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Have you ever opened your Bible and felt nothing? Have you sat in worship and wondered why the words that once moved you now seem flat? Have you prayed and felt like your words were bouncing off the ceiling, returning empty?
If you have, you are in good company.
Spiritual dryness is one of the most common and least talked about experiences
in the Christian walk. Even the great men and women of faith in Scripture
walked through seasons where heaven seemed silent and their souls felt parched.
But here is what I want you to know today:
spiritual dryness is not the end of your story. It is not a sign that God has
abandoned you, that you have failed, or that your faith was never real.
Sometimes, the dry season is the very place where your deepest growth begins.
"What if spiritual dryness isn't a
punishment; but an invitation?"
The night before His crucifixion, Jesus
gathered with His disciples and took them to a vineyard or at least painted a
vivid picture of one with His words. In John 15:1-17, He gave them (and us) one
of the most powerful teachings on abiding, fruitfulness, and the faithfulness
of God even in the hardest seasons.
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Let's walk through five lessons from this
passage that speak directly to the dry seasons of our spiritual lives.
— Faith • Hope • Renewal —
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Lesson 1: The Vine Is
the Source, Not You
John 15:1-2
Jesus opens this passage with a
declaration: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener." Not
a vine. The true vine. The source. The one from whom all life, nourishment, and
fruitfulness flows.
One of the most common causes of spiritual
dryness is that we begin to operate as though we are the source of our own
spiritual life. We try harder. We serve more. We perform. We read more
chapters, attend more services, volunteer more hours and then we burn out, dry
out, and wonder what went wrong.
The branch does not manufacture life. It
receives it. Its only job is to stay connected. The moment we start straining
to produce fruit on our own, we disconnect ourselves from the very source that
makes fruitfulness possible.
"Stop striving. Start surrendering.
The Vine does the work; you just have to stay attached."
If you are in a dry season today, pause and
ask yourself honestly: Have I been trying to live the Christian life in my own
strength? Have I drifted from simple connection into religious performance? The
invitation today is not to try harder; it is to come back to the Vine.
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Lesson 2: Pruning Is
Part of the Process
John 15:2
Here is a verse that might make you
uncomfortable: "He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while
every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more
fruitful."
Did you catch that? Even the fruitful
branches get pruned. Pruning is not reserved for branches that are failing. It
is actually a sign that the Gardener sees potential in you.
In viticulture, the farmer cuts away what
is healthy but unproductive; not because he is angry, but because he is
strategic. He removes the excess so that the remaining growth can flourish
abundantly. And spiritually, God does the same.
Some seasons of dryness are actually
seasons of divine pruning. God may be removing a distraction that seemed
harmless; a relationship that was pulling you away from Him, a habit that was
slowly dulling your spiritual sensitivity, a pursuit that had quietly taken the
place of worship in your life.
"Being pruned means you are IN the
vine; not cut off from it."
If your season feels painful, if it seems
like things are being stripped away, resist the urge to interpret that as
rejection. Ask God what He is doing. The pruning seasons are often the ones
that produce the most fruit in our lives; but only if we cooperate with the
process rather than resist it.
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Lesson 3: Abiding Is a
Daily Choice
John 15:4-5
"Remain in me, as I also remain in
you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither
can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the
branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart
from me you can do nothing."
The word "remain" or
"abide" appears again and again in this passage; not as a poetic
flourish, but as the heartbeat of Jesus' entire message. And notice the tense:
it is continuous. Abiding is not a one-time decision made at the altar years
ago. It is a daily, sometimes hourly, choice to stay connected.
In dry seasons, abiding can feel
mechanical. You open the Word and feel nothing. You pray and hear silence. But
abiding during dryness is perhaps the most powerful act of faith you can offer
God; because you are choosing to return to Him not based on feeling, but based
on trust.
Practical abiding might look different
depending on the season. Some days it is twenty minutes in deep prayer. Other
days it is a five-minute psalm read through tears. Some mornings it is singing
praise loudly. Other mornings it is sitting quietly and simply saying, "Lord,
I am here." The size of the practice matters far less than the
faithfulness of the posture.
"Five faithful minutes of abiding
is worth more than an hour of distracted religion."
Start small. Come back to the Vine. Every
single day. This is the secret to weathering the dry seasons; not more effort,
but more returning.
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Lesson 4: His Words
Are the Water
John 15:7
"If you remain in me and my words
remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you."
Jesus connects abiding with His words
dwelling in us. This is not coincidence. The Word of God is to the soul what
water is to the earth; it softens what is hard, nourishes what is starving, and
awakens what has gone dormant.
When we feel spiritually dry, the instinct
is often to move away from Scripture. It feels heavy. Uninspiring. Like reading
a menu when you have no appetite. But the very thing we are tempted to abandon
in the dry season is the very thing that can end it.
Reading the Bible during dryness is not a
formula or a religious checkbox. It is a returning. It is the branch reaching
back toward the Vine. It is the parched earth opening itself toward the rain,
even when the sky seems grey and the clouds seem far away.
You do not need to understand every verse.
You do not need to feel moved by every passage. Begin with the Psalms if you
need to start somewhere; they are the honest prayers of people who also walked
through spiritual dryness and cried out to God from the wilderness of their
souls. Let David's words become your own. Let the Word of God do what you
cannot do for yourself.
"The Word doesn't just inform the
soul. It waters it."
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Lesson 5: You Were
Chosen to Bear Fruit
John 15:16
"You did not choose me, but I chose
you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit; fruit that will last
and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you."
Read that again slowly. You did not choose
Him. He chose you. And He appointed you; not to drift, not to struggle in vain,
not to remain dry forever; but to bear fruit that lasts.
One of the cruelest lies that spiritual
dryness whispers is this: "God has forgotten about you. Your best days are
behind you. Maybe this faith was never real." The enemy loves to use our
dry seasons to question our identity and disqualify us from our calling.
But Jesus speaks directly against this lie
in verse 16. Before you ever felt spiritually dry, before this season of desert
began, before you lost the feeling; He chose you. He appointed you. He had a
plan for your fruit, and that plan has not been cancelled.
The dry season is not your destination. It
is part of your journey. And the God who chose you before you chose Him is the
same God who will bring the rain when the time is right. Your assignment is
still standing. Your calling is still intact. You are still His branch; rooted,
chosen, and meant for abundance.
"The dry season doesn't disqualify
you. It deepens you."
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📚 A Resource for the Journey
If this post has stirred something in you
and you want to go even deeper into overcoming the dry seasons of your faith, I
want to recommend a book that I believe will bless you greatly:
Overcoming Spiritual
Dryness by Timothy Atunnise
Part of the
Becoming Prayer Power House series (Book 6)
This book is a practical, faith-filled
guide for those seasons when God feels far away. It pairs beautifully with the
teachings of John 15; because abiding and prayer go hand in hand. If the dry
season has made your prayer life feel hollow, this resource will help you find
your way back to the place of refreshment.
👉 View it on Amazon : available on Kindle so youcan start reading today
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🙏 A Prayer for the Dry Season
If your soul feels parched today, will you
pray this with me?
Lord, I come to You
today as a dry branch. I do not have the strength to manufacture what only You
can give. I confess that I have sometimes strived when I should have
surrendered. I have sometimes performed when I should have rested in You. Prune what needs to be pruned. Speak what
needs to be spoken. Water what has gone dry within me. I choose today, in spite of what I feel, to
abide in You. I place my roots back in Your Word. I open my hands to receive
Your grace. I trust that the same God who chose me and appointed me for fruit
has not forgotten where I am. Let the
rain come, Lord. I am ready to receive it.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Daily Grace and Mercy
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Let's Encourage One Another
Which of these five lessons spoke most to
your heart today? Are you in a pruning season? A striving season? A returning
season? Share in the comments below; your story might be the exact
encouragement someone else needs to read today.
And if this post blessed you, please save
it to your Pinterest for the next dry season; yours or a friend's. You never
know whose desert this might help water.
Subscribe to Daily Grace and Mercy for weekly
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Daily Grace and Mercy •
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