Biblical Affirmations for Spiritual Dryness: Rekindle Your First Love

A couple years ago, CBN spent two days in our home filming its Immune Boosting Docu-Series for The 700 Club. You can watch the 700 Club Segement here (Skip to 16:07).

What struck us then, and has only become clearer since, is that you can do everything “right” for your body and still miss one of the most important dimensions of health. Because true Bible Health begins with your relationship with God, and sometimes the most dangerous kind of spiritual dryness is the kind that still looks faithful from the outside.

“I just wanted to share that this email totally resonated with me in all its content. Your reminders were spot on for me and the Biblical references spoke deeply to me as well after just having surgery yesterday. Thank you for the well thought out content you share in your emails. They are an asset.”

— Carol

You can be doing nearly everything right and still know something is missing.

You go to church. You pray. You serve. You know the verses. You may even be more disciplined than you were five years ago.

But the fire is not what it was.

Scripture feels familiar instead of alive. Prayer feels more like responsibility than relationship. You still love God, but somewhere along the way closeness became routine.

That is spiritual dryness: a season when faith feels flat, distant, mechanical, or harder to engage even though you still believe.

Jesus addressed that condition directly, and He did it in one of the most sobering messages He ever gave a faithful church.

Our anchor passage for this final article in our seven-week Biblical Affirmations series is from Revelation:

“To the angel of the church of Ephesus write… ‘I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars. And you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary.

Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.

Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”’ — Revelation 2:1-5

Jesus praises their works, labor, patience, discernment, and perseverance, yet says they have left their first love. Spiritual dryness can hide beneath faithful activity.

Notice also what He does not do. He never tells Ephesus they are no longer His. They are still His lampstand, and He corrects them as people who belong to Him.

Then He gives the way back: remember, repent, and do the first works.

This article is about that return.

You are reading Article 7, the finale of our 7-Part Biblical Affirmations Series. Start with Biblical Affirmations for Healing: How to Renew Your Mind With Scripture if you are new to this practice.

Mama Z here...

I was raised in faith and loved the church I grew up in. But by my twenties, I was taking ten prescriptions, could tolerate only a handful of foods, and was struggling with bulimia.

Easter 2004, a friend invited me to a non-denominational church and I was born again. Later, Isaiah 58 changed how I understood spiritual discipline. God confronted people whose fasting looked right but had become empty, and I realized you can perform a discipline perfectly and still miss the heart of it.

I fasted for ten days on water, prayed for God’s help, and weaned myself off the pharmaceuticals I had been taking. I believe God healed me. But the bulimia and food sensitivities remained, and recovery became a slower walk with Him.

That is when I started praying over my hands before I cooked: Lord, I know not what I’m doing, but I know You will guide my hands in the kitchen.

I prayed that hundreds of ordinary times when nothing dramatic happened. It taught me this: a dry season does not mean God is absent, and it does not mean you are any less His. What steadied me was not a feeling I recovered. It was remembering whose I was on the mornings I felt nothing.

Deep change often happens while we keep showing up before the feelings catch up.

Spiritual health describes your relationship with God. Your physical, mental, emotional, financial, occupational, and social health all matter, but spiritual health gives them their center.

There are seven areas of life that all need our attention and prayer. Dive deeper here…

You can be physically strong, emotionally stable, financially secure, successful in your work, and surrounded by people you love while still being distant from God.

That is why spiritual health is different from every other area. It is about the condition of your relationship with God.

• Do you draw near to Him?

• Do you abide in His Word?

• Do you hear His truth clearly enough to recognize what is shaping your thoughts and decisions?

• Do you feel a oneness and special intimacy with Him?

When that relationship is healthy, it brings clarity to everything else. You begin to see your body, relationships, work, money, emotions, and circumstances through the lens of God’s truth rather than through fear, pressure, culture, or feelings.

And here is the fruit of it. Spiritual health produces a settled knowledge of who you are in Christ, and that is where confidence, boldness, hope, and faith come from. Those are not personality traits or moods you work up on a good morning. They grow in a person who knows whose he is.

“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” — Colossians 3:3

Hidden things are not visible and are not felt, and they are not one bit less real for it. Your life is not stored in how close you felt to God this week. It is stored in Christ.

Biblical health refuses to divide what God wired together, and it puts spiritual health at the center because our connection with God shapes how we steward every other part of our lives.

And this is where spiritual dryness becomes so deceptive.

You can still believe in God. You can still attend church, pray, read your Bible, and do everything a faithful Christian is “supposed” to do while slowly losing the closeness, hunger, and responsiveness that once marked your walk with Him.

Today we build on that foundation by confronting one of the beliefs that can keep sincere Christians spiritually dry for years: the idea that spiritual discipline is the relationship, and that its absence is a verdict.

“THANK YOU SO MUCH for knowing God is real and loving the Spiritual Life. It makes SUCH a difference to me and to everyone on this wonderful earth of ours, including those who know Him not. I am a mum and grandmother so thanks for that too. Makes such a difference to know who you are.”

— Peggy J.

Discipline is not the problem. Scripture is full of commands to practice, to train, to be diligent, to meditate day and night, and no honest reading of the Bible produces a spirituality with no habits in it.

The problem begins when the practice stops being a way to a Person and becomes the way you keep score against yourself. That swap happens quietly, usually during a hard season, and the tell is that you can no longer tell the difference between a day you missed and a day you failed.

That confusion is an identity problem. A son who misses a morning has missed a morning. A servant auditioning for a place he already owns has failed an evaluation.

The culture has a counterfeit gospel ready for that, and it preaches five lines with a straight face:

1. If you have to make yourself do it, it does not count.

2. Authenticity means only doing what you actually feel.

3. You should not need a discipline to be close to God.

4. If God wanted your attention, He would get it.

5. Take a break from the whole thing until you want it again.

Every one of those has a grain of something true in it, which is exactly what makes it work. God does want your heart and not your performance.

Empty religion is a real category and Jesus attacked it more sharply than anyone. But somewhere in the translation, a Biblical warning against hypocrisy got repurposed into a permission slip for waiting indefinitely on a feeling, and a generation of believers now treats desire as a prerequisite for obedience rather than a fruit of it.

That is not authenticity, and it is time we were honest about it.

The way out is not trying harder. It is remembering that the verdict is already in.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” — Romans 8:1

Present tense, written to people who were still failing. Your standing is not recalculated each morning based on how the quiet time went.

Research cannot measure your first love for God, but it can show whether spiritual health tracks with meaningful life patterns.

The Center for Bible Engagement has surveyed more than 100,000 people and repeatedly found its clearest threshold at FOUR or more days of genuine Bible engagement per week.

Fewer days did not show the same pattern. At four or more, people reported lower odds of several destructive behaviors and were less likely to call themselves spiritually stagnant. The report came from a ministry rather than a peer-reviewed journal, so we hold it loosely.

That is not a magic number. It is a reminder that occasional exposure is not the same as repeated engagement.

A 2022 longitudinal study found that spiritual struggle and psychological distress reinforce each other over time, each one feeding the other. None of this proves that doubt makes you sick. It shows that spiritual life reaches into habits, hope, behavior, and emotional health.

Jesus already told Ephesus that outward faithfulness could coexist with an inward loss of first love. The research gives us another reason not to dismiss spiritual drift as harmless.

Jesus said this to a church that was performing beautifully.

“But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.” — Revelation 2:4

Ephesus looked strong from the outside. Jesus knew their work, endurance, discernment, and perseverance. Then He named the hidden problem.

That is spiritual dryness in one of its most dangerous forms: continuing to do Christian things while relationship quietly becomes routine.

And read the tone again, because He never threatens to disown them. This is a Father’s warning, not an eviction notice.

Verse 5 gives a three-part path back:

• Remember. What marked your walk with God when your love for Him felt alive? What had your attention?

• Repent. Turn around. If distraction, resentment, hurry, compromise, disappointment, or neglect has been pulling you away, bring it into the light.

• Do the first works. Open the Bible. Pray. Worship. Gather. Serve. Obey. Give thanks. Abide.

Jesus does not tell Ephesus to manufacture a feeling. He tells them to return. You cannot command yourself to feel what you felt years ago, but you can choose where you turn today.

Romans 12:2 has anchored this entire series:

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” — Romans 12:2

Revelation 2 gives us the destination: return to your first love. Romans 12 gives us the process: renew the mind.

What you repeatedly believe about God shapes how you interpret a quiet season. If dryness means abandonment in your mind, every unanswered prayer feels like rejection. If God’s character and Word remain your anchor, you keep drawing near while emotions lag behind.

This is where Biblical affirmations fit. They are not manifestation, magic words, or pretending. They are intentional declarations that agree with what God has already said.

And most of what God has already said is about who you are.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” — 2 Corinthians 5:17

That is why an affirmation is not pretending. A feeling statement spoken in a dry season would be dishonest, because you do not feel it. An identity statement is simply true, and saying it aloud is how a tired mind gets reminded of a fact that never moved.

“God is far away” is answered by James 4:8. “I have ruined this” is answered by Revelation 2: remember, repent, return. “Nothing is happening” is answered by John 15: abide in Christ and trust Him with the fruit. And “I am not who I used to be” is answered by Galatians 2:20, because it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you.

Repeated attention matters, but transformation is not a quick brain hack. Scripture, prayer, worship, obedience, repentance, gratitude, and fellowship reshape us over time.

“I look forward to your emails every day. I need these little bright spots.”

— Marianne R.