “I will praise You, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will tell of all Your marvelous works.”
Rogers continues, “If we want to experience the joy of the Lord, we must recount all the wonderful deeds that He has performed on our behalf (all the ways He has blessed us), and then pour out thanksgiving to God. The more we do this, the more we’ll experience deep, abundant, overflowing joy.”
So instead of confessing, switch to praising.
If your season of dryness goes on for an uncomfortably long while, first check to ensure you are actually IN the faith. This resource may help
Is It Real? 11 Tests of Genuine Faith
Then, once assured that you are in the faith, if you want to endure in ministry, in your walk, persevering to the end, there are three words. “Remember Jesus Christ.” I recommend this sermon highly.
Abner Chou | TMS Chapel | The Secret To Endurance
Stay in the Word, praise the Savior more than eve, even praising Him for your spiritual dryness, keep to the spiritual disciplines, and eventually they will begin to move again. Look to those in the Bible who endured the same: Moses 40 years after killing the Overseer, Hannah plagued by Penninah, David dry and crying out to the Lord.
Psalm 30:5-
For His anger is but for a moment,
His favor is for a lifetime;
Weeping may last for the night,
But a shout of joy comes in the morning.
