Hymns 660
Scripture Reading:
Heb. 10:38 But My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, My soul does not delight in him.
MANY BELIEVERS LIVING A FLUCTUATING LIFE
Many believers frequently wonder why at times they feel spiritually dry and tasteless, while at other times they are happy and excited. When they are happy and excited, even though they are not having the experience in the third heaven, it seems as if they are having a unique mountaintop experience. They wonder how they can overcome the dry life to remain all the time in a happy and excited condition. They wish that their whole life would be one of constant flowing and bubbling. If they could to this, they would be able to sing hallelujahs all their life. Many believers are seeking a solution to this problem.
I would like to consider the matter of this fluctuation, starting from the first joy we received at the time of salvation. If we can find the cause of the illness, we can find the cure. From the experience of many saved people, we can find a law that joy is greater at the beginning than at the end, while dryness is greater at the end than at the beginning. The joy becomes less intense (though deeper), and the time of joy becomes shorter. At the same time, the dryness becomes more intense and lasts longer (though shallower). Perhaps the first dryness lasts for three to five days; the second dryness for a week; the third for two weeks, and the fourth for perhaps a month. In other words, the second time around, the joy is less intense and shorter than the first, while the dryness is more intense and longer than the first. The period of dryness extends longer, and its intensity increases more. All believers have this kind of experience. Eventually, our dryness is more than our joy.
God never changes, the work of the Lord Jesus never changes, and the Holy Spirit never changes. The eternal life that we have received is still there; it is never lost. What is lost is merely our initial joy. A young child may think that the sun is gone when it rains. He may go to his father and ask, “Where is the sun?” He may go up to the roof and find that the sun is not there. He may go to a nearby watchtower and find that the sun is not there. But the sun has not changed; it has merely been blocked by dark clouds. Today our Sun has not changed; what has changed is our feelings. The sun in the sky has not changed at all. But there are dark clouds in the sky which block the sunlight. If we live in our feelings, our sky will always change, and there will always be the covering of the clouds. If we do not live in our feelings, there will be no change in our sky. We ought to live above the clouds of our feelings.
These are common phenomena of a Christian’s experience; they are not accidental. The experience of most Christians falls under this pattern. We can conclude that these things do not happen by accident. Since they do not happen by accident, there must be a hand behind everything. Whose hand? It must be God’s hand. He causes our joy to become less intense and its duration to become shorter. He causes our dryness to become more intense and its duration to become longer. (We are merely referring to the experiences of ordinary Christians; we are not talking about the experiences of abnormal or outstanding Christians.)
Abnormal Christians have sinned and become fallen. Of course they have no joy. Outstanding Christians have denied themselves from the beginning in a specific way and pursued after God in a specific way. Every time they go through some special dealing, they experience special joy. Every time they see God working in a special way, they experience special joy. Outstanding Christians and abnormal Christians are exceptions. What we are talking about are the normal Christians.
GOD’S PURPOSE
That We Would Not Be for Ourselves
When we read the Bible during a period of excitement and joy, we have a great interest in reading. But are we reading the Bible because of our interest or because the Bible is the Word of God? Is the purpose of our pray to seek God in His presence, or is the goal the joy we feel in our prayer? …We have to realize that the times we are most excited, when we seem to be living on the mountaintop, perhaps are the times when we are in our flesh the most! This is why God takes our joy away and puts us in a condition of dryness…Under these conditions, God is teaching us a lesson; He makes us realize that our peak spiritual experiences are just something of ourselves…God does not want the dryness to be too harsh for us, so He gives back the joy after a while. But He also does not want us to presume that we have reached the peak of our spirituality, so He takes the joy away again…When the dryness comes the second time, God will see if we have learned anything. We may think that we have done something wrong again. Actually, this is not God’s intention. He is seeing if we are working according to our duty, or if we are working because of joy. Perhaps some people have to go through these experiences five or six times; perhaps others seven or eight times. Most of the time, the feelings alternate between joy and dryness. This cycle will continue until God arrives at His purpose when we realize that our desire for joy is for ourselves and not for God. This is the first reason God deals with us with joy and dryness.
Disciplining the Power of the Will
Let me ask: During which time do we experience actual spiritual dealings? It is when we are dry. When we are excited, we may not have any spiritual experience but only the results from the power of our emotion. When we are dry, we have to exercise our will, and our work is the result of our real person. The reason God gives us the dryness is so that we will learn to exercise our will during these dry times.
God gives us the dryness, so that when joy and excitement are not present, we would exercise our own strength (the strength we received at the time of our regeneration). In this way, we will be able to pass through hindrances and contrary winds. The power of resurrection is more clearly demonstrated in an environment filled with death…The reason God gives us feelings of joy is so that we would not turn back halfway in our Christian life. This is why the joy we receive from Him diminishes to a shorter time as we go on, and the dryness increases for a longer period of time. We will then exercise our will more, and our will will be greatly strengthened.
When we examine our past experiences, we see that our joy and dryness fluctuate. We also learn that during the times of joy, there is not much progress, while during the times of dryness, there is much more progress than when we were joyful. We observe that during the weeks of dryness we have advanced.
Overcoming the Environment
If you can overcome the feeling of dryness, you can overcome your environment. The feeling of dryness is the most difficult to overcome. If you can overcome this feeling, you surely will overcome your environment. The environment that is closest to a Christian is his emotion. Only by overcoming your emotion can you overcome other things. If you exercise your will to say, “I will read the Bible, I will pray, and I will testify,” even though you are living a dry and parched life, you will find that you can overcome all kinds of environments, no matter how great they may be.
Living by Faith
The duration of joy becomes shorter, while the duration of dryness becomes longer. The degree of joy is less, while the degree of dryness becomes more. The end result is that at a certain point, the two will meet. They will be like two streams merging into one; there will not be any distinction between them anymore…The reason God is leading us this way is to show us that there will eventually be no difference between the two. In other words, our joy and our dryness will be completely merged as one. Today God has no intention other than having the just live by faith. The just do not live by emotions. Therefore, no matter how we feel in our emotions, they will not bring us anything. Some believers have to go through God’s training ten or twenty times until they do not exercise the strength of their emotion. God’s training causes the dryness to increase more and the duration to become longer, in order to bring these ones to the point where they will live by faith. Finally, if you live by faith, you will be able to live a joyful life in the driest hour and live the driest life in a joyful way. These words seem to be contradictory, but it is a reality in the spiritual life. God is leading you to live such a life by faith. (CWWN, vol. 11, pp. 685-696)
Further Reading: CWWN, vol. 11, “Living by Faith”
