This year, I experienced something I never expected. I experienced what felt like a spiritual death. How could I feel so low? I had no desire for God at all.

Psalm 42:1-2 says, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” I came nowhere near to feeling like that. In all honesty, I did not know what to do. I reached a point of hopelessness.

I was recently encouraged by a fellow believer to do something small, anything! He helped me to see that in the depressed state I was in, any small movement in faith toward God could be life-changing. He helped me to see that in my condition, I really didn’t have much to give. But if I could just give a moment to prayer or being in God’s Word, or even simply thinking about the nature of God, I would surely not regret it.

Taking the advice of this fellow believer, I listened to a sermon by John Piper. In this sermon, God hit me hard. John Piper explains that the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever. While listening to John Piper preach, I was reminded of this desire for God.

In the last year, I had allowed myself to forget what it meant to desire God. Every Christian goes through darkness. In his book, Desiring God, Piper says, “In the pursuit of joy through suffering, we magnify the all-satisfying worth of the source of our joy. God Himself shines as the brightness at the end of our tunnel of pain. If we do not communicate that He is the goal and the ground of our joy in suffering, then the very meaning of our suffering will be lost. The meaning is this: God is gain. God is gain. God is gain.”

I have suffered. I have sat in my suffering. No longer. I will pursue joy in God in my suffering. I will seek to delight in him. He is the “brightness at the end of my tunnel of pain.” And he is gain.

I am thankful to God for the advice of a fellow believer. I encourage you all, if you find yourself in a similar situation that I found myself in this year, do something small. I listened to one sermon. I was reminded of the great joy that is found in desiring God. I did not have to have that desire again. God gave me that desire.

So, I can now say with the Psalmist, “As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”