Blog by Alan Fadling

What if your deepest spiritual growth doesn’t happen on the mountaintop but in the quiet, ordinary valleys of your everyday life? What if prayer that feels dry or uninspired is not a sign of failure but a sacred invitation into deeper trust and transformation? In his book When the Well Runs Dry, Thomas Green gently nudges us away from our hunger for excitement in prayer and toward a quieter, truer communion with God. This isn’t about losing faith—it’s about learning to recognize God’s presence in the slow, hidden work of grace that often unfolds in silence and simplicity.

Here are a few more insights that I have gleaned from Green’s book in addition to the two I shared a couple of weeks ago.

Genuine Spiritual Growth Prefers the Ordinary

Green says, “One sure mark of genuine spiritual growth, I think, is a growing preference for the ordinary days of our life with God. We gradually begin to realize that it is when nothing seems to be happening that the most important things are really taking place.”*

In the beginning of our faith journey, we want exciting or stimulating or intense prayer. We want some “wow” in our prayer.

In our spiritual youth, we love exciting experiences. We always want something new. We crave novelty. We long to be stimulated. But Green is saying that as our prayer life deepens, we come to realize that most of our spiritual growth happens in our everyday life rather than in the dramatic moments. Mountaintop experiences can be catalysts for change and growth, but the actual growth happens in the mundane moments of our ordinary days.

So often what we think is dryness in our prayer life may be a sort of withdrawal from our attachment to excitement. In such moments, we may be tempted to think that nothing is happening in our spiritual growth if we aren’t having exciting experiences or gaining profound insights or doing dramatic deeds. All of these are wonderful gifts God may give us occasionally. But a long, maturing spiritual life happens mostly in the unexciting, unimpressive moments of our day-to-day life.

All of this helps us realize that speaking with God and looking within are not necessarily the same thing.

Prayer and Introspection

Green suggests that “one of the great hazards of the interior life is that we go to find God and we end up talking to ourselves. There is a fine line between prayer and introspection.”†

When I first read that passage, my initial thought was “Yikes!” I can look back and see many prayers that consisted more of me talking to myself in front of God rather than me speaking with the living God. Or I was saying a prayer for other people in the room to hear more than I was speaking with God. It’s a professional hazard for pastors like me, but maybe you identify with that experience even if you aren’t a pastor.

There is a kind of praying that can be an unhelpful, me-focused introspection rather than a fruitful, God-focused communion. There is, of course, an inner reality to deepening prayer, but that is because Christ is in us, abiding in us. Prayer goes deeper as it remains connected to the Christ who makes himself at home in our hearts.

This is why when I enter into prayer it helps me to begin with a few unhurried moments of quiet attention. When I do this publicly, I sometimes feel the discomfort in the room at such silence—as though we were on the radio and I was creating dead air. But a moment or two of stillness helps me remember what I’m doing and who I’m speaking with.

Finally, one of the most helpful things I’ve learned from When The Well Runs Dry is that…

Beginners Try Too Hard in Prayer

 As part of an ongoing personal study project in the spiritual classics, I recently reread The Life of St. Teresa of Avila. In it, she compares deepening prayer to four ways of watering a field: (1) carrying buckets back and forth from a well, (2) using a pump to draw water from the well, (3) planting near a river or stream and using it to irrigate the field, and (4) welcoming the rain.

This metaphor is Teresa’s way of describing how our prayer moves from focusing mostly on our own efforts to responding more and more to God’s work.

Thomas Green draws on Teresa’s insights and quotes these words from her autobiography: “Beginners in prayer, we may say, are those who draw up the water out of the well: this, as I have said, is a very laborious proceeding, for it will fatigue them to keep their senses recollected, which is a great labor because they have been accustomed to a life of distraction.” ‡

I believe it was Teresa’s metaphors that gave Green the title for his book. In the first two stages of prayer we get our water from a well. But what if the well runs dry? We then need to look for other ways to water our garden.

If the well never runs dry, though, we may not stop using our early approaches to prayer. We may never deepen our conversation with God.

The hard work of early prayer may weary us because we believe that prayer is something we are doing for God. Some people say they can’t imagine spending half an hour in prayer. I can understand that, especially if you’ve never prayed for even five minutes. But this also has to do with your vision of prayer.

If you think prayer is mainly you coming up with something to say to God for thirty minutes, that can feel daunting. But what if prayer is more like thirty minutes of conversation with a good friend over coffee? Thirty minutes in that setting might not feel like long enough.

It’s certainly true that in the beginning prayer requires a lot of effort to overcome our habit of self-distraction. We live in a time when attention deficit is rampant. Too many of us spend hours every day distracting ourselves. Much of modern life seems to thrive on distraction as our attention is being captured and monetized by algorithms. Moving deeper in prayer will likely require us to become comfortable with what would feel boring to us as beginners. We can learn not to sacrifice our attention on the altar of popular amusements.

Conclusion

I want to leave you with this encouragement: Prayer is not a spiritual task to master but a loving relationship to nurture. It’s not about perfect words or flawless practices—it’s about presence, connection, and trust. God is already at work in you, inviting you to come closer, listen more deeply, and rest in his faithful love.

If your prayer life feels dry or challenging right now, know that this is not the end of your journey—it’s an invitation to go deeper. God is faithful, even in silence. He’s forming you, often in ways you cannot yet see.

So take heart. Be patient with yourself and trust the Spirit’s counsel in this process. Whether you’re drawing water from the well or waiting for rain, God is with you, and he delights in every moment you spend seeking him. Keep drawing near and let him lead you into the fullness of his presence.

For Reflection:

• When was the last time you sensed God’s presence in something seemingly ordinary?
• Have you ever mistaken introspection for prayer? What helped you return to true conversation with God?
• What does it look like for you to rest in God's presence rather than strive in prayer?

*Thomas H. Green, When the Well Runs Dry (Ave Maria Press, 1979), p. 24.

† Green, p. 30.

‡ Green, p. 38.