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I\u2019m spiritually stuck. We are stuck people. We get distracted, pulled down, undone. God feels distant and irrelevant. Dane Ortlund says, \u201cYou are not abnormal. So relax. We all go through this from time to time.\u201d<\/p>\nI\u2019m spiritually stuck. We are stuck people. We get distracted, pulled down, undone. God feels distant and irrelevant. Dane Ortlund says, \u201cYou are not abnormal. So relax. We all go through this from time to time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seasons of spiritual darkness are common \u2014 even when many pretend it\u2019s an anomaly. Even when indifference pirates our most pious intentions, and we surrender ourselves to isolation in our lack of holy zeal, don\u2019t be deceived: Gloom in the Christian\u2019s heart is common. It does often look and feel different for different people:<\/p>\n
Day after day, sermon after sermon, small group after small group, we\u2019re discouraged and frightened by a widening gap between the desired self and the real self. We feel the torque pulling between our desired relationship with God \u2014 the desired emotions, the desired disciplines, the desired relationships \u2014 and the real.<\/p>\n
It feels like the solution should be simple \u2014 another round of repentance, a worship song, a Paul Tripp devotion. Something. Anything. But those things either don\u2019t feel effective or mysteriously elude us.<\/p>\n
Here are six places to start \u2014 intentions to experiment with \u2014 when you feel spiritually stuck and alone. \u201cIntentions\u201d are things that we easily lose. They are good, but they can be slippery. You should find yourself in one, or a few, of these intentions. They\u2019re not all right for you. But you should discover which one might be most relevant to you now. Read through them, and search for words for your heart. Read them in sequence, and look for the helpful nutrients you need.<\/p>\n
1. Be honest about your heart.<\/strong><\/p>\n We read, \u201cI waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog\u201d (Psalm 40:1\u20132). Well, then. What a wonderful experience for David. #Blessed. But not all of us have yet been pulled from the bog.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s be honest about what we feel toward God \u2014 our tangled thoughts, our slogging feet, our raw experiences, our dulling passions, our disappointed expectations. Anyone who gives you a single answer for all of humanity \u2014 to fix every single sorrow \u2014 is a fool. That\u2019s what makes us wanderers. You can\u2019t podcast away sin\u2019s tedious yoke. What, then, does it look like for us to encounter Christ when we cannot yet praise God for pulling us out of our emotional marshland? It begins with honesty.<\/p>\n Ask yourself, \u201cIf I had absolutely nothing to lose, what would I say to God?\u201d Or, even further, \u201cIf I had total domain over my personal spiritual life, what would I want it to look like?\u201d More than that, \u201cHow do I feel about how that compares to my real spiritual walk?\u201d Keep digging. Honesty is difficult, because sometimes it\u2019s buried beneath our own spiritual pretensions. Find the honest in you \u2014 sift through your own heart like you\u2019re sifting for gold.<\/p>\n 2. Complain out loud to God.<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, speak your honesty. We need the blessing of God\u2019s fatherly ear toward us, inviting us to speak what we might not say out loud in church: Maybe perseverance in praying out loud \u2014 or starting to pray embarrassing feelings out loud to learn that God has no pretense \u2014 will be your means of blessing and freedom.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re angry at God, say it with David. \u201cEvening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice.\u201d David has replaced his meal-time prayers with complaining to God, and he doesn\u2019t apologize for it. He says, \u201cI\u2019m talking to you three times a day, and I know you can hear me.\u201d<\/p>\n 3. Complain out loud to others.<\/strong><\/p>\n If you want to double down with a high-risk spiritual investment portfolio, say these honest things out loud with other people. \u201cLet the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high\u201d (Psalm 7:7). Revival may be found in community. This isn\u2019t meant to justify whining. Don\u2019t whine. Complain until you expect, again. Complain until you find yourself bringing your spiritual dryness to God: \u201cOver it return on high.\u201d \u201cReturn.\u201d<\/p>\n Complain to others, \u201cIs my complaint against man? Why should I not be impatient? Look at me and be appalled, and lay your hand over your mouth\u201d (Job 21:4\u20135). Job is saying, \u201cI don\u2019t care if this scandalizes your pristine, glass-encased view of prayer. He can\u2019t use traffic as an excuse for his absence \u2014 he is all places at all times with all knowledge and all power \u2014 so I\u2019m asking him to show up right now and get me out of this rut.\u201d He just might.<\/p>\n 4. Get out of your own head.<\/strong><\/p>\n More knowledge may not be the solution to your problem. In an age of career-design, lifestyle-engineering, and life-hacking, that may seem ridiculous to you. But if you\u2019ve tried everything, consider this thought: It\u2019s possible you may not even need to repent of anything in order to \u201cfix\u201d your feelings. You might just need to get out of your head.<\/p>\n To a certain extent, your current spiritual emotions may be the circumstances that you\u2019ve been given \u2014 the cards you\u2019ve been dealt \u2014 and faithfulness does not look like scrubbing your soul of any indicators of unrest or grief, but of letting those indicators help to lead you into being more comfortable in your own skin, and as an extension, a deeper, more real relationship with the God who made you and gave you this story.<\/p>\n The uncontrollable spinning of thinking about God and the Bible can distance you from yourself, from people, and from God (attention: seminary students). If you don\u2019t know that you can think too much about theology, you\u2019ll just feel guilty for not being able to think your way out of a problem that is caused by overthinking to begin with.<\/p>\n Turn off your phone, go to the nearest open field, kick off your shoes, and lay in the grass. Do it right now. \u201cYour righteousness is like the mountains\u201d (Psalm 36:6). I have an inkling that this prayer has roots in a completely non-intellectual, nature-enjoying, social-media-absent experience in David\u2019s life \u2014 looking at mountains, perhaps. Lay back in the grass and, gazing at the sky, allow your mind to wander there. \u201cBow your heavens, O Lord, and come down\u201d (Psalm 144:5). And maybe you will find enough rest in that moment to sink down a few verses: \u201cStretch out your hand from on high; rescue me and deliver me from many waters\u201d (Psalm 144:7). And maybe he will.<\/p>\n Let the entire industry of trivializing Jesus Christ through list-formulations dissolve out of your mind. Let the expectations of virtual communities be silenced. The distant vision of an infinite, glorious, compassionate, and satisfying God \u2014 increasingly a pipedream \u2014 it is real, and it is available to you today.<\/p>\n 5. Get back in your head.<\/strong><\/p>\n God also heals us through remembering. The entire book of Deuteronomy is about how Israel needs to remember God if they are going to find satisfaction for their souls and be fruitful with what God has given them. Remind yourself that nothing you\u2019re experiencing is surprising or disappointing to God. The best, most faithful, happiest Christians in the universe have experienced spiritual darkness, and it doesn\u2019t necessarily say anything about you.<\/p>\n God intimately cares about and knows:<\/p>\n He knows everything about us. And he still sustained us today. He still gave us breath. He still woke us up. He still gave us what we need to live a full, 24-hour day. For some purpose, in his knowledge that is greater than ours, and in his care and provision and compassion that is more imaginative and sufficient than we could conceive, he has not allowed the atoms that hold us together to dissolve. That would be terrifying, knowing we live our lives teetering on the cliff of non-existence at the whim of a more powerful, all-righteous being, except that he tells us why he gives us another day, another breath, another reason for hope:<\/p>\n He loves us.<\/p>\n 6. Practice receiving the love of God.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is the most important thing you can do. Without this, all the other spiritual exercises you could possibly integrate into your personal life will quickly disintegrate. So let\u2019s have at it.<\/p>\n God loves you so much. He loves you. He loves you. He is with you in the dim and the dark. He sings songs about you.<\/p>\n The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)<\/p>\n It\u2019s so easy to trust our reflex \u2014 that God is big, and therefore removed, distant, and has better things to do than care about our daily anxieties. Sure, he \u201ccares\u201d about us. But he cares about everyone. So, his generic providence can feel like a cheap consolation prize to forgetful people \u2014 a happy meal toy that punishes us when we do bad and pats us on the head when we do right.<\/p>\n The beauty of God\u2019s love is that it survives spiritual dry times. Don\u2019t let the lie sink into your mind that spiritual dryness indicates that God has gotten over you, or that he\u2019s tired of working with you. Far from it.<\/p>\n Think of a moment in your life when you were brought to tears \u2014 when you were overwhelmed by your body\u2019s desire to cry, because you felt so deeply. God feels that about you. The Bible tells us that \u201cIn the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence\u201d (Hebrews 5:7). Jesus, who is God\u2019s perfect expression of his attitude toward you, cries over you. He doesn\u2019t just love in action. He loves in emotion. God is upset by you \u2014 in a good way. It can\u2019t be overstated: He loves you.<\/p>\n We live in a frightening world. Life threatens us with loss, with decay, with slow suffering, with aging, with slipping into a place we don\u2019t want to be. God is beyond and above romantic love; he doesn\u2019t have it \u2014 romantic love merely depicts the commitment and intensity of God\u2019s love. \u201cGod is in love with you\u201d isn\u2019t saying too much, but not enough \u2014 God is in love with you. God is utterly devoted to you. He\u2019s fascinated with you like a father with his daughter. He\u2019s brought to tears by his love for you. If something tangles you up and distracts you from that, cut it loose.<\/p>\n Start there, end there. You don\u2019t need more good news than this, whether it\u2019s the first day you belong to Christ or the fiftieth year you walk with him: \u201cIn this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins\u201d (1 John 4:10).<\/p>\n \u00a9 Copyright 2016 Desiring God<\/span> <\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019m spiritually stuck. We are stuck people. We get distracted, pulled down, undone. God feels distant and irrelevant. Dane Ortlund says, \u201cYou are not abnormal. So relax. We all go through this from time to time.\u201d Seasons of spiritual darkness are common \u2014 even when many pretend it\u2019s an anomaly. Even when indifference pirates our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":14641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-opinion","8":"wp-image-borders","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/large_a-place-to-start-for-the-spiritually-stuck.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4bgnN-13114","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13114"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22188,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13114\/revisions\/22188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cI am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with weeping.\u201d (Psalm 6:6)
\n\u201cI am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.\u201d (Psalm 69:3)
\n\u201cI am weary, O God; I am weary, O God, and worn out.\u201d (Proverbs 30:1)<\/p>\n\n
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