John Bevere - How to Overcome Your Spiritual Dryness

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So we’re at lesson nine, and we only have ten lessons. I know I’m getting a little sad about this because I’m having so much fun with you guys. The title of this lesson is «Draw from the Wells.» I also want to say the content of this lesson is so important. I’ve had many people tell me when I minister on this or when they read the book, they say this is the aspect that really touches them. The title is «Draw from the Wells.»

I want you to look at John chapter 7. Jesus makes the statement, «If anyone thirsts"—and believe me, when you’re in the desert, you thirst—"let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.» But this he spoke concerning the Spirit whom those believing in him would receive. The Wilderness is a dry land; it’s not a place where we experience an outpouring of God’s Spirit, the rain of His Spirit. Remember, «Ask me for the rain in the time of the latter rain,» how God waits for the precious fruit of the earth, and like a farmer waiting for the early and latter rain. That’s not the time of the rain. This is the time when you’ve got to draw from the wells.

Okay, so out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water. Notice it’s «rivers,» plural. Why is that? He’s talking about the Spirit. If you look at Isaiah 11, verse 2, Isaiah talks about the Spirit of God who will be upon Jesus, and he is called the Spirit of counsel, the Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of understanding, the Spirit of might, and the Spirit of knowledge. Let me show you some scriptures in Proverbs. This is really interesting. Watch this: wisdom flows from the wise like a bubbling brook. Let’s look at another one: understanding is a wellspring of life. We’re all talking about wells and brooks here, right? You’ve seen this. Let’s go to another one: counsel in the heart of a man is like deep water, but the man or woman of understanding will draw it out. How do we draw it out? We’re told again in the Book of Proverbs: the mouth—everybody say «the mouth"—of the righteous is a well of life. The well is the top; the water comes from the earth, correct? Are you seeing this?

Let me tell you about a time when I was in that second major 18-month Wilderness when I was a youth pastor. We had just been launched, but I was still experiencing some dryness. I remember we had a state park right down the road from us called Wekiva State Park. I got a little tent and a small backpack, and you couldn’t drive there; you had to hike out to this remote campsite. So I went out there, spent the whole day praying, and spent the night praying. The next morning, I was praying and getting very frustrated because I kept praying and praying, and thoughts were hitting me: What in the world have you done? Why have you even left home? Why are you living out here in this woods? Just go home.

You know you fasted now for 24 hours; everything’s good. Yet something on the inside—this is what you’ve got to be sensitive to—said, «Oh no you don’t.» I remember I started pacing back and forth, saying, «God, I’m going to hear from you because you said that if I draw near to you, you will draw near to me.» I started saying, «Spring up a well into my soul, spring up and make me whole.» All of a sudden, it was like this was just what the Holy Spirit was leading me to do. It felt like life was starting to come up; it’s so hard to describe. Within minutes, I was running up and down the path, yelling, «My God, you saw me!» It was the most amazing time of prayer. Then I noticed what the children of Israel said in Numbers 21, verse 17: «Spring up, O well!» All of you sing it! I realized this was something that God was having me do. You know, I had to dig to get to that well. Do you understand what I’m saying?

You see a reflection of this with Isaac, the son of Abraham. If you look in Genesis 26, it says this: a severe famine now struck the land. Think about a famine—zero rain; we’re in a desert. The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, «Do not go down to Egypt, but do as I tell you, and I will be with you and bless you.» Now think about it: you’re in a dry time. What’s the greatest temptation in a dry time? Get the remote, get on social media; I need some likes, right? I’m going to go to my page and hopefully get at least 100 likes on what I put because why? It produces that serotonin, I think they call it, right? You’re like, «I desperately need to be comforted.»

Well, you’re looking to Egypt to comfort you. Do you see what I’m saying? This is not the time you want to watch five hours of ESPN because you’ll come out just as empty as before. This is not the time to open the refrigerator four times in one hour because the same food that was in there the third time is still in there the fourth time. It’s when we start desperately looking for what the world can offer us instead of digging. God said, «I will bless you.» Did it automatically happen? No, because the Philistines—the world—had plugged up all the wells. Do you know what Isaac had to do? He had to re-dig the wells that the world had plugged up.

You know, sometimes we live in this world, and we just get a little too much of that Philistine action going on, and all of a sudden, now we’re a little dry. Hi, what’s happened? Have we plugged up a little bit? We need to open those wells. «Spring up, O well! Spring up into my soul! Make me whole,» right? You see what I’m saying?

So now here’s Isaac in a barren land, and God says, «Don’t go to Egypt, and I’ll bless you.» Look what happens: when Isaac planted his crops in that land, with the famine that year, he harvested 100 times more grain than he planted, for the Lord blessed him. So what happened? He dug open the wells. This is a natural thing; he was able to water those plants with the water from those wells that he had re-dug that the Philistines had plugged. Now he was much more blessed than if he had gone down to Egypt. That is so important that we understand this.

So many times I’ve seen such a huge harvest come by drawing from the wells when I was just about ready to give up. It’s hard to describe, but I know you can relate to this. Have you ever been in your prayer closet, and you’re like, «Okay, I’ve prayed for 30 minutes; that’s enough,» and deep down inside, you know God’s saying, «Come on, come on, come on!»? He’s trying to unplug; he’s trying to get a greater flow of His Spirit coming out of your life. It’s vital to keep our eyes on the joy that is set before us, right? That’s what Jesus did. Who, for the joy set before him, endured, right? The joy produces endurance. You know what else Isaiah said? With joy, we shall draw from the wells of salvation. Why does it take joy to draw from the wells? Because the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Now can I be really honest with you? When I was a young Christian, I used to read Nehemiah 8:10, «The joy of the Lord is my strength.» Why is God’s joy my strength? It just didn’t compute. But then all of a sudden, I started thinking about this big popular term when I was a young Christian. Have you ever heard this term, «The Joy of Cooking»? Yes, okay, Daryl and I, of course. So what’s the joy of something? I don’t know if you guys even use that language today, but we did; it was heard a lot back then. One day I thought, «Cooking has no joy.» Oh, he’s not talking about God’s joy; he’s talking about my joy that I get in my relationship with God. That’s my strength! Isn’t that weird that I thought like that? It just didn’t compute. But now I get it. Right? Now it makes complete sense.

How does that joy occur? When we keep our eyes set on the prize set before us, and that’s Jesus. Yes, it’s the fulfillment of the promises, but it’s really Jesus. Now I’m going to share with you another time that occurred. I don’t even know if you were born yet; you might have been a little baby at that time. But we were on the road; things weren’t going really well. I mean, I was going to little churches with 80 or 90 people in the early '90s, and it was just a battle. I mean, everything’s a battle. We had to believe God for everything. Our first year, we had $40,000 come into our ministry. I had to pay my salary and run the ministry and take care of two kids and all that stuff, right? So everything’s a battle. I remember one day I was just kind of weary, and Lisa was at the grocery store. We ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish back then. She was at the grocery store, and I remember I was just heavy—just heavy, right?

So I felt like the Holy Spirit deep inside said, «Go put on some praise music.» I took my cassette and put it in our stereo upstairs in our loft. I remember it was a praise medley, so I’m singing along with this praise medley, and I’m trying to dance, but I feel like I’m dancing through liquid lead. This is taking every ounce of strength to praise God, right? It was like a 12 to 14-minute set of five different praise songs. Then we got over, and the Holy Spirit said to me, «Rewind it and start it again.» So I went and hit rewind, went back to the beginning, and started again. Well, in the first song, second time through, I don’t know how to describe it, but I got a glimpse in my spirit of Jesus. I went crazy! I started running through our house, jumping up and down. I had so much energy! Whereas before I felt like I was dancing through lead, I was now screaming, «Jesus!» And I’m running; nobody’s in my house. I thought, «Man, I’m glad it’s during the day because the neighbors could hear me.» I was so loud!

This went on for like 20 or 30 minutes. Wow! Wow! So I’m done, and I feel like, «Okay, that was good.» My wife comes in with a bag of groceries and just said, «What’s happening here while I was gone? Everything’s different!» I told Lisa what happened. See, the Bible says He gives us the garment of praise. It doesn’t say He gives us the garment of worship. So many times I go into a church, and they’ll start off with some worship song, and yet it feels heavy, and I’m like, «Worship is not going to break through this heaviness.» Praise gets us to really focus on Him and what He’s done for us, right? It’s a declaration. So it’s so important that we realize, with joy, we draw from the wells of salvation.

In these last couple of minutes of this lesson, I want to go back to a time period in that second Wilderness I experienced when I was a youth pastor. I remember the pain being perpetual. I was living through that again, right? It was just before our pastor launched us and made the announcement, «You’re going.» God had shown me a year earlier or 18 months earlier, «I’m going to send you to America.» I remember the short grass and the dirt and the tall grass, yes? I lived in perpetual pain over those next 18 months. I remember praying twice as much as I did before. For some reason our youth services were always on Tuesday nights, and I would spend anywhere from two to four hours praying for those youth services.

You know what that was? That was desperation, trying to get in the presence of God because I was in such a dry place. There were so many times I screamed in that room and said, «God, please get someone else to preach tonight! I can’t preach; I don’t have anything to give these guys.» I would walk into that service, and the Spirit of God would follow me like a blanket. I would preach like crazy. We saw witches getting saved, gang members getting saved—many of them are still in the ministry today. I’d be like, «Whoa! I feel like I can go on!» Why? Because God’s not going to let them go through my Wilderness! He let that anointing come on me like a blanket. I’m telling you the truth.

I’m driving home after the youth service on Tuesday night, and halfway home, it just kind of lifted off me, and I went through another perpetual pain for another seven days. We were at the end of the 18 months, and this is when it really gets tough. Remember, just before the harvest, your greatest attack comes against your harvest. Always remember that; write it down. The greatest attack against your harvest, which is your promises fulfilled, always comes just before the harvest manifests. Look at David. That’s when Saul was in a deep sleep, and Abishai said, «Let me kill him!» David’s like, «Uh-uh!» That was the greatest attack against David right there, the opportunity to kill his leader, and he passed it.

But I remember I was so dry, in such pain inside, and I remember one particular evening. Remember Paul says to Timothy the prophecies made, the promises that God has spoken to you by them, wage a good warfare? When we’re in the desert, you need to be constantly reading and speaking those promises. So I was doing that all through these 18 months. «God, my time is in your hands.» You know that’s a Psalm that I love because I was like, «God, you know the timing. You’re the one who made the promise; I know you’ll fulfill it. I believe you, Lord! You know what I’m going through!» Well, it got so bad that speaking the promises or the Word of God wasn’t feeding me. I remember that night I was sitting in a seated position, and I got my hands over my face, saying, «God, you’re faithful. God, this I know: you are faithful. God, you’re faithful!» As I said it, I felt like it was feeding my spirit. I thought that was the only thing helping me right now. I just focused on the character of God: «You’re faithful; you will bring this to pass. Whatever you said, you’ll bring it to pass. You’re faithful.»

You know, it was within one week that my pastor said to me, «John, you’re going. You’re going to travel.» He said it to me. But can I tell you what I found afterwards? When David was in the worst part of his Wilderness, I want you to notice what he said: Psalm 37, verse 3, «Dwell in the land and feed on His faithfulness.» There will come a time, possibly, that maybe the promises of God aren’t feeding you, but what will feed you is reminding yourself of the character of the one who created you and the one who called you. He’s faithful; He’ll bring it to pass. See you in the next lesson.