Bowing Down in Dry Places

Author: Naomi Latta

It’s in the dry places where we have a choice to make. Do we draw the line and expect God to fill us up? Or do we, acknowledging that he doesn’t owe us anything, humble ourselves to ask and believe that the Lord will refill us?

“But I’m in a dry season, and I can’t worship from a dry place! I have nothing left to give! I want to worship you, but I just can’t. God, won’t you bring me out of this dry place so that I can worship you?”. I don’t know how many times I’ve said that. Sometimes I say it consciously. Sometimes it becomes inherent in the way I interact with the Lord. I let myself fall into the trap of believing that because I feel dry, I have nothing to offer the Lord. To be honest, in hindsight, I don’t think I could be more wrong.

We act like God owes us an encounter with his Spirit. He doesn’t.

The honest truth is that worship can, and should, flow from both the full seasons and the dry seasons.Usually, I tend to feel like I have worshipping in a full season down PAT. It’s in the dry places where we tend to get a little lost. It’s in the dry places where we have a choice to make. Do we draw the line and expect God to fill us up? Or do we, acknowledging that he doesn’t owe us anything, humble ourselves to ask and believe that the Lord will refill us?

Do we set aside our pride?

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it till the day that I die. The principle of worship , our goal, should always be to bow down. One of the greek words that the Bible uses for worship,“proskuneó”, literally means to bow down. Physically and emotionally, mentally and spiritually, we need to be getting our head below our heart and surrendering to the Lord. Our head – the part of us that says that we are sufficient, we are all-important, that everything is about us – needs to get below our heart, and we have to surrender our needs to God. It’s about bowing down, getting our head below our heart, and putting God on the throne.

God doesn’t owe us an encounter or a “fixer upper”. Experiencing him in a dry place, I think, is a little like the concept of salvation. Bear with me. Salvation is freely given to those who ask. The Lord loves to save his children. The key is that, though God gifts salvation to any who ask, you have to ask (Romans 10:9). We have to declare our need for God, and declare that he is Lord. The same is true, I think, with experiencing the Lord in dry places. We have to cast away our pride and ask the Lord to fill us up so that we can worship him fully. We don’t have to live out of a dry place – the Lord is faithful to fill us up. John 7:38 says that rivers of living water will flow from the hearts of those who believe.

God will hold to his promises. We see this in the story of the woman at the well – when she asked, he offered never-ending, life-giving water. Near the end of that passage we find John 4:23-24:

“But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way.  For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

I love that Jesus says that we must worship in spirit and in truth. It means that he doesn’t just want someone spiritual, someone who knows their theology, or someone who is in perfect alignment with the Lord. He asks us to worship in truth– the truth of how we are feeling, where we are lacking, what we need from him to make us whole and full again in a dry place. Sometimes, it’s impossible to come to the Lord without some issues and some needy areas. The good news is that he is gracious and able to reach in and restore our broken parts.

So – we have a choice to make. Let’s choose to cast aside our pride and bow down in the dry places.