How to Fight for Joy During a Season of Spiritual Dryness

Hope in God

We’re sitting in a room right now that was built in 1981. I live in the neighborhood, and I’ve lived here for over forty years. When I was first a pastor here, I fought with so much discouragement because I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d never been a pastor before, and I didn’t know if I was doing it right. I felt discouraged every Monday.

And so we put a big sign on the wall out there, so that I could see it walking into church, and it said, “Hope in God.” It was taken from Psalm 42, which goes like this: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him.”

So the answer to the question “What do you do when you’re not happy in God?” is to preach to yourself. Preach to yourself Psalm 42—and all the other glorious promises of the Bible. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote a book on spiritual depression, and that was the thesis of the book. Don’t listen to yourself; preach to yourself. So I preach to myself, “Hope in God, Piper! Come on, get out of this! Hope in God!” And it works!

If the Holy Spirit is pleased to come, he takes the Word like kindling. That’s my understanding of the Bible. It’s kindling. He puts a flame to it with the Holy Spirit, the fire burns, and you feel hope again. It’s very cyclical. And some people with personalities like mine, who are just kind of volatile, it’s up, it’s down. I’m just fighting all the time to get back to my equilibrium of joy. You fight with the Word of God. You fight with the kindling of the Bible by throwing it on the fire of faith in your furnace, and the fire by the Holy Spirit returns with joy.

John Piper is the author of Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist.

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