A few years ago, I hit a wall.
Not a dramatic crisis. No major sin. No catastrophic failure. Just… quiet. A slow, creeping kind of quiet where the Bible felt like a textbook I’d already read too many times, my prayers felt like they were bouncing off the ceiling tiles, and Sunday mornings — the thing I’d given my life to — felt like going through motions I’d perfected but stopped feeling.
I’m a pastor. I’m a biblical counselor. I should have known exactly what to do with that. And yet, when it’s your own soul going dry, all the right answers feel a little bit like reading a weather report in a drought. Accurate. Totally unhelpful.
So I drove thirty minutes east of Denver, past the four-lane highways and into the farming flatlands outside Parker, to a property where someone had dropped an old red caboose behind their house. I’d heard it was retrofitted — a couch, a heater, a table. No Wi-Fi. I needed it.
I just needed the noise to stop. And sitting in that caboose, staring at the Colorado flatlands, I finally said something honest to God: I don’t know where you are right now.
Maybe that’s where you are too. You’re doing all the right things. The Bible app is open every morning. You show up on Sundays. You serve. You tithe. But inside? Something feels like it’s gone offline. Everyone around you seems to be having this live, active conversation with God while you’re sitting there on spiritual mute.
Here’s what I need you to hear: You are not broken. You are not forgotten. And Jesus hasn’t given up on you.
The Word for This Season
What you’re experiencing has a name. Spiritual dryness. It’s a season when God feels distant even when you’re doing everything right — and it happens to everyone. David wrote the Psalms right through it. Mother Teresa served in Calcutta for decades while privately crying out to a God who felt silent. Even the most seasoned pastor you know has been in that caboose, staring at the flatlands, not knowing where God went.
This isn’t a sign that you’ve failed. In the Reformed tradition, we understand that God is sovereign not only over our circumstances but over our spiritual experience of Him — including the seasons when He feels hidden. The Puritans had a word for it: desertion. Not abandonment, but a withdrawing of felt presence for the purpose of deeper formation. What feels like distance is often discipline in the most loving sense of that word. And here’s the thing I’ve learned from nearly three decades of ministry, from sitting with broken people in my counseling office — when you feel furthest from God, He is often doing His deepest work.
The Detour Jesus Took for One Man
Nothing makes that clearer than a story most people rush past in Mark 7. Jesus takes a wildly inefficient route through Gentile territory — up through Tyre, north to Sidon, back south through the Decapolis. It’s like driving from Denver to Colorado Springs by way of Wyoming. There’s no obvious reason to go this way, and every commentator who sits with it long enough starts to ask: why did He go here?
Until you see who He went for.
There’s a deaf man there. He can barely speak. His friends drag him to Jesus because he can’t even articulate what he needs. He is completely cut off — from conversation, from community, from being able to ask for help himself. He is, in the most literal sense, a man who cannot come to Jesus on his own. And Jesus goes to him anyway.
This is one of the most quietly profound pictures of sovereign grace in the Gospels. The man contributes nothing to his own healing. He can’t hear the invitation. He can’t confess his need. He can’t even ask. His friends bring him — and even that is God’s providence working through ordinary means, through community, through the body of Christ functioning exactly as it was designed to. When you’re spiritually dry, you become this man. You can’t hear God’s voice. You can’t find the words to pray. You might be showing up at church because someone in your life is basically dragging you there, and you’re grateful for it even if you don’t have the language to say so. That’s not weakness. That’s the body of Christ doing what God designed it to do.
Here’s what wrecks me about this story: Jesus rerouted His entire journey for one man who couldn’t even call His name. He didn’t wait for the man to clean himself up, get his act together, or find the right words. He traveled miles out of His way to find someone who couldn’t come to Him. That is how Jesus operates in your dryness.
What Jesus Did Next Is Uncomfortable — And Beautiful
Watch what happens when He gets there. Jesus doesn’t stand at a respectable distance and speak a healing word. He takes the man away from the crowd — just the two of them — and then does something that would raise every eyebrow in our church lobby: He puts His fingers in the man’s ears and touches his tongue.
Why? Because the man couldn’t hear Jesus speak. So Jesus spoke through touch. Every movement said something the man could actually receive. Fingers in the ears: I know exactly where you’re hurting. Touch on the tongue: I’m going to fix what’s broken. Eyes lifted to heaven: What I’m about to do is coming from above, not below. Jesus enters the man’s world completely, meeting him at the precise point of his inability, which is exactly what the incarnation has always been about.
Then there’s one detail that gets me every time. Before He heals the man, Jesus sighs. That’s not clearing His throat. The Greek word carries the weight of a deep, emotional exhale — the kind that escapes you when you see someone you love suffering and everything in you wants to fix it before you even move. It’s the sigh of a father kneeling down to look at his kid’s scraped-up knees. Jesus is not distant from your dryness. He is moved by it. He sighs over it with the kind of compassion that actually feels what you’re going through.
Then He speaks one word: Ephphatha. Be opened. And immediately — Mark’s favorite word — everything changes.
What the Silence Might Actually Be
Before we get to the practical, I want to say something that doesn’t get said enough in church: sometimes God allows seasons of spiritual dryness on purpose. Not as punishment. Not because you’ve failed. But because He is a good Father who knows that spiritual maturity cannot be built entirely on felt experience.
I’ve sat across from high-performing people — people whose entire identity is built on what they produce, whose whole world rises and falls on performance — and watched them discover that a faith built on feelings evaporates the moment the feelings leave. That’s not a problem unique to elite achievers. That’s a human problem, and it’s one the Bible addresses directly. The writer of Hebrews tells us that God disciplines those He loves, and the word used isn’t angry correction — it’s the intentional training of a father who is preparing his child for something the child can’t yet see.
Early relationships run on butterflies. Mature love runs on commitment. There comes a moment in every serious relationship where you choose the person when the feelings have gone quiet — and that choice becomes the foundation everything else gets built on. God is doing the same thing in your dry season. He is teaching you to love Him for who He is, not simply for what He makes you feel. He’s weaning you off spiritual candy so you can handle spiritual meat. He’s building the kind of faith that holds up under Job-level pressure — not the kind that only works when the worship set is good and the sermon hits close.
As biblical counselors often say, our feelings are real, but they are not reliable narrators of God’s actual location.
What To Actually Do Right Now
So what do you do in the meantime? I’ve walked a lot of people through this, and here’s what I’ve seen actually help.
Stop pretending you’re fine. God would rather have your honest mess than your polished performance. “God, I feel nothing right now” is a complete prayer. It’s basically Psalm 13 in four words. The Psalms are full of lament — nearly a third of them are complaints directed straight at God — and they’re in the canon for a reason. Don’t wait until you feel something to reach out to the One who already knows.
Shrink your expectations. When you can’t manage a chapter, read a verse. When you can’t manage a verse, read a word. “Jesus, help” is a theologically complete prayer. “I believe; help my unbelief” is one of the most honest prayers in the Gospels, and Jesus honored it immediately. Your devotional life doesn’t need to look like a seminary assignment to count.
Let someone carry you. The deaf man’s friends brought him to Jesus when he couldn’t get there himself. You need that too. Text someone today — one person — and say, “I’m struggling spiritually. You don’t have to fix it. I just wanted you to know.” This is what the body of Christ is for. Let someone else hold the weight for a while.
Check the basics. After Elijah’s greatest spiritual victory, he collapsed and asked God to take his life. And God’s first response wasn’t a sermon or a vision — it was a nap and a meal. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is get eight hours of sleep, get off your phone, and have a real conversation with a real person. Elijah wasn’t spiritually weak. He was physiologically depleted. There’s a difference, and a good biblical counselor will tell you the same thing.
Keep showing up anyway. This is the hardest one. When it feels pointless, keep opening your Bible. When prayer feels like talking to a wall, keep talking. Not to earn God’s attention — you already have it, secured not by your performance but by the finished work of Christ — but because the means of grace are still the means of grace even when they don’t feel like it. Faithfulness in drought builds the kind of roots that survive anything.
Your Feelings Are Terrible GPS
Let me be direct about something before I close. Your feelings are an unreliable guide to where God actually is.
You feel distant? Romans 8 says nothing — nothing — can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not your dryness. Not your doubt. Not the thing you did that you’re convinced should have disqualified you. Paul wrote that list — death, life, angels, rulers, things present, things to come — and the only thing conspicuously absent is your spiritual performance on a random Tuesday.
You feel forgotten? Isaiah 49 says God has engraved you on the palms of His hands. Not written — engraved. It’s the language of permanence, of something cut into stone. He could not forget you if He tried.
Do you feel like a disappointment? Zephaniah 3:17 says He is rejoicing over you with gladness, quieting you with His love, and singing over you with exultation. Right now. In this very season. While you’re sitting there feeling spiritually flatlined, the God of the universe has a song with your name in it.
The same Jesus who rerouted His entire journey to reach one man who couldn’t call His name is willing to cross whatever distance it takes to reach you. He is not waiting for you to get it together first. He is not standing with His arms crossed, disappointed that your quiet time hasn’t been what it should be. He is standing in your dryness, speaking the same word He spoke in Mark 7: Ephphatha. Be opened.
I’ve learned something in nearly thirty years of ministry — the dry seasons end. They always end. Spring follows winter. Morning follows night. The feelings come back, usually when you least expect them, often stronger than before. But in the meantime, you just have to keep showing up. Keep trusting. Keep believing that the God who seems silent right now is closer than your next breath, working in ways you won’t understand until you look back from the other side.
That disconnection you’re feeling is not the end of your story. It might just be the chapter where God does His most important work — where faith grows strongest, where the roots go deepest, where you learn to love Him for who He is instead of what He makes you feel.
Hold on. Morning’s coming.
