The Taste of Sand: Rehydrating the Dried-Out Soul

By David R. Lee

Some say it never should happen, but it does. Any Christian, church leader, or Christian organization head can, from no apparent cause, suddenly find their soul in a desert place. It is confusing, frustrating, causes doubts, and feels like being saved and lost simultaneously. What generates this standstill in faith? How can motivation disappear in serving Christ? This book examines reasons for the desert dilemma, takes one through the strides to understanding the condition, and points to the changes that can lift one up to a renewed normal commitment to the Lord. Pastors and ministry leaders are on the menu first, but the final course is help for all believers. Go inside and see.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638747796

Book preview

This Must Be Said First

Agreat lie in our times is that Christians are not supposed to falter.

Our world is composed of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of ministers of the Lord Jesus who are serving or have served in church or Christian organizations. Usually these are termed professionals, which is somewhat misleading since there is a different stamp that separates them from ordinary secular occupations. In a real sense, God has called them to lead people in knowledge, experience, and commitment to Jesus Christ. In actuality, every person who subscribes to the great Lord in repentance and faith is a minister also.

Whether in the formalized profession or not, suddenly in the epicenter of the landscape, there can appear a very disturbing sinkhole that swallows us mysteriously. Most commonly, such a lapse will be referred to as burnout. But that may only encompass one symptom. For no known explanation, a person can begin to doubt God, salvation, ministry, the meaning of life itself. Those called can be saturated with fervor for years, so why then have many dropped out of the work completely? What’s their story? This same inquiry can be levied at those from ordinary life who once were entrenched in their Christian commitment but have thrown the treasure over the cliff. The condition being written here could occur due to a drawn-out and mountainous workload. However, this period in the midst of seemingly normal occupation may not easily be identifiable. It is like reading a captivating book, and for reasons incomprehensible, the pages are blank for a while before reappearing with script.

What I have written in this manuscript is more specifically directed to those who have been called to lead groups of people. These are familiarly known as pastors and teachers, evangelists, missionaries, staff, or heads of parachurch agencies. Yet the souls of average followers of the Savior, on occasion, can slide into a deep dried-up ravine and hopefully will find useful insights from our discussion. You don’t have to be clergy to feel the effects. Most of the script will advise pastors. The latter section is devoted especially to Christians in general who experience the questioning quagmire of unexplainable spiritual numbness.

I served over forty years in church and other Christian venues as have many devout deputies of Christ. Admittedly, I have no unique qualifications to instruct others in similar positions as to how to overcome or remedy the stalling out in the middle of the air that hits at a most unanticipated moment. For ambiguous reasons, the engine just sputters and stops. It is tough enough to manage one’s personal dilemmas much less cure others. As I am writing presently, I am not as plagued as in former times by this sort of quandary; but the pandemic and turmoil on our planet, the rearrangement and isolation from normal relationships and feelings of the mystical future have certainly rattled the turf for a number of Christians. In conversations with friends and family, there have been revealed definite seasons of spiritual letdown. The common response is that God is in control, but a hesitation in their voices appears to indicate times of something similar to frozen faith. Some are pleading, Lord, come quickly and let’s get this struggle over. I’ve read how the pillars of the past and certainly the personalities of the Bible have hit the wall while doing God’s business. I have experienced this curse more times than I’d prefer to count over the years. I have found it ordinary to those in ministry positions and common among many in the faith, so I have sensed a leading to share my discoveries.

This is about me and you. Our fathomless Lord has directly watched over and monitored every occasion of our personal involvement in His enterprise. He has kept His word that He would never leave or forsake us. Yet sometimes it feels like we have been assigned to an orphanage. Thankfully in the oppressive heat, when the facemask during the pandemic suffocates and you gasp and gasp, the Lord brings back His cool air, and you are resuscitated anew. None of us will be wearing masks in heaven.

Take note. This book is sliced into four segments. The first will analyze the condition, and the second will suggest the cure. If the first segment is critical to consoling those in ministry positions and other people, the second slice is crucial to understanding the significance of a desert experience. The third section is to go from exposure to explanation, at minimum clarify that our queries do have answers. Four questions discuss the lessons that surface from the soul’s sandstorm. The fourth and final section is directed to the general Christian population who have dried out and are seeking a rest area where they can be refreshed. I have enormous enhancement and reward from service to the Lord. Those who have been in the belly of the whale know what it feels like to be claustrophobic, chastised, rescued, relieved, and cleansed to keep on serving. Your track may be different in scope, but there will be familiarity also. Let’s explore together the condition and the consolation when the thirsty spirit needs a drink of fresh water.

Part 1

The Condition

The Day My Soul Dried Up

Iwoke early in a darkened resort room. The rest of our family was scattered in their various beds still in an assortment of sleeping positions. I slipped around a heavy drapery and out the sliding glass door where a hazy morning sun began to excavate the landscape. We were vacationing in the high Nevada desert at a time-share, and I had some quiet moments to marinate and journal while the earth awoke.

I saw a gaggle of egrets bursting into flight from the foliage over a nearly used-up stream. The sun overhead was fighting its way into day through a gauzy sky. I had a Bible on an outdoor, wrought-iron-outlined glass table and opened to the baptizer John in Mark preaching a repentance baptism. But my mind rambled to the surrounding hills devoid of trees. Scrawny tumble bushes appeared randomly on granulated slopes. The entire elevated mesa was an arid planet of stubble and shards of shale. Soon the barren brambles and clustered rocks would receive the heaviness of the day’s heat, the blistered rural roads exuding wavy summer air from the surface.

That is when it hit. I had been to this desert many times. Oh, this was the first family reunion excursion of several that would follow over time at this locale. But the habitat I was observing reminded me that my spirit had been exiled often to a dried-up, parched wasteland desperately in need of rehydration and nourishment. You’ve been there, haven’t you? I mentioned this effect in a men’s group and a minor explosion of assent made the tables vibrate. To a man, they nodded emphatically yes, and I hoped I could evoke this kind of unanimous vote on other propositions in the future. You are thinking that you have been driven to that very Sahara. And you will likely do an encore when exasperation strikes several times more.

Reactions seek immediate explanations. The initial rap by some hot-aired, pious critic is that if a Christian is truly trusting God, this won’t happen. We are on the victory side, and the Lord is daily and, by faith, will enable the sanctified to avoid this dismal spiritual sidestep. Sorry, this is bogus theology because, if my analysis is correct, every Christian will someday, if not already, experience this drought. The characters in the Bible certainly did. The desert doesn’t hand out exemptions. John the Baptist was in the wilderness, and perhaps the desert was home to him. Could be he enjoyed residing in the vacated outlands. Some do. He was accustomed to his surroundings and adapted to his handwoven camel-hair attire, even ate the nectar of bees and dieted on bugs.

But John had God’s work to do, and the wilderness enhanced his activity. He met his cousin the Lord Jesus waist-high in the Jordan’s water. An Old Testament prophet had announced seven hundred years in advance that this prophet, meaning him, would introduce the Great Prophet. John may have donned the personality of a recluse, having periodic visitors to meander their way to the site of his liquid pulpit. I can frame a picture of him intruding into the Galilean villages with some of his eccentric magnetism, beckoning the curious to come hear his message on the quieter wilderness bluffs. There he finger-pointed to them the necessity of preparing for God’s superior Servant’s imminent appearance by forsaking their sin. John had clear reasons for his desert. But we do not. Our desert is a hot fog.

The deserts of my soul have given me few revelations of why I suddenly appeared on-site. Those shriveled seasons did not harmonize with my Christianity. I was raised in a Christian family where the Bible was read every day, and numerous Christian organizations complemented our family’s faithful church attendance at a wide variety of functions. I heard the best of the renowned Bible teachers, and my parents hosted plenty of name-brand leaders over mashed potatoes and roast beef and Mother’s premium desserts at our dinner table. My parents were engaged in national conferences and served on ministry boards in churches and parachurch organizations. My father chaired Christian Business Men’s Committee in our state. My mother glorified the Lord powerfully on piano or organ in churches and Christian conventions for years. We were saturated with holy hobbies and intensely trained long before our formal degrees from Christian colleges and me from seminary.

I was personally discipled by pastors and evangelists while positioned as youth director at several churches and a club leader for Youth for Christ. With a seminary degree in my pocket, I launched into youth and senior pastoral assignments which totaled thirteen churches over forty years, including mission trips to Eastern Europe, Mexico, and South America. The best of the best was my spiritual feast along with my Christian spouse and godly heritage from both our families. I had no excuses for denying God’s salvation and have been submerged deeply in the joy of knowing Jesus continuously.

Yet seasons of shriveled spirit have avalanched upon me for reasons I cannot explain. This book is meant to unearth the questions and answers of these disorienting occurrences. Someone who is perusing these pages needs enlightenment also, either having sucked the sand of the spiritual desert in days ago or presently has descended into a dried-up snake pit and is screaming for help. Shall we confront the monster together?

Very few friends are going to empathize with the paralysis you feel. It seems you have discovered yourself imprisoned in a room with no furniture. You sense that you are suspended between two stars with nothing to grasp onto. Whatever you tried previously to shed this funk was a bath that didn’t clean the skin. The pores of your soul begin to complain. The tongue and the palate stick together. Your Christianity becomes tasteless. There are no bullets in the gun. You are in a caved-in mine shaft sorting rocks to find a peep hole of light whereby you may escape.

How can you convey to anyone the feeling of being a Christian and lost at the same time? You are tied to the obligation of ministry, yet you are towed in the opposite direction to be distanced from any association with it. Guilt for experiencing these rogue feelings pours over you like a barrel of hot ice water. You are not abandoning your faith in Jesus, and you love Him widely. But your soul has been drained like all the oil is now missing from the oil pan, and you are driving the car regardless. The lights on the dashboard flash bright-orange warnings, and you drive on. You wish to panic, but you are too tired at the moment. You are drinking from a waterless cup, yet you keep sipping air and imagining that it will refill itself and return you to normal.

Something odd has transformed your zeal into caked clay. You peruse your Bible, but you see fonts and phrases. You start to read sentences that won’t finish. You cascade over a chapter that you have to reread to remember what you forgot the first time over. One more shot at it, you are thinking. Again you peel off four or five verses, close the onion-skin volume that you have devoured for eons, and set it on the far corner of the end table where it will not disturb you for a while.

Prayer is the next entrée. Maybe if you change the beginning words, a new wave of spirituality will bud. You do and it doesn’t. You inquire, Who am I trying to impress? This isn’t me, and God is rolling His eyes at my artificial attempt to pontificate. You resort to the bottom-scale vernacular as if chatting over a plate of nachos and a Perrier. God is unimpressed. The nachos taste stale. You resort to your usual prayer menu, rattling off the same people and petitions in the order you have memorized them from daily practice. You mention a hair ball of names without knowing what possibly they have been experiencing. You do your in Jesus’s name, amen and still glide the gully. The sand is scorching under your feet. You are gasping dust. Your soul hangs on a dehydrated limb in limbo.

You pray, Lord, where am I? You hear no voice in response. You doubt your eternity, but that doesn’t work. You know you are safe. God already told you so. Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong. Myriads of songs and verses growing up can’t hide. You have disappointed Him, but He will never let you out of His sight. You know that for certain, just not while you’re reading this page. Lord, help me figure this out. He has and I share the following insights.

As this treatise moves along, I will be reflecting on my own experiences. Yet I am including a whole file cabinet full of conversations, lengthy phone marathons, weeping, and prayer sessions from friends in ministry positions who have unloaded similar dryness. The notables in Scripture had their Mohaves. Jacob was petrified to face his brother. Elijah wanted to die, as did Job. Saul of Tarsus was struck sightless. Even Jesus wept. So did Peter. Martin Luther suffered depression. John Wesley had a contentious wife. Charles Finney experienced foul exhaustion after preaching to the masses. Yes, a great many pastors try to play hide-and-seek with their emotions, showcasing their smiles in public, but what caverns they have fallen into when alone!

Causes of Shriveled Spirits

Exhaustion

Some call it burnout. Others may refer to overload. From the field of psychiatry we hear the word depression. It may not even have a name yet. But you have it. You don’t have to be in the formal ministry to experience it. It is a common as flies at a picnic. Intriguingly, you just might want to be away in the wilderness. Jeremiah did as chapter 9, verse 2, of his book quoted, Oh that I had in the desert a wayfarer’s lodging place; that I might leave my people and go from them (New American Standard Bible).

Somewhere in a lonely bog, you are reviewing the efforts of your spiritual trek. No way can you forfeit the sincerity of the moment of your salvation. Your status with God is authentic. The very Holy Spirit vice-gripped your soul. Heaven’s windows were unlocked for you, and God was compelling you to act. You blushed shamefully at your many transgressions and humbly pled for forgiveness through the cross of Jesus. You could feel it. God met you there, whether standing prayerfully, sitting with hands wiping your eyes, or kneeling like you never wanted to get up and discard this holy prostrate position.

You had those floods of joy o’er my soul like the sea billows roll. You rose to your feet cleaner than you’d ever known clean. Someone asked what you just did, and in the simplest profound terse expression ever offered, you squeaked, I found Jesus. But you didn’t. He found you. You weren’t looking for Him. You might have been searching for significance, enduring all those experimental exertions that promised fulfillment and a destiny of flowers. What you may have discovered was a short-lived happy hour or an ideal that crumbled like a one-night stand on melba toast. The philosophies of the culture didn’t match their promise. You tested the waters for reasons and meaning and found no eternal peace for your bloated expectations. Books you devoured had ideas but no lingering results. The friends who said they would be there were elsewhere, at least shared you with a number of other endeavors which were their excuses for being unavailable.

Perhaps you decided to take a lunch break from the treadmill and instead did a launch break into something formerly for you forbidden. Was it lining up glasses while seated on a barstool that blurred your rationale and ended next morning with you questioning what and why? Some may have discovered that two warm bodies intertwined on a hotel mattress fed the lust of the physical but was so temporary that they realized it was the same kind of love that occurs in a barnyard. Sensual indulgence with no commitment merely throws ashes on a heart lunging for authentic love. Society may have put a slash mark through all the rules on illicit affairs, but it still felt more like exotic crime than genuine affection. Did you ever secretly slip in some mind-altering pills just for the experimental fascination, knowing full well you would never ever, ever become hooked? Well, that’s what you thought back then.

Or maybe you did no such thing. You engaged in nothing that would have tie-dyed your character. You simply were in an anchorless boat that swirled nonstop in circles, and you questioned your heart and meaning. You, for the moment, could not taste and see that the Lord is good. You simply didn’t know how.

Jesus had been following you and knew exactly where you were located. He did not force you to sign up for religion or some sense of self-manufactured spirituality. He reached out His hand and massaged your heart, and you realized the love in His touch. Your heart began to melt. Your crystallized objections shrank like a snow fort in sunshine, and your mind suddenly pinpointed the longing to give in to the beckoning of the One who would genuinely save you from yourself.

Jesus found you, couched you in loving arms, parlayed you with indescribable episodes of spiritual alertness, and eventually selected you for special work. For years you basked in blessing, served to your ultimate, and you felt secure in your contribution to the kingdom. From nowhere came a desensitizing spirit-depleting tornado. You were swept to the badlands and left to contemplate a major sterile confusion.

Numb and out of touch, you still embraced your initial salvation, your growing-up days, your invitation by God to serve in His ministry. That’s not something you disremember. But you sense that a deluge of meetings and phone calls from needy folks that made you miss the determining quarter of your ball game felt like stepping into a pothole of gum. That and the emergency middle of nap time urgencies, the interruption of infrequent meals with the family, or the startled awakenings after midnight in which you drove to meet up with screams for help in your pajama top have drained you through a strainer. Something grenaded your spirit, and you lost the progress of the pilgrim.

So you sit down and think blanks. Then you realize that you have no squirm. You just sit and breathe and stare. The raw fact is that you have given the best portion of your mind, soul, spirit, and service to the Lord. You donated truckloads of energy to straighten people whose circumstances caused them to bend sideways or walk crooked. They needed you, and you were sincerely obliged to lift them out of the mud. You can’t relax while ambling through the hospital corridors after midnight when your sleep was detonated by the call from the young maternity maiden freaking out because her baby was breach, and she was fully convinced the death demon would whisk her away and strand the baby. Yesterday you refereed the catfight between the young superstar executive and his interior fashion designer wife of seven months, who swore a lot mostly at each other because their marriage was wobbly immediately after the honeymoon.

Your last meeting with the bored (in the church constitution referred to as the board) kept you on the edge of your chair, not from anything profoundly urgent, but you were anticipating a sprint to the exit the moment the marathon of verbiage finally ceased. Each time you looked at the digital clock on your cell phone, the numbers, for some reason, kept reversing ten minutes. In your head, as you were faking interest at the guy filibustering two people down the table, you counted, One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, all the way to sixty, and your clock didn’t change numbers. Your mind wasn’t there, and you had left your heart in San Francisco. Every time you were asked your opinion on the topic of trivia, you coughed out soot. You drove home and immediately hit the bed snackless and roiling under the covers with guilt for wanting to be elsewhere than there.

The blatant fact: you are exhausted. This is not the only reason for holy drought, but it is reason aplenty. You look tired, think tired thoughts, and your eyes are scanning the inside of your head instead of gawking outward. And one of the main reasons you are tired is people. You are called to people and fully committed to the people encompassed in the love-death of Christ on the cross. The call was to woo them into the kingdom, and you have exerted every effort in your arsenal to win them. But you have been bulldozed over by people and their endless problems, their insistent beckoning for attention, and the appointments with numbers of them you have not yet