Discussion Jumpstarter
Study leader reference - not a definitive answer
Question 10
The speaker argues that spiritual disciplines don’t “fail” on days when you feel nothing; “when we don’t feel anything…training is most transformative,” illustrated by God’s response in Antony’s story: “I wanted to see you struggle,” and the father watching his child climb. What does this reveal about God’s intentions in dryness, and how would it reshape your expectations of prayer, fasting, or obedience if you believed God sometimes withholds felt help in order to form love and endurance?
Another way to ask: What might God be doing when prayer feels dry, and how would your view of prayer, fasting, or obedience change if you believed God sometimes lets you struggle to build love and endurance?
Discussion Jumpstarter
Direct Answer
The transcript suggests dryness is not pointless absence but a form of God’s training—He may allow struggle to form endurance and real transformation, not just good feelings. If you believed that, you would treat prayer, fasting, and obedience as shaping practices aimed at becoming different and learning love, not as daily measures of emotional success.
- He asks: when disciplines don’t produce refreshment or felt encounter, did they “fail”? He answers: “no.”
- He states, “when we don’t feel anything…training is most transformative,” because if it always felt amazing, “there’s no training.”
- Antony story: after long conflict, God’s response is, “I wanted to see you struggle.”
- Father/child ladder illustration: he doesn’t immediately rescue because “that’s what’s going to form him…make him into a stronger and better person.”
- He applies this to spiritual life: in dryness (“Where is God?”) we trust He is with us and “perhaps…he’s wanting us to learn how to struggle well.”
- He clarifies the goal: disciplines aren’t to “feel better,” but “to become different,” and ultimately to love God and others.