When You’re Spiritually Dry by Emerson Brown
291 | Seven sermon summer surfin’ spectacular
Find Hope and Refreshment
Surf's up for another entry in our Seven Sermon Summer Surfin' Spectacular! This week, guest speaker Emerson Brown joins us to tackle a deeply relatable reality every Christian faces: seasons of spiritual drought. When prayer feels like a routine, worship lacks spark, and Sunday mornings feel exhausting rather than refreshing, it’s easy to worry that our faith is slipping away. Drawing from the raw emotional landscape of Psalm 42, Emerson shows why feeling dry isn't a sign of lost faith — it's an invitation to honest lament. From learning how to speak truth back to our own downcast hearts to discovering spiritual survival tips from backyard squirrels navigating ten inches of snow, this lesson equips us to stay anchored in faithful routines until the rain returns.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Spiritual droughts are a natural part of walking with God, and experiencing them is not a sign of failed faith.
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Welcome and Setup
Bryan: Well, cowabunga everybody, and welcome to the Sermon Sermon Summer Surfing Spectacular. I'm Bryan Schiele.
Ryan: I'm Ryan Joy
Bryan: And here on today's episode, we're going to have a sermon from Emerson Brown, who, uh, has not really been on the podcast before, but, uh, definitely someone that Ryan you know pretty well, uh, from your time there in Fort Wayne, right?
Ryan: Yeah, he's actually the son-in-law of one of our elders, but we've gotten to... You know how it is with the different evangelists, we tend to find each other and, and love to talk about, uh, preaching and life and the Bible, and so we've gotten close and, um, yeah. He, he has also-- He's also about to come and lead our, uh, epic teen weekend here.
He's gonna basically a, a meeting and lead a bunch of studies here with us. So, uh, yeah, it's awesome to have Emerson on, and I love this sermon that we're about to get to hear.
Favorite Seasons Banter
Bryan: Yeah, so we're gonna talk in this sermon here about seasons and going through different difficult seasons, I think, spiritually speaking. But Ryan, I mean, just what is your favorite season? Is it the summer, or do you have a different favorite season besides the summer?
Ryan: I, well, I actually, I mean, I love all, all of the seasons honestly
Bryan: That's not an answer
Ryan: No, but I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say winter. I love winter. I love snowy winters, and that's something I missed in, in Phoenix, and, you know, this sermon is, has to do with a lot of deserts, and, uh, desert life in the winter does not feel like winter.
But I, I love to look out and see the snow. I love snow cream and going skiing and being warm by a fire, and so that's probably my favorite, maybe holing up in a cabin somewhere. But, I mean, they're, they're all pretty good except for maybe that one or two weeks in March where it's still cold, but it looks like it should be su- uh, springtime.
That's, that's kind of the worst. What about you? What's your favorite?
Bryan: I have no answer for this because in the desert in Arizona, there is no such concept of seasons, so everything is just hot or not quite as hot. So I'm looking forward to really, like, leaning into a new environment in Indiana and, like, actually experiencing seasons. So I feel like sweater weather would be enjoyable for me, like in the
Ryan: weather.
Bryan: So that's probably gonna be my answer is fall, but I don't-- I've never really experienced a fall, so maybe that's why the, the fall is always greener on the other side. Anyway, so Emerson Brown's sermon here, we're gonna get into that, and before the sermon, though, you have a conversation with him. Excited to hear about that coming right up
Meet Emerson Brown
Ryan: Well, thanks so much for being on, Emerson, and, uh, let me just say we are in for a treat with this lesson all about squirrels and deer, other woodland creatures. Not really about that, but mostly about these dry periods that Christians sometimes go through. So yeah, thanks for being on with us.
Emerson: Thanks, Ryan.
Appreciate the opportunity, and it's always a little bit of a weird thing to, uh, share your own sermon with somebody.
Ryan: Yeah. Well, it, it's, uh, something that you do really well, and this is a relatable lesson that I think, I think everybody's gonna benefit from it.
Defining Spiritual Drought
Ryan: And, and I think we can all find ourselves in Whether it's this season of life we're in right now or some other season we've gone through in the past where we're going through one of those droughts where we just are struggling to, um, you know, to, to experience the kind of full, uh, close relationship with God, full joy and peace and zeal that we want to experience and, and know is, is accessible to us most of the time.
But, um, I, I'd really like to hear about your experience with these kinds of things or what inspired this lesson. But leading into that, I wanted to list a, a few of the markers or traits of this kind of dryness just so people can start to imagine what we're talking about. So you mentioned like feeling burnt out, burnt out in your service, in your parenting, in these, these different parts of life that squeeze us, and maybe feeling like growth is next to impossible, like we're just stuck in a rut, and your Bible reading and your prayer start to feel devoid of that kind of, uh, life and energy that we, we expect to find there sometimes to fuel our spiritual lives.
And then, and then one interesting one you brought up, you said Sunday can be hard-
Emerson: Mm-hmm ...
Ryan: in these seasons. And, you know, could you just talk about periods of spiritual drought in your life and where this all came from?
Emerson: Yeah. So I've sure had my share of spiritual drought, and sometimes I feel like they've been more dry than others.
And I think, as you said, most Christians have probably experienced this. Um, not too long ago, I was talking to a brand-new Christian. He's been a Christian for a little bit over a year, and already he's starting to feel that. He asked me, "Why do I not feel on fire like I was just a few months ago?" Hmm. Um, but I've also heard Christians that have been Christians for multiple decades, um, imply similar things and talk about similar things.
And so this is just a kind of a reality for serving the Lord. And probably most recently, the time that I felt most spiritually dry, there was something that happened to our family and kinda threw us all off. And through the course of several months, things got better, and, um- But I didn't really feel like I was going back to normal.
And so sometimes spiritual drought can be caused by external things. Maybe somebody gets sick, maybe there's a financial hardship, or you're focused on other things, um, or it's just draining and sapping a lot of energy from you. Um, or it can be just something purely internal, and there's really no external reason for it.
Psalm 42 and Heart Talk
Emerson: And so this psalm, uh, this sermon is based on Psalm 42, which came up on our Bible reading period, um, or our Bible reading plan during this period of spiritual drought, and it was just really timely, and I really related especially to verse five, which is repeated a couple times in Psalm 42. "Why are you in despair, O my soul, and why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence." So there's this internal dialogue, him talking to his heart, "Why are you in despair?" And a lot of times we don't understand why we feel that way, but we do. Uh, but there's also this expression of hope and confidence that, um, we can trust in God for, for better times.
So, uh, I've, I've really experienced that. Um, I think a lot of people can relate to I know this is to be... I know this is true, but I feel a certain way, and sometimes there's an inconsistency. Yeah. And so we've gotta talk to our hearts to try to keep our hearts, uh, catching up with our head.
Ryan: Talk to our hearts.
I love that, and that ps- this psalm does that really well. We did a series, um, in, on the podcast called Talking to Yourself, where we, we addressed that kind of idea and, and this psalm Is a, a psalm that, that is about dryness. Like, you know, there's another song we s- sing sometimes that's like, "I come to the garden alone while the dew is on the roses, and he walks with me and he talks with me," and you know, like it's such a beautiful flourishing picture.
Emerson: Mm-hmm.
Ryan: And you mentioned in the sermon, this isn't a flourishing garden praise psalm. Right.
Why Lament Matters
Ryan: It is a desert lament, and that leads us into thinking about lament. A- and maybe that's something that a lot of Christians haven't ever thought about, why lament is important in our worship and prayer, and why the Bible gives us these kinds of songs so often.
So why, why do you think we need lament?
Emerson: Well, you're right. Lament is so frequent in the Bible. It's frequent in the Psalms. In fact, we have an entire book of the Old Testament that is called
Ryan: Lamentations. Yeah.
Emerson: So we are... We're supposed to lament sometimes, and the reason for that is because life is not always come to the garden when the dew is still on the roses.
Right. It doesn't always, uh, feel that way. There are times when we can't just sing and be happy, that we need, we need to sing sad songs because those are the songs that express the sadness in our hearts, and fai- that's what faithful people do. They don't just whitewash, um, their feelings before God. They don't just put on a happy face and pretend like everything's fine when it's not.
Obviously, we can't do that before God, and we, to an extent, we shouldn't do that before other people either. Mm. Um, so lament is important because it shows that we are real people, and if all we ever sing are happy songs at church, then there are people who are gonna feel isolated because they're not always happy.
Maybe they're going through grief or sorrow. Um, maybe they're suffering in some way, and they're probably going to be thinking, "Why are all these people happy and I'm not? I'm the only one." Um, so we need to be singing laments, and we need to do that as an act of service for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Um, and there's an appropriate place for joy. There's an appropriate pra- place for confidence. The Psalms fill all of those needs. Uh, but lament is definitely one of those areas where I think in general we are kinda lacking because it's not fun to sing lament. Mm. But it's not fun to go through a lament either
Ryan: Yeah, that's that idea of like w- singing, sing and be happy to somebody who is just completely, you know, in, in the mud, in the, in the mire, as the Psalms say.
That's not helpful, and it's not real. Mm-hmm. It's, it's, there's a, a, a falseness and a denial of reality that starts to, to happen there. And y- you know, these, these moments where we acknowledge reality, like the Bible is full of hope, and yet it's a gritty, realistic hope. Like Lamentations that you brought up, in Lamentations 3, it's surrounded by all of the darkness that it's really rough to read.
Hopes for the Sermon
Ryan: We find those words of, you know, "Yet I will remember, and therefore-" Mm-hmm. "... I have hope." And so, you know, as you think about someone who either is in a season like that right now or knows at some point one is coming, it's, it's around the corner that we will be on this sort of roller coaster here while we're in this world and in this body and life keeps coming, what do you hope that people who are listening right now to this sermon we're about to play, um, can, can hear to prepare them and maybe come out a little different based on th- reflecting together on Psalm 42 and these thoughts?
I
Emerson: think the biggest thing is, um, maybe there's two things. One is that it's okay to feel spiritually dry, that it's just natural, um, a natural part of life, natural part of walking with God. But two, that God has given us tools to express that to him and to move us, uh, in those times so that we can move, start moving ourselves out of those times.
Mm. Um, and the Psalms, again, um, I, the Psalms are intended not just to be read and sung, but they're intended to be used in our lives, um, applied in, um, relevant circumstances, and the Psalms definitely do that. Psalm 42, uh, does that here. And one of the reasons I think we struggle to, um- To f- to acknowledge that we're spiritually dry perhaps is that we think it might be a confession that we don't have faith anymore or that we don't love God anymore.
But when you read Psalm 42, that is not the case at all. He deeply loves God. He is deeply devoted to God. So, so that's not a question. What's in question is, "I love God so deeply, and I long to be with him, so why do I feel so distant from him?" And, um, and so yeah, it's, it's possible for people that are deeply devoted to God to feel that.
Um, and so yeah, m- I guess my guiding purpose was just to, uh, point people to the Psalms and say, "Hey, if you're going through this, use the Psalms, and you'll, you'll find that they express what we struggle to express."
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that, that's really well said and a perfect lead-in to this sermon where we will go to the Psalms and find, find ourselves there and find, uh, some, some pathways to bring our difficulties before God in this sermon, "When You're Spiritually Dry" by Emerson Brown.
Thanks again, Emerson, and, uh, let's listen to the sermon
Sermon Begins Thirst Story
Emerson: What do you think the thirstiest you, you, you have ever been is? Um, I don't know that I can remember a real specific time when I was just really, really thirsty. Uh, but I grew up in s- southern Georgia. If you've ever spent summers in Florida, you know what the weather is like. You know that it's hot and humid.
And I spent my teenage years cutting grass for neighbors in the, um, heat of the summer, and I would, I wouldn't carry any water with me, and I don't, I don't know why. I just, you know, was a silly teenager. And so I would come home after mowing a couple of y- lawns, um, you know, pushing the mower up and down the hill, and, um, then I would, I would come back, and I would just be dying of thirst.
And, uh, you know that feeling, uh, as soon as you, you get that water in your mouth, instant relief, right? Instant refreshment there. This Psalm talks about thirsting for God, and thirsting, um, not just a little bit, but thirsting so much that you feel like you're going to die.
Reading Psalm 42
Emerson: Let's, um, let's read the Psalm together, and I wanna share some thoughts with you, uh, from this tonight.
Psalm 42, this is the New American Standard Bible As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"
These things I remember, and I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in the procession to the house of God, with the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him for the help of his presence.
O my God, my soul is in despair within me. Therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan and from the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the sound of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have rolled over me. The Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime, and his song will be with me in the night, a prayer to the God of my life.
I will say to God my rock, "Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?" As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me, while they say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, the help of my countenance and my God.
Desert Deer Picture
Emerson: So these, uh, the first couple of verses are most familiar to us because of the hymn we just sang. "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God." When I would, um, when I usually have sung that hymn before, the picture I have in my mind is of a deer in its natural habitat in a setting that looks kind of like this.
A deer, you know, kind of strolling alongside the stream, lazily lapping at the water in a very well-watered area. That's where you would normally expect a deer to be, right? That's not where the deer is in this psalm. The deer is in something like this setting, where he is completely out of his element.
There is no shade in sight, no water in sight. The deer is not where he is supposed to be, but the deer is where there is no water, and he is thirsty. He is thirsty for God. "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." If you wanna hold your place there at Psalm 42 and look at, uh, Psalm 63 for just a moment Psalm 42, which we're looking at tonight, was written by the sons of Korah.
This one was written by David in Psalm 63, and if you notice in the heading, it says that he wrote this when he was in the wilderness of Judah. So he is in a desert place. Notice what he says in verse one, "O God, you are my God; I shall seek you earnestly; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water."
I think these two psalms are very similar in this way. You, you see a, a man, a person of God who is in this desert place thirsting for God where he cannot find relief, and so that's the picture of Psalm 42. The psalmist is out of his element. If you go back to Psalm 42, look at verse two. Psalm 42 in verse two, "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God."
And then he says, "When shall I come and appear before God?" So it seems to me that he is separated from God in some physical way. He is, he is not able to come and appear before God, presumably in the temple or the tabernacle where he would, he would be presented. In verse three, he is surrounded by people who mock him and say, "Where is your God?
You know, you, you pro- profess to worship this great God. Where is he now?" In verse four, he remembers these things as he pours out his soul, and specifically he remembers how he used to go, uh, leading the people of God in the procession into the house of God. This, this individual was a worship leader of some kind, and he would lead the procession as people were joyfully shouting and praising and singing God.
That's a distant memory now. That's not where he is right now. His heart is filled with questions. In verse five, "Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?" In verse nine, he even asks God, "Why have you forgotten me? All the people around me are saying, 'Where is your God?'"
And that is affecting his own heart. "Why have you forgotten me?" He feels distant from God. His heart is filled with doubt, with despair, and he's struggling with, "Why do I feel this way?" If we were to outline this psalm, we would find that it is, um, it is predominantly a lament psalm, a lament to bringing, um, sadness and despair and these, these troubling, disturbing thoughts before God.
That's the theme of the psalm. But it alternates between bringing those laments to God and bringing hope and trust to God. So in verses one through, uh, five, at the end, uh, uh, beginning of verse five, one through the beginning of five, that's the lament part, and then verse five ends with hope in God. And so there's that confession of trust.
But then he goes back to lament in verse six. And then in verse eight he says, "The Lord will command His loving kindness." And so he laments, and then he professes, "God is, is going to show me His loving kindness again." But then back in verse nine, he's back to lament, "Why have you forgotten me?" Until the end of the psalm ends with, in verse 11, "Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God."
This is a psalm that's kind of a mix between prayer to God and internal dialogue. He's talking to God, but he's also talking to himself. "Why are you in despair, O my heart?" And that refrain is repeated twice in this psalm.
What Dryness Feels Like
Emerson: So I want to ask you a question tonight. What do you do when you feel like this psalmist felt?
When you are spiritually dry? You remember what it feels like to be thirsty, just really, really thirsty. You know what that feels like physically, but what does that feel like spiritually when you are dry? When you love God so deeply, but you feel so distant from him. This is not someone who is separated from God because of his sin.
There are psalms that, uh, talk about that. David would pray to God and ask for, uh, you know, forgiveness, but that's not where the psalmist is. The psalmist loves God deeply, and he has no sin between him and God, but he is possibly in exile, maybe in Babylonian captivity, or maybe, uh, out in the wilderness somewhere, not able to come before God.
He, he loves God deeply, and he wants to be in the presence of God, but he just can't. He is in this spiritual drought. And so what do we do when we f- feel like we're going through a spiritual drought? What does that look like to us? I, I just wanna give you some, some ways that that may feel like to us.
Maybe it feels like prayer is difficult. Have you ever had a time in your life when you struggled to pray? Not because you didn't want it, not because you wanted it to be that way, but because it was just hard to open up your heart to God. Your prayers maybe felt routine. They felt like you were just repeating the same words.
Um, maybe your heart wasn't in your prayers, and maybe you didn't pray at all Maybe you find that, that worship is unengaging. The times when we come together and we sing together, you, you find it hard to be stirred up by the words of the songs and the voices of the people that you hear. And it's not because y-- uh, we're-- our singing is dragging or, you know, anything like that.
Everyone's engaged. Everyone around us is, is lifting up their voices, but I feel like I just don't... I don't fit. I, I feel like my heart cannot sing loudly like everyone, everyone else's can. You find it hard to be uplifted by that. Maybe you feel like relationships are distant. You feel like, um, you just would rather isolate yourself from other people, um, in an unhealthy way, rather than open up to others who could help you spiritually.
When our relationships become distant like that, maybe it's because we're spiritually dry. And maybe for all of those reasons, Sundays can be hard Sundays can be hard sometimes for Christians. Again, it's not because we don't want it to be difficult. It's not like we just don't wanna go to church, but sometimes our hearts are just struggling to want it.
Um, maybe there's embarrassment or shame about how you're doing spiritually. Maybe you've not had much to give lately. You'll be around people who you th- you might think may not understand. You're around people who just seem like they have it all put together, and Sundays are hard, or growing feels impossible.
We want to grow. We talk about growing spiritually. We talk about being on fire. We talk about serving the Lord, but you feel like you've hit a wall. You feel like you've hit a dip, and that's a hard pit to come out of. Serving, um, God as zealously as we once did, it's not where we are now. You want to be on fire, you want to be passionate, but it's not the way you feel at the moment.
And so maybe your Bible study, your Bible reading isn't enlightening. Maybe it's not as encouraging as it, uh, as you want it to be. And maybe you just feel exhausted. You're serving, you're doing the right things, but you're exhausted. Maybe you feel burned out on parenting. You feel burned out on shining your light.
You feel burned out on serving others or on teaching. Whatever it may be, you just feel exhausted by that, and you wonder if any of the things that I'm doing for my children or for the people around me, is it really doing any good? If it... Is it making any impact on people? I, I don't know if I have overstated any of those things, but I know that many of us have felt those ways.
And so what do you do when you are spiritually dry, when you feel like you're thirsting in the wilderness for God, and there's not really a close end in sight? Is it safe to say that we have all been there? Is it safe to say that we can relate in some way to at least one or more of these things? Well, this Psalm can really help us with that, and so I just wanna share, um, first of all, some comfort from this Psalm, some things that this Psalm can do to, um, help, help us find some, some ease, but also some advice from this Psalm.
Comfort Youre Not Alone
Emerson: The first thing is that this Psalm shows us that we are not alone when we feel that way. We are not alone. If you have ever felt spiritually dry or worn out or burnt out You can know that you're in the company of good, faithful people. So the sons of Korah, we don't know a whole lot about, uh, them, but we know who Korah was.
If you remember back in Numbers chapter sixteen, Korah was, uh, one of the ones who led this rebellion against Moses, against his leadership. And you remember what happened to him. The earth opened up and swallowed him. But apparently, and there's indications in Chronicles, uh, that some of the sons of Korah survived this.
And you think about that. Korah was a, a Levite who wanted, you know, more, uh, more position than he had already been placed with. You know, as a Levite, he already had a great position in the service of God, but he wasn't content with that. Well, his, his descendants did so much in writing these psalms for us.
There are eleven psalms in the Book of Psalms that are attributed to the sons of Korah, this being one of them. These are people who were faithful to God and did us a, a lot of good, encouraging us by writing these psalms. And so the fact that the sons of Korah are writing this indicates that there are faithful people who have felt this way before, but it's not just the psalmist.
The feelings that are expressed in the psalm are not singular or unique to his situation. Think about some people in the Old Testament who also felt worn out. You have Moses. Moses was charged with leading a million plus people in the wilderness. They're constantly complaining, constantly bickering, constantly questioning, constantly doubting, constantly challenging, and that grated on Moses.
I mean, it would grate on us, right? And at one point, Moses said to God, "I cannot do this. I cannot bear this burden alone. Have I borne these chil-- These are not my children, and you, yet you've, you've allowed, you've placed me, uh, commanded me to lead them as if they are." Moses felt worn out in leading the people.
In I Kings chapter nineteen, Elijah felt like a failure after all he had done for God and Israel. After all the, the teaching and, uh, the, you know, that showdown at Mount Carmel where it was clear that God is the Lord, immediately after that, Jezebel wanted to kill him, and so he ran away. He felt like a failure.
And then in the New Testament, you have the Apostle Paul. In II Corinthians chapter one, he talks about how he reached a point where he despaired of life because of some persecution or some suffering that he faced. And he said, "It was beyond our strength." And I think it-- from, from what we know about Paul, it seemed like that was the lowest point of his life as a Christian, despairing of life beyond what he was able to handle.
And so you think about how low Paul was and discouraged in that When the Bible shows us the people who felt that way It's not sugarcoating anything. The Bible is showing that it's okay to feel that way, and we need to be able to express it. Um, in our, in the songs that we typically sing, we sing songs of praise.
We sing songs that express happiness. We sing songs that express hope and confidence and joy. We have a lot of songs about that. We have very few songs that sound like Psalm 42. I'm glad that we have s- as the deer, uh, the, the hymn that we sang. But as we sing it, we need to remember that it is a lament.
It's not-- It's... Again, it's not the green trees and flowing stream kind of song. It is a, a dry desert song. It is a lament of desiring to worship God, but I, I just, I'm not there. And I, I'm not as, as passionate or on fire and, a-as I would like to be. That's the kind of song that it is. And so singing laments is not a fun thing.
It's not a fun thing to sing sad songs, but we need to sometimes because that's how we feel sometimes. Another thing that we learn from this psalm is that when we feel that way, our frustration and confusion is valid. So look at verse five again. This is the refrain that's repeated a couple times in the psalm.
In verse five: "Why are you in despair, O my soul, and why have you become disturbed within me?" Here's that internal dialogue part of the psalm. He's talking to himself, "Why are you feeling this way? Why are you so downcast? Why are you so depressed? Why are you so discouraged? Why have you become that way?" I think these verses speak to the gap that often exists between what we know and what we feel.
We know that God is true. We know that God is real. We know that He is faithful, but sometimes we don't feel that way. Sometimes we don't feel like He is right there next to me. He feels distant from us, and that's what this psalm is saying. "Why, why are you in despair?" His brain is convinced of what he knows, God is faithful, God is true, but his soul deeply feels God's distance.
And so one commentator put it this way, "He is urging his heart to catch up to where his brain is." He's telling his soul, "I want you to catch up to where m-my, m- my brain says, 'God is true, God is faithful, God is always there.' Soul, catch up. I want you to, uh, come with me," is what he's saying to himself.
Serving God, being a Christian, is not a linear thing. We're not always on the up and up. We want to be in, on the up and up, but that's not the way it is every time. A lot of times it's more like a rollercoaster. We're up and down. There's a mix of heartache and joy. There are ups and downs. There are highs, and there are lows.
Sometimes in, in one moment we feel confident about where we are with God. Other times we feel doubtful. I, I don't, I don't know where I stand before God. Sometimes there is peace. There's, there's tranquility in my heart. Anything can happen and I would be fine. At other times, one little thing can happen, and it throws me completely off.
Have you ever been there in that spiritual drought? The Psalm tells us it's okay to be confused by that. I don't understand why I feel this way. That's what the Psalm is. I don't understand.
Faith Decision Not Feeling
Emerson: But he's taking it to God, and he's reminding us that it's okay Another thing he comforts us, reminding us, is that doubt and drought are not the end of your faith.
Notice what else he says in verse five. After that internal dialogue when he says, "Why are you in despair?" L- this is what he concludes that refrain with. "Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence." He's talking to himself again. He's saying, "Hope in God. Trust in Him because one day your sadness will be turned to joy again."
And so doubt and drought are not the end of the faith, of his faith. He may feel despair, he may feel disturbed, but he is not giving up. He's determined to hope in God, and I wanna tell you, that is what faith looks like. Faith doesn't always look like having confidence. Faith doesn't always look like feeling strong.
Faith doesn't always look like being on fire and being zealous. Faith sometimes looks like not being those things and saying, "I'm still gonna trust in God, and I'm gonna do my best to do the right thing." That's what true faith looks like. It's helpful to remember that faith is a decision, not a feeling.
You remember what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:7? "We walk by faith, not by sight." Faith is a decision, a choice that we make. Regardless of how I feel, regardless of what your circumstances are, it is a decision to walk by faith even though you cannot see the end. That, that is what faith is. We also need to realize that faith is not the absence of doubt.
Sometimes we think it is. If I doubt, if I question, if I don't understand, that means I don't have enough faith. No, that's not what the Bible teaches. Faith is the distance, or I, I would say doubt is the distance between where our faith is and where it should be, but that's not the absence of faith.
There's a story in Mark chapter nine that has helped me a lot. In Mark chapter nine, there's a, a father who brings his young boy to Jesus, and because this young boy has a demon, and this demon has tried everything he can to destroy this son. He's thrown him in the fire. He's tried to drown him. I mean, can you imagine watching your children, your child suffer like that?
And so he's at his wit's end. He is, he is at his, you know, desperate for anything to help him. And he comes to Je- he comes to the disciples first, and they can't cast out the demon, and so he cries out to Jesus, "If you can do anything, help us." And Jesus says, "If you can? All things are possible for him who believes."
Do you remember what the father said? "I do believe. Help my unbelief." Tell you what, that man had faith. That man had the honesty to say, "There's a part of me that I don't understand, and I question if you can do something." He was honest enough to admit that, but he was also desperate enough to say, "Help me believe.
Help me when my, when I doubt." And I think that's what this psalmist is also going through. His doubt is not the end. It's an opportunity to grow and to exercise that faith, and so he brings it to God. And so that's what spiritual drought is. It is an opportunity to exercise, maybe ev- even increase our faith Maybe that's a little bit of, of, uh, of advice, uh, already there, but hopefully these points are also comforting to us.
You're not alone. Your frustration and confusion are valid, and that doesn't mean that you just don't have any faith at all. There's also three things that this psalm can teach us, some advice for us.
Advice Better Days
Emerson: First thing is that we can trust God that better days will come. Trust God that the drought is not going to last forever.
So look in, look in verse five again, this hope part. He says, "Hope in God, for I shall again praise him." I shall again praise him. Now, what does he mean by that? I don't know exactly. Um, maybe he's saying that he's going to one day lead the people of God in procession and joyful worship again. Maybe it's that one day he thinks that he, he hopes he will be back in the presence of God in the temple or the tabernacle.
Whatever that meant for his specif- specific situation, we don't really know. But listen to what he's telling himself. "Hope in God, for I shall again praise him." One day, one day, I will sing for joy again. Now, he didn't know when that day would be. He didn't know when that day would come or how it would come, but he had confidence to say, "I trust God that better days will come."
I, I kinda struggle with wording it that way because it may kinda sound like, well, you know, when someone's going through a really hard time, it's not a good idea to just say to them, you know, "Better things are around the corner." That's a lot of times just whitewashing the problem and, and ignoring and not validating the, the, the things that they're feeling.
But, but, but this psalmist is saying he's not, he's not putting his hope in something empty and, and not even something physical necessarily. One day, one day, I know that I will praise him, even if it's not in this life. I will one day praise him in his eternal presence. And so when we go through that spiritual drought, we need to place our trust in the same thing, that I, I, I'm not always going to be, I'm not always gonna be frail and fragile and dust.
One day, I will be made new in heaven, and I will be resurrected with a body that will not struggle with the frailty and doubts and struggles with this life. One day, I will be made new There's a passage in the Book of Ecclesiastes, I think it is. Yeah, Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 14. It says, "In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider.
God has made the one as well as the other, so that man will not discover anything that will be after him." So God will sometimes give us days of prosperity, and in those times be happy. Sing those sing and be happy songs. But in the days of adversity, he says, "Remember that God has made them both." Our trust in God should center us from swinging f- you know, from one end to the other.
Keep Doing Right Things
Emerson: Life will do that to us, but trust in God should center us in prosperity and adversity I think another lesson we learn from the Psalm is that in those spiritual droughts, we need to just keep doing the right things The thing that stands out to me the most about the psalm is that while he is questioning and while he's in despair, he keeps praying.
I mean, he just keeps praying. Um, look at verse nine. Look at this. "I will say to God my rock, 'Why have you forgotten me?'" Think about that. Says God's my rock, but I'm gonna go to my rock and I'm going to say, "Why have you forgotten me? Why aren't you there? Why do I question your presence, and why do I question your care for me?
Why is that? You're my rock, but why aren't you here right now as my rock?" That may sound like a contradiction on, on its face, but again, isn't that the way we feel sometimes? Sometimes we, we wonder that. And so when it feels like God is too far away to listen, he still prays. When he is so dry that he feels like he's dying, he still thirsts for God.
He goes to God, and that's, that's so important for us. Just keep doing the right things. Just stay on track. Keep doing the right things. This morning we talked a lot about routines, and I think this is how our routine, where our routines come in. Keep doing the right things. Keep praying. Keep reading. Keep spending time with your brothers and sisters in Christ even if you don't feel like it.
Keep doing those things because those routines can keep us anchored.
Squirrels and Routine
Emerson: There's an illustration that, um, really stood out to me. You remember when we had, um, I don't remember if it was January or February, but we had that big snowstorm. We got 10, 10 inches of snow at our house, and it stayed on the ground for, like, two weeks because it was so cold.
Well, as I would come up to the building, um, during that time, I would sit in my office back there. My corner office has a, um, a window that overlooks our neighbor's yard back there, and there are a lot of squirrels that, that, uh, play in the lady's house back there, uh, in, in her, in her yard. And over the, those two week, that two-week period, the squirrels taught me something.
It sounds weird to say that, but the squirrels taught me something. Think about this. Imagine you're a squirrel that's this, th- this high, and you've got snow that's 10 inches high. How are you gonna get around? It make, make it difficult for squirrels to do that. Well, well, what they, what, what I realized that they did is they would make one or two pathways in between the trees.
You know, for two weeks they didn't have just hundreds of pathways between all the trees. They had one or two pathways between the trees that they would frequent, and they would use those pathways every time they went from tree to tree. And that was an im- that was a lesson for me about routine When I feel like I'm, you know, just barely keeping my head above water, what do I need to do?
Do the things that I've done before that have brought success. Do the things that are, that I know that I need to do. You don't have to make your way every single time. You don't have to, you know, reinvent the wheel every single time. Go the way that you know God wants you to go. And so the squirrels taught me that lesson.
Keep doing the right things. And then the Psalm also reminds us to keep thirsting for God. You know, there's a sense in which we always, always should thirst for God. In verses one and two, "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?" So even if we're not going through a spiritual drought, it is good for us to still thirst for God. The object of this psalmist's thirst is God. God is the solution. God is the water that can feed that soul, and we never, we should never stop feeling that way, whether we're in the drought or we're not in the drought.
And so don't try to quench that thirst with anything else. Don't fill that void with anything else. Only God can quench that thirst.
Living Water Conclusion
Emerson: Only God can bring the rain in that drought, and so wait and trust him I want to end with John chapter four, um, John chapter four. Remember, Jesus is talking to the, uh, woman at the well, and this woman is spiritually thirsty.
She has come to the well to drink physical water, and she had no idea that she would meet the living water. Jesus engages her in conversation. Notice in verse thirteen, "Jesus answered and said to her, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.'"
Think about what Jesus promised right here. He promised an eternal well that would constantly be springing up. Sometimes we don't feel that springing up in our hearts, but Jesus is that well. Jesus provides that constant nourishment for our souls, and so keep thirsting for Him. Keep going to Him. Keep praying.
Keep going. Keep doing those things. Um, Jesus will constantly, constantly provide that for us. Even when we don't, even when we don't feel it immediately, Jesus will constantly be that well for us.
Podcast Wrap Up
Bryan: All right, everyone. Well, thanks so much for tuning into the Seven Sermons Summer Surfing Spectacular. This episode was with Emerson Brown. We've got some more coming up on the horizon, and we're really excited for those. Wherever you're at, if you're on the beach hanging out with your family, thanks for tuning in with us over the summer, and we'll be back soon for more normal episodes.
And until the next episode, everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you
Ryan: Shalom