Another purpose of God for this kind of dealing is to train the will of the believer. A genuine spiritual life is not a life of feeling but a life of the will. The will of a spiritual man has been renewed by the Holy Spirit; it waits for the spirit's revelation and proposal and then orders his whole being to follow the revelation from the spirit. However, most believers have a will that is so weak it cannot follow through with what they want. It may also unexpectedly come under the influence of the emotion and reject what God wants. Therefore, it is very important to train the will to be strong.
A believer advances very easily when he is excited because he is assisted by the effect of the emotion. When he is frustrated, he finds it difficult to advance because he is not being assisted by the emotion, and he has to rely instead on his will for all the decisions. God's intention is for the will to be strong, not for the feeling to be excited. Hence, He often causes the believer to feel dry, dull, and barren so that he can exercise his will through the strength of the spirit to do just what he has done during periods of excitement. When he is excited, the emotion is in effect. But now God wants his will to function in place of his emotion. Without help from the feeling, the will can be gradually strengthened through exercise. Many erroneously believe that their spiritual life is at its peak when they have feeling, and at its lowest level when they are void of feeling. They do not realize that the genuine living is lived by the spirit through the will. When a believer has no feeling, the extent to which he can live by his will is the extent of the reality in his living. How he lives during dry periods constitutes his real living.
Furthermore, God has another purpose in so dealing with the believer. He wants to lead him into the highest life. If we look closely at the experiences of a believer, we can see that each time the Lord leads one to a higher level in his spiritual journey, He first allows him to live in such a feeling. We may say that after each period of living by the feeling, he reaches a further station in his spiritual journey. God grants the believer to first have a taste in his feeling of what He desires him to obtain eventually. He then withdraws this feeling so that the believer will keep, by his spirit and through his will, what he previously obtained through his feeling. If his spirit is able to press on through the will, regardless of how he feels, he will observe real progress in his life. This is confirmed by our experience. As we go through the "now-up, now-down" life, we often conclude that we have made no advancement since the progression and regression cancel each other out. Although we feel that we have been merely going forward and backward during the last few years or months, if we compare our present spiritual condition with our former condition, when we first started to have this kind of an experience, we will see that we have indeed made some real progress. Unknowingly, we have advanced.
Many believers make a great many mistakes through ignorance of this teaching. When one consecrates himself wholly to the Lord and seeks after new spiritual experience (such as sanctification, victory, etc.), he evidently enters into a kind of new life where he feels that he has progressed. He is full of joy, light, and lightness, and he thinks he has possession of the perfect life he desired and sought after. But shortly thereafter, his new experience suddenly becomes obscure; the happiness and excitement he once felt disappear. Therefore, many believers become discouraged. They think that they can never be wholly sanctified or have a more abundant life like others because they are not able to retain the experience which they have desired for a long time. They do not realize that this is a spiritual law. Whatever is obtained through the feeling must be kept by the will; and only what is kept by the will becomes truly a part of the believer's life. God only withdraws the feeling. In the absence of feelings, He wants the believer to use his will to do the same thing he did when he had the feeling. When the believer does this, he will eventually discover that what he lost in feeling has subconsciously become a part of his life. This is a spiritual law. If a believer remembers this all the time, he will not be discouraged.
Therefore, the problem is altogether related to our will. Does our will remain surrendered to the Lord? Is it willing to be led by the spirit? If this is so, it does not matter how our feelings change. We must be concerned with whether or not our will is obedient to the spirit and ignore our feelings. For example, after a believer has just been born again, he is usually full of happiness. However, after a while (over a year for some) this kind of happy feeling disappears. Can we say that he has perished? Of course not. There is life in his spirit; how he feels makes no difference.