In the dry and thirsty land, we make mistakes. “(A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.) O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.” (Psalm 63:1)
When the Lord decides, for His own reasons and for His glory, to leave us in that land for a while, we, if we are truly desiring to serve Him, go searching for Him, and along the way, we stumble, and many times fall. Few who call Him Precious would simply sit and wait for Him to return to guide them, they would continue walking the path, even in the pitch dark, but in these times, He cannot be found.
Call them trials or tests if you like, but no matter the name given them, the Lord has left you alone to let us see just how much we truly love and adore Him, not for His sake, for He already knows, but for ours.
David offers us these examples many times in the Psalms, and the Book of Judges shows us many times what happens when we determine to make our own choices outside of the Scriptures in that dry and thirsty land. I believe there may be quite a few people who have been in that land so long that they do not even realize it, their effective witness for Christ goes no further than the Sunday morning obligation, or perhaps a specific time during the day that they have set aside for the reading of the Word, and if circumstances arrive when, for whatever reason, they cannot fulfill that particular obligation, they will wait for tomorrow’s “same time” to arrive, not even beginning to acknowledge the thirst that they claim to have for Him.
Oh, they may feel bad momentarily, but that will pass, for they long ago began to be satisfied with just a drop or two and have never experienced the full indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the fulness that comes with Christ, for if they had, that dry and thirsty land would be a great and troublesome burden.
In that land we are not filled with the knowledge of the will of God, (Col. 1:9) our Spiritual discernment seems to be unbalanced, for when we are there, we are not as the lost sheep that needs to be found of the ninety-nine, (Luke 15:4) He knows where we are, He has decided to let us search for Him, to cry out to Him, if we will. It is not being determined if we are of the chaff or the wheat, for we have brought forth much fruit by the power of the Holy Spirit and for His glory, but we are left there for a time to show us our need for Him.
He may or may not place you in the same position as Lazarus who was laid before the gate of the rich man, (Luke 16:20) He may not allow the attacks to come upon you as He did with Job, He may allow your life to continue on the path it always has been, but without the intimate relationship with Him for a while, for that is what the dry and thirsty land is, life not without Christ, but away from His presence, and not because of an unrepentant sin, but because of His will to place you there.
Nothing has value there, there is no pleasure, no peace, no rewards of any merit, nothing matters but the patience we possess our souls in, (Luke 21:19) in that lonely place. Until He decides to return unto us, we are to continue to work for His glory, no matter how we feel about it, He will return, in His own time, full of mercy and grace, and we will have learned a great lesson in that day, without Him, nothing matters, and in His presence alone is where fulness of joy is found. (Psalm 16:11)
