How to Minister While Spiritually Dry: 4 Encouragements

Scottish pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813–1843) is often quoted as saying, “The greatest need of my people is my own holiness.”¹ Or as the Apostle Paul commanded Timothy, “Set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity … Watch your life and doctrine closely” (1 Tim 4:12, 16 NIV).

But what does personal holiness look like when we are going through a spiritually dry season?

Anyone who has been pastoring for any length of time can relate to this question. We want to bring zeal to the pulpit. When we meet with people, we want to be in tune with God’s Spirit. We want to have wisdom to offer. When we lead meetings, we want to know the joy of the Lord and facilitate them with gladness and confidence.

But we don’t always feel this way. When we pray, we feel nothing. When we read Scripture, it feels like a dead letter, mere words on a page. As we preach, we look out and sense a dullness in the room. We sense something’s not landing. We teach faith and yet appear to lack it ourselves.

So what does it look like to have faith and minister God’s grace when our own lives are spiritually dry?

What is spiritual dryness?

Spiritual dryness is not quite the same as experiencing desolation while facing a trial. Each is difficult and meant to bring us to the foot of the Cross, but they are not the same.

The Puritans had terms for such periods of dryness. They called them “dark nights of the soul” or “spiritual desertions.” As Peter Lewis explains, by this the Puritans “did not mean that God had truly deserted the elect soul but describe the experience … in which the ‘lively’ sense of God’s presence and favorable share or ‘interest’ in it was denied to the Christian.”²

How to minister while spiritually dry

We might immediately think, Of course, this happens to normal church members, but surely not to pastors? Isn’t the whole point of our calling to remind people of God’s love through Jesus Christ? Surely, pastors must be precisely those who experience God’s presence in their daily lives.

When we experience periods of dryness, we may doubt our vocation and wonder whether we should either resign or do something radical until we once again experience the joy and peace of God in our daily lives.

To answer that, I offer the following thoughts and remedies:

1. Perceive that seasons of dryness are normal

Times of spiritual dryness or doubt are a normal part of the pilgrimage for many leaders in Scripture:

• Job was the most righteous man of his time, and yet he endured thirty-eight chapters of desolation and suffering before God answered.
• David cried out to God in the Psalms, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Ps 13:1; cf. Ps 42, 43, 73, 77, 88).
• Elijah fled in despair after his victory on Mt. Carmel before God came to him in a “still small voice” (1 Kgs 19:12 KJV).
• Paul experienced periods of great anxiety and weakness (2 Cor).
• Ecclesiastes and Lamentations are entire books devoted to the subject of faith in the face of doubt and despair.
• Even the Lord Jesus, in his human flesh, experienced God’s absence at Gethsemane (Mark 14:32–42) and on the cross (Mark 15:34).

The first thing to do when you experience an extended period of dryness is to recognize that what you are going through is not without precedent in Scripture. If you have these seasons, it does not mean you are crazy or disqualified from ministry or necessarily doing anything wrong. It means you are normal.

2. Prize them as part of God’s sanctifying process

One of the dangers we face when we are “on fire” spiritually is that we can become arrogant and, in effect, preach our own experience rather than the unchanging grace of God. When we describe our close intimacy with God and all our answered prayers, we can end up discouraging those who are struggling—or worse, point them to ourselves rather than to Christ.

But when we go through periods of dryness, it humbles us. It causes us to seek a renewed relationship with God himself rather than his felt blessings. As one Puritan put it,

God is a tender father, and he would have all the love of his children. He would not have his children to love their nurse more than himself: our joy and peace and comfort is but the nurse of our graces. Now when God sees that his children fall in love more with the nurse than with himself, then he removes the nurse, and causes their peace to be suspended and interrupted.³

In this way, we see that under God’s sovereign care, times of spiritual dryness can be just as sanctifying as times of bliss. To paraphrase another Puritan, for our good we are sometimes given strong communications of God’s presence, and for our good at other times we are denied them. All things work out together for good (Rom 8:28)—and that includes seasons of dryness.

3. Preach Jesus, not yourself

But how do we keep ministering to God’s people when our own tanks are empty? This is not the article to remind leaders to be mindful of their own spiritual health—to take Sabbaths, to stay in the Word and prayer and close fellowship. But say you are doing all those things and still coming up empty? How do you keep ministering to others?

I have one simple remedy: Preach Jesus, not yourself (cf. 2 Cor 4:5).

Evangelicals in particular can sometimes struggle with this since we strongly emphasize the need for individual faith, for everyone to have a personal encounter with Christ. But this can sometimes lead us to make that personal experience central rather than Christ himself. We forget what Peter wrote in his letter to the Christians of Asia Minor:

Though you have not seen [Jesus], you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Pet 1:8–9 NIV)

None of these believers had seen Jesus, and yet they still loved him. In the same way, when we don’t “see Jesus” through our felt experiences of him, we are still to love him. Our ultimate hope has not changed. We are still receiving the goal of our faith, the salvation of our souls.

This is one reason why Paul rebuked the Corinthians for prizing strong leaders who excelled in their speaking skills and other visible spiritual gifts. Paul reminds us instead to “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen” (2 Cor 4:18 NIV).

In ministry, this means focusing, not on our own experience, but on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is the one who saves us by his grace, and nothing can separate us from his love (Rom 8:31–39), including our own lack of felt spiritual experience.

This is one reason why the sacraments (or ordinances) of Christ are so powerful and helpful. As I have often told my colleagues, I can mess up a sermon, I can mess up the liturgy, and I can misspeak after worship. But I cannot mess up the Lord’s Supper, because it is Christ himself being offered in the bread and wine. When it is celebrated, Christ is present—always. Preach Christ.

4. Persevere in Christ

Finally, as Winston Churchill famously said in a speech to his old school, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never.”⁴ Or to quote the book of Hebrews,

Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that you may do the will of God and receive what is promised. … we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and keep their souls. (Heb 10:35–36, 39 RSV)

Periods of spiritual dryness are those periods when we most show our faith, precisely because we do not feel the benefit of it. As C. S. Lewis reminds us in The Screwtape Letters, “the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please [God] best.”⁵ In these times, we learn to set our minds on things above, not things below (Col 3:2). We declare God to be good and true, simply because he says he is.

That is faith. And as they say, that’ll preach.

Share your thoughts

How can one minister while spiritually dry? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Christopher Hutchinson recommended resources

• Lewis, Peter. The Genius of Puritanism. Carey Publications, 1977.
• Rosenbladt, Rod. “The Gospel for Those Broken by the Church.” 1517 (blog), February 2, 2017.
• Keller, Timothy. Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering. Penguin Books, 2015.

Additional resources for further encouragement

Related articles

• 5 Ways to Prevent Pastoral Burnout
• Pastor, Sharpen Your Axe: Why & How to Take a Sabbatical
• Don’t Go Alone: Why Ministry Leaders Need a Good Shepherd Too
• Faithful Ministry Begins with Attending to One’s Soul
• What Is Friendship—and Can Pastors Find It in the Church?

1. This is more likely a paraphrase of a sentiment that characterized M’Cheyne’s ministry than an actual quote.
2. Peter Lewis, The Genius of Puritanism (Carey, 1977), 66.
3. William Bridge, quoted in Lewis, Genius of Puritanism, 73.
4. Often mischaracterized as a short commencement address, the quote comes in the context of a longer speech at the Harrow school. Source: https://winstonchurchill.org/churchill-bulletin/bulletin-160-oct-2021/never-give-in-4/.
5. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (HarperOne, 2001), 40.