You don’t wake up every morning with a sprightly spring in your step.

You have the Monday morning blues… even though it’s Thursday.

You’re bored with the mundane wash-rinse-repeat cycle of your week. 

You crack open your Bible, only to find yourself distracted and maybe even indifferent.

You’re not alone.

All of us have wandered through weary lands. Seasons of spiritual dryness visit us every now and then, an unannounced guest who moves in with a suitcase full of tiredness.

How are we to navigate those dull and dreary days? 

For weeks on end, my own walk with God has felt sluggish. 

Sure, I’ve been going through the motions. 

Reading my Bible? Check.

Praying regularly? Check.

Serving at church? Check.

Using my gifts to build God’s kingdom? Check.

And yet.

There’s a brittleness where once hope bubbled up.

A boredom where once passion overflowed.

A bone-dryness where once living water sprang forth.

But through this season, the word that God has been laying on my heart is unmistakably clear. It’s an unglamorous, undramatic, old-school, won’t-go-viral, may-not-even-get-an-Amen word. 

Obedience.

That’s it.

What does God require of me during this season of dryness?

To take that next step of obedience. And the next. And the next.

To ask of Him which good works He has prepared in advance for me to do… and then to walk in them.

Unwavering, unconditional, unfettered obedience.

Will the “breakthrough” follow our obedience? Perhaps. I’m yet to reap the benefits of that theory.

But I do know that as I walk in obedience, I walk toward Jesus. 

The “result” may not be open doors or new opportunities.

But it will mean greater intimacy with Him.

King David knew about desert conditions. There were times in his life when he was physically in a desert and other seasons when it was a spiritual desert. 

In Psalm 63, he cries out in the desert of Judah. Scholars believe that this psalm was written when David was on the run from Saul or from Absalom. The terrain around him reflects the landscape of his own heart.

“You, God, are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you,

my whole being longs for you,

in a dry and parched land

where there is no water.”

Yet, David doesn’t remain in despair and desolation.

He remembers who God is:

I have seen you in the sanctuary

    and beheld your power and your glory. (verse 2)

 

He resolves to worship God:

I will praise you as long as I live,

and in your name I will lift up my hands. 

I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods (verse 3, 4)

 

Ultimately, as he takes those steps of obedience to remember God and resolves to worship in the wilderness, his cries turn to praise. 

He rejoices in God. 

But the king will rejoice in God. (verse 11)

 

God’s hiddenness in some seasons of our lives is not His absence. He walks with us through the moutaintops and the valleys.

For the disciple, the wilderness is a required training ground. It’s in dry seasons, when we recognize that we are parched and weary, that we can truly say:

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. (Psalm 42:1)

I’m slowly grasping that I don’t need to resent the dry seasons of my life. The wilderness is not always a season to fight. 

Sometimes it’s a season to recognize my thirst, to remember who God is, and to resolve to worship Him through everyday obedience.

One step forward. Closer to Jesus.

 

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