Welcome to all who are receiving THRIVE for the first time. I’m excited to have you join our family of readers from Mongolia to China, Australia, Canada, and many countries in between. My prayer is that you’ll grow and be spiritually stimulated by taking a few moments to read THRIVE and reflect on how God is moving in your life.

IN A DESERT?

Some of you live in the Middle East and know firsthand both the barrenness and the beauty of the desert. So do those of you who live in Australia, Mongolia and Africa. (Have I missed someone?) You know that a desert is dry, directionless, confusing and intimidating. But it can also be a place of discovery and great beauty. Spiritual deserts can be the same way.

Spiritual deserts are places where you feel confused, as if you’re wandering without direction. You might sense a distance from the Lord. And you spend time thinking and looking for indicators of which way to go. Spiritual deserts can also be places where you learn more about yourself, recognize your inner dryness, and feel your need for God. Does this sound familiar? If so, check out the following:

How do you get in a spiritual desert?

If you’ve read about Christian mystics from past centuries, you have heard the phrase, dark night of the soul. These difficult times of experiencing a complete absence of God’s presence are allowed by God to deepen faith. The resultant spiritual desert is for the purpose of growth, moving us from relying on our feelings to trusting God in spite of their absence. But most of our times of wandering around in spiritual deserts come for other reasons. Here are some:

Neglect —We are spiritually weak, discouraged, defeated by negative thoughts, and without God’s joy because we’ve neglected to replenish our soul, our mind, will, and emotions, which are renewed by regular spiritual practices. Oswald Chambers asks a penetrating question in this regard: “Are you thirsty, or complacent and indifferent—so satisfied with your own experience that you want nothing more of God?” How would you answer that?

Exhaustion —We are in a particular season of life that demands all our energy or we’re running and doing more than God asks of us.

Confusion —We are questioning our circumstances and waiting for signs of God’s direction for our future.

Unconfessed sin —We are wrestling with something that has happened, or is currently going on, and we feel guilty or rebellious and far away from the Lord.

How do we get out of a spiritual desert? We make choices.

Come to Me —All the spiritual practices we need to include in our lives point us in the same direction: Come into Jesus’ presence, draw close, talk to Him, and meditate on Him. We renew our minds by reading His Word: such as portions of John’s Gospel along with the other gospels, Hebrews, Colossians and Philippians 2.

If we want to move from a place of dryness to being penetrated with the spirit of life, these are choices only we can make. Here’s another choice we need to act on:

Be still and know that I am God —Be still, slow down, stop the activity. Still yourself physically and inwardly. Find a quiet place, go for a walk alone, and unplug yourself for the purpose of listening for God’s voice.

Know: knowledge isn’t just accumulated information. To know that He is God implies a confidence, a certainty, and a reliance on truth. What is the truth?

I am God: In your struggles, choose to affirm that He is God, the Almighty One for whom nothing is too difficult. He is in your desert with you and knows what will best produce His purposes for your life. As your God, He promises to cleanse you, sustain you, renew your soul, and lead you out of your spiritual desert—stronger in faith because of this experience.

Spiritual deserts needn’t be wasted time. Use the dryness, the absence of life-giving joy, and the longing for what you have known of God’s closeness to claim this promise from Isaiah 41:18:

“I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into springs.”

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Here are five verses about Jesus to linger over. What might God be saying to you through them?