What if God doesn’t show up for your prayer time? Has that ever happened to you? You set aside a generous block of time to pray but when you get there the spiritual lights are off and nobody is home. Your mind feels blank. There’s no inspiration. As the old saints used to say, “The heavens are brass.” Oh God, where are you?
Now, we know that God is very much present always, but these feelings can really throw us off. I’ve had many of these feelings over the years. And sometimes this “dark night of the soul” goes on and on for days or weeks or even months. During seasons like this, prayer becomes like trying to run in water. I’m sure you remember doing that as a kid in a pool, right? It’s so hard!
When the experience of prayer is dry there are a couple of common temptations to make note of. First, because praying through dryness is so unpleasant, we are tempted to abandon prayer and find comfort in other things like tv, social media, food, alcohol, shopping, socializing, pleasure reading or any number of other comfort experiences. Second, we are tempted to think the Lord is punishing us by not giving us inspiration in prayer. We wonder if we are going through what David described in Psalm 32:
For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah —Psalm 32:3-4
The imagery is clear as we all know the feeling of being sapped of strength in the sweltering heat. The context of the psalm was that David was carrying guilt for sin and not confessing it honestly to the Lord. When he acknowledged his guilt, then the Lord forgave him and put gladness in his heart. So we naturally start searching our hearts when we feel spiritual heaviness. That’s a good thing, of course.
Purpose of dryness
But the dryness and oppression we feel in prayer is not always on account of some sin we have not repented of. Oftentimes, it is what God uses to purify our motives. The spiritual affliction has a way of gradually moving us from shallow prayers into the Deep. Consider what David says in Psalm 42:
My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. —Psalm 42:6-7
David is saying that in the midst of his God-orchestrated trials crashing against him like waves, the Deep in God is touching something deep in David.
Here’s what I’m saying. When you get serious about prayer you will come up against this experience of dryness. There is no way around it. Many Christians abandon the effort of shutting away to pray and settle for “prayers on the fly” or “tiny prayers.” These are awesome but there’s something about getting into the secret closet and pressing in. I want to encourage you to not let dryness dissuade you from lingering hard and long in His presence.
“Okay, that’s easier said than done, Scott.” I know, I know. I didn’t say it would be easy. But it is attainable. Let me try to help you with this a bit.
You carve blocks of time to pray during your week. Good. You find a suitable place of solitude without distractions. Good. You have your Bible and maybe a journal in front of you. Also good. But it seems like God is a million miles away. Now what?
Lean into it. Just stay. The goal in prayer isn’t to feel a rush of divine inspiration or exhilaration. That happens—and I love those times!—but that’s not the aim. Prayer purges motives and creates depth. It develops a longing for eternity. It shapes character. It is a death to self. It is the only path to knowing God and ministering in power. Don’t rush away.
Depths of God
I want to make a bold statement. Unless we learn to pray through our dryness we will never discover the depths of God. I remember this little ceramic wall hanging my mom put in my room that said, “You will never discover new oceans unless you have courage to lose sight of the shore” (or something like that). Lengthy times of prayer take you away from the shore of earthly distractions. Get out into the Deep. Ignore the dryness; ignore the affliction; ignore the feelings of unreality—stay!
What I’m suggesting is that learning to spend patient blocks of time in concentrated prayer will transform you in ways beyond what you can imagine. All of the great men and women of God throughout history learned to shut away in prolonged communion with the Lord. They pushed through dryness. There’s no other way to attain the fullness of the Spirit.
Lingering long
A long time ago the Lord gave me a picture to understand this principle of lingering in His presence. I saw an oversized apple tree bursting with fruit. One boy came along and spent just a few moments under the tree, grabbed an apple that had fallen, and went away. Another boy came and spent a little longer, picked three good apples from a low branch while staring at something in the distance, and took off. A third boy appeared and gathered a basket full of apples but did it in a rush, spending about 10 minutes under the tree. He didn’t even look at the tree but was focused only on getting a lot of apples as quickly as possible. The last boy came, whistling while he walked, and sat down under the shade of the tree and gazed upward at its beauty. After a while, he climbed up into the tree and got familiar with all its branches. He spent so long under the tree that he not only took away three baskets of the best apples but the fragrance of the tree was upon him.
If what I’m talking about is not something you have done I want to challenge you not to just cast off what I’m saying. Don’t settle for prayers on the fly. You can do this! And I’m telling you—it will transform you! If there are sin issues hindering your walk with God they’ll be uprooted. You will discover new oceans of understanding and joy. And I am confident that you will encounter God in ways you never have before.
David Wilkerson
When I was a new Christian living in New York City my wife and I attended a large church called Times Square Church. It was pastored by David Wilkerson and his brother Don, and many other pastors. David was something of a celebrity because he founded Teen Challenge and wrote the popular book The Cross and the Switchblade. He preached all over the globe and drew massive crowds. He was famous for having a very strong measure of God’s Spirit on his life and ministry. Pastor Dave died not too many years ago in a car crash. His son Gary wrote a book about David’s life from the point of view of a son. He brought out the relentless devotion of his dad, as well as, his human flaws. I am personally grateful for his life that taught me the fear of the Lord as a young believer.
Many of David’s sermons can be listened to at www.sermonindex.net. There is one sermon of his that I probably have listened to once a year for 30 years. It’s called The Making of a Man of God. You get the feeling that this sermon came after months of being shut away with God. The style of preaching is old school, be prepared, but the spiritual truth he is pressing is that God uses afflictions to “squeeze out the honey.” The sermon will pair nicely with everything I just shared in this letter. May God make us into what He wants us to be.