A few days ago on Shabbat, some friends and I were sitting around the table playing Nerts… one of my favorite card games. We enjoyed a fun, relaxing day of good food, games and tons of laughter. I even crumbled up some Ruffles into the almost-empty bowl of onion dip and ate it with a spoon, because it was just too good to waste any! Hush, don’t laugh at me!

As we were dealing the cards for our next round of Nerts, Mariana (who works in our office and is an amazingly talented young woman) said something that caught my attention. I don’t remember how it even came up, but she mentioned how she misses the Wednesday night radio shows we used to do.

She lived in Finland at the time, so she would wake up at 3 AM to listen to the show. Although we still have TV/radio shows, I asked Mariana why she misses those particular shows. She talked about how much she loved those shows because she got so much out of every single one.

I turned to her and said, “Mariana, you were hungrier then. That’s why you miss it. You don’t miss the shows; you miss the hunger. You have to fight to keep that hunger, in the good times and the bad.”

As the conversation continued, I could literally see the realization hit her.

This was not my first time… I’ve seen this happen so many times before. In the beginning, we are hungry and desperate. We wake up in the middle of the night, get up early, spend hours and hours seeking God. We just want to be with Him. We put aside our own needs and wants, just to spend more time with Him.

But as time goes on, our desperation decreases and our hunger virtually disappears.

You see, a relationship with our Father is all about the pursuit. Do we pursue Him? Do we seek Him? Do we follow Him? That “chase” makes us.

However, most of us pursue comfort. We pursue convenience. We pursue what’s easy, what’s right in front of us.

We all go through different seasons in our lives. In some seasons, we receive abundant blessings. Everything is going well, all our needs are met and we are generally satisfied. These times may seem like happy, carefree, easy, fruitful times. But they are dangerous times, as well, because it is so easy to quit pursuing God in these seasons. When all of our needs are met, we don’t “need” God. (Or so we think…) We’re not hungry anymore, because we have everything we need.

But during those seasons in the desert, we begin to get hungry and cry out to Him. When the wellsprings run dry, we’re hurting and lost – without any answers. Then we seek God. We may even beg or bargain with Him.

We are quick to neglect Him in the good times, and we use Him in the bad times.

For years, I only pursued God when I needed something. I manipulated and used Him because I just tried to get something from Him.

We do this so often. Instead of truly committing to Him as His bride and truly being one with Him, we use Him to satisfy us when in an unsatisfied place.

I had to train myself to pursue Him daily, whether I was in a dry, unsatisfied place or a fruitful, abundant place. You have to fight to keep your hunger through your blessed, fulfilled times, when your prayers have been answered. When He answers your prayers, you don’t pursue Him anymore with the same desperation, hunger and desire for intimacy and yearning to hear Him, to feel Him, to be locked in His presence.

The dry season will always come. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.

Sometimes you hit a dry spell because things are hard, and that’s just part of life. But sometimes you enter that desert because you’ve been blessed. Let me explain… barren periods always follow blessing. Look at a garden. What follows the harvest? Death. Nothing grows. It’s dry, empty, lifeless. That’s how life works. There are seasons of fruitfulness and seasons of infertility.

We forget to pursue Him during seasons of blessing, which makes our winter so much more dry and crippling and painful. But, if you pursue Him in both the good times and the bad, you set yourself up for blessings… even in the driest of times.

In fact, some of my most favorite times with Him have been my dry seasons… only because I learned to focus on pursuing Him in my blessed seasons.

So, I want to encourage you today. If you are in a blessed season right now, press into Him. Seek him. Follow Him! Do not stop pursuing Him just because you don’t necessarily need anything from Him at the moment. Pursue Him because you want to build a relationship with your Father.

If you are in a dry season, keep seeking Him! Keep drawing closer. Watch your Inbox next week, because I’ll talk about how to handle a dry season. It’s critical to learn how to navigate those seasons, so you can continue growing, moving forward and preparing for what is ahead.

I would love to know your thoughts about The Daily Fix today. Did it help you at all? What season are you in? Have you fallen into the same pattern I did, only seeking God when you need something instead of seeking Him to build a closer relationship? Please let me know in the comments below!

Then, be sure to tune in for our weekly Spiritual Equipping episode of The Dani Johnson Show today for more biblical insights and inspiration. You can find the show on your TV and radio and please remember you can always stream today’s show right here on our website.

In great faith,

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