How Deep Is Your Well? A Note from Andrew Brunson at The Cove

Last week I was at the Gospel Rescue Mission Fellowship's annual conference at The Cove in Asheville, North Carolina. One of the keynote speakers was Andrew Brunson — the American pastor who spent two years in a Turkish prison, much of it in solitary confinement, on fabricated charges. He talks about the dark middle: the silence, the unfelt grace, the wounded heart that doesn't recover on its own.

Brunson described what it was like to be moved to the high-security prison where he had broken — even to the point of considering suicide — was in deep crisis with God. They sat him through a 13-hour trial. He hadn't eaten or slept. He went back to a solitary cell, lay there weeping, and was crying out to God: Where are you? Why have you left me here? Why are you so silent?

And he said he was surprised by what came out of his own mouth.

That, he said, was his victory. Not a verdict from the court. Not even the relief of his own emotions resolving. Not even a sense of God's nearness. But the decision to walk in obedience and choose to love Jesus, even when His presence wasn’t felt.

Then he made this observation: "There's an intimacy that only comes with testing."

You don't earn it. You can't manufacture it. You can't read your way into it, or worship your way into it, during the comfortable seasons. It only opens up on the other side of the pressure you didn't choose.

Andrew’s wife, Norine, had a simple habit. Every day she spent time with God reading His word. No fireworks, no encounters, no big stories to bring home — just a daily deposit. He described it as digging a well. A little deeper each day. Nothing impressive on any single day. But the well kept getting deeper.

Then one day, the well wasn't a metaphor anymore. They were both arrested. She was locked up. And she started drawing from a well that had been getting deeper for years.

Brunson said, plainly, that she handled it better than he did.

I sat with that. Because as a father, husband, and CEO of a company, while I desire to start every day in quiet meditation with our Savior, I often don’t.

That's a problem. Because we can’t wait until we face the pressure before we start digging that well.

Brunson said something to that room of leaders — and I think it's worth quoting carefully, because it cuts a particular way for those of us in or around ministry:

In other words, our “work” has fast feedback loops. The heart doesn't. So we drift toward what gets graded — the talk, the campaign, the launch, the board update — and away from the one thing Jesus said matters most: spending time with Him.

Then a hard season arrives, and we reach for a bucket that hits dry ground.

Brunson ended on Daniel 11:32 — "the people who know their God shall stand and accomplish exploits." He pointed out, gently, that we in the U.S. tend to grab the second half of that verse. We are a "can-do" culture, and we love the exploits.

But the verb order matters. Stand comes before accomplish. And the thing that lets you stand isn't competence. It's knowing your God.

I left asking what I should be digging. In this world of rapid change, where we are being pushed to move at the speed of agents, am I stopping each day long enough to dig the well deeper with my relationship with Jesus.

Brunson said that for years he had prayed, "Father, draw me close to your heart." And after he was released, God told him plainly — I was answering that prayer the whole time you were in prison — even when you didn’t sense my presence.

God's way of drawing him close ran straight through the dark.

I'm not going to pretend I know what God is doing in your life or what He's preparing you for.  But I think his message lands for any of us leading something that matters:

So if you're a ministry leader, a business leader, a board chair, an executive director — the practical question isn't whether your strategy is sharp. It's whether your heart is being shaped, every day, by time with the One we say we're working for.

The work will scale. The heart will not—not on demand, not in a crisis, not from a content drip. It is dug slowly, on ordinary days, when nothing dramatic is happening.

I walked away from his talk with a reminder and a fresh commitment to keep digging into my relationship with Jesus by spending time with him each day. Sounds simple. Even trite. But it is the source we all need to weather the hard times of life and leadership.