What is spiritual dryness, and how can I overcome it?

Whereupon I venture to inquire whether it is always thus with him, and learn, alas! that it is not. Would that it were! Sometimes the evidences are not so clear. Love to God languishes, the heart grows cold, there is but little liberty in prayer, and he fears he has grieved the Holy Spirit away. Downcast and desponding, he is ready to think that he has fallen from grace, and is in a sad state.

It need hardly be said that for us the withdrawal is on our side, and that if joy and spiritual food and power fail, we are straitened in ourselves alone. God does not hide Himself, the Spirit is not grieved away, but the barrenness and loneliness of soul are just as real as though it were so. Thanks to His grace, the presence of the Spirit with us is a pledge of our recovery to the joy of the Lord.

World-bordering breeds the Pharisaic leaven; the Holy Ghost is grieved; prayer becomes a burden; the reading of Scripture a dry task; and the maintenance of outward orthodoxy becomes wearisome and dull and empty and powerless. Oh! may the Lord draw such back to His wounded side, and recover their backsliding.

Things nearer at hand remain in view — perhaps the fellowship of Christians, or some service undertaken in the brighter days — but the joy, the charm, the reality are gone, everything seems out of focus, for Christ is not seen as the great central Object throwing everything else into its right relation. Then the question arises as to the reality of these things, for no things are so unreal as divine things to the soul out of communion and under the cloud of what is temporal. It may be the memory remains to increase the unhappiness, but Christ is not a present living reality.

Things nearer at hand may remain in view—perhaps formal fellowship with Christians, or some service undertaken in brighter days, but the joy, the rapture, the spiritual experience of faith's undimmed outlook: these have vanished, and become a thing of memory, a memory that only increases the unhappiness and forces sighs from the lips that ought to be full of song.

Things nearer at hand may remain in view — perhaps formal fellowship with Christians, or some service undertaken in brighter days, but the joy, the rapture, the spiritual experience of faith's undimmed outlook: these have vanished, and become a thing of memory, a memory that only increases the unhappiness and forces sighs from the lips that ought to be full of song.

383 I am sure of the sun while it is raining, but still I say, What terrible weather we have! - there is not a bit of sunshine. God will never make us doubt about His love, but He will make us feel the loss of it. He will bring us into the conscious sense of the loss of His love. He may make us find out some positive wrong thing that has done it, or a slothful state of soul in not acting in the light. But He loves us too well to let us go on, without finding it out sooner or later. God is perfect in His grace, and He deals with us so that if a person is walking with God, we shall find weakness, but we are with Him about it directly. But where there is a failure in walking up to the light, where it is anything habitually wrong, there the soul gets away, not from the knowledge that God loves it, but it goes on asleep, and, when it wakes up, as it does, through mercy, it finds, perhaps, darkness as to everything - certainly as to the enjoyment of God. It is there where the exercises of soul come in, and the need of constant watching unto prayer. If it be not so, there will be the loss of the enjoyment of divine love; and when we get back into the presence of Him that loves us, that is the very time we get distressed and miserable.

The Lord Jesus wants us to realise how much He feels our lack of love to Him and so it is necessary sometimes for us to be put into circumstances where the awfulness of life without Him comes home to us. So He withdraws Himself and leaves the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts. We read in verse 6, "I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer." He would have us experience what unrequited love feels like. Sometimes the only way that we learn is by passing through circumstances in which we may drop so low as to wonder if the Lord Jesus is with us. We know that He has said, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee" (Heb. 13:5). This is always true, but when my heart becomes cold towards Him, I will lose the sense of His company.

She speaks with anguish now for she had felt what is like to call to him and have no answer. Have you ever done that? Got really low in spirit, prayed hard but it seemed as though He was not listening? Look deeply into your own heart and see if He is everything to you and that you may have, for a while, lived as if He did not exist. We must learn what that feels like.

And may we not see in the barren land and the desolate wilderness an apt and striking illustration of a soul out of communion through disobedience to the precious commandments of Christ? Such an one has no refreshing communications with heaven — no showers coming down — no unfoldings of the preciousness of Christ to the heart — no sweet ministrations of an ungrieved Spirit to the soul; the Bible seems a sealed book; all is dark, dreary and desolate. Oh! there cannot be anything more miserable in all this world than a soul in this condition. May the writer and the reader never experience it! May we bend our ears to the fervent exhortations addressed by Moses to the congregation of Israel! They are most seasonable, most healthful, most needful in this day of cold indifferentism and positive wilfulness. They set before us the divine antidote against the special evils to which the church of God is exposed at this very hour — an hour critical and solemn beyond all human conception.

It has been said by another, that "the blood of Christ both strengthens our inner man, and keeps down the weeds of the flesh." And so it is; for, in the exercise of faith, we draw from Christ, and are so spiritually strengthened, that we are able to keep under carnal lusts. But, though we be true disciples of Christ, severed from Him we grow weak spiritually, and fleshly desires and ways spring up, and are sometimes painfully manifested. Accordingly, this chapter shows us, that when the people had no water from the rock, and thirsted, that they gathered themselves together against the servants of God; that they chode with Moses, complained of the barrenness of the wilderness, and concluded that they would die, and never see the land of promise. Their experience was that of darkness, barrenness, and misery, because they got away from the only fountain of refreshment and blessing. And so it is with God's people now. Oh, how many complaining children of God may trace their present sadness of soul, not, as they suppose, to the circumstances that have crossed their path, but to the two evils of forsaking the fountain of living waters, and hewing out to themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water! How can we be happy apart from Him who is our life and salvation? How can we be making melody in our hearts, so long as the spring of all our joys ceases to be viewed by us as the river of life to our souls? Those who cleave to the Lord Jesus, and walk in His ways, may assuredly count upon the comfort of the Holy Ghost as their portion; and while they will not be without the trials of the wilderness, they will realize the present help and mercy of God in trouble, and in God's own good time deliverance from trouble. Thus abiding in the Lord Jesus, we shall be happy and fruitful, but severed from Him we shall be barren and unhappy; and, as the apostle Peter saith, such will be blind, unable to see afar off, and will forget that they were purged from their old sins. How important, then, that the Christian should not feed on ashes, or seek in any measure satisfaction at the worldling's swine-trough; but, knowing that Christ is all, live upon Christ His person, work, fitness, fulness, and offices; hide, as it were, in His wounds, drink deeply into His gracious words and ways, treasure up His promises, eat His flesh, dwell on His unutterable and unchanging love, seek more and more His unsearchable riches; so that the constant language of our souls may be, "His mouth is most sweet, yea, He is altogether lovely. This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend."