I still remember how I felt when I accepted Jesus as my Savior. I was seven, crying and trembling in the pew beside my dad. The preacher had just delivered a terrifying sermon about Hell, and I knew I didn’t want to go there. Sensing my anguish, my dad took my hand and led me to the altar, where I knelt and asked Jesus into my heart. When I stood a few minutes later, I felt something I never had felt before — lightness, purity, and joy — all inexplicable. True, at the ripe old age of seven, I had not committed any horrific sins, but that “washed-clean” feeling lasted for weeks. But it didn’t last forever. Inevitably, the emotional high ebbed away, and I faced a hard truth. The
Christian life is not lived on an emotional mountaintop; often, it is lived in the valleys.
Over the past four decades, my Christian life has been a mix of mountaintops, valleys, desert paths, and garden walks. I often find myself trudging through a wilderness, looking back fondly to my last high point, wondering when the next will arrive. What would seven-year-old me have thought if 40-something me could have shown her this reality? What if she knew I sometimes struggle to communicate with God on a heart level, that sometimes He feels distant, and I don’t know why? And occasionally, I struggle to muster up the gumption to pray, read my Bible, attend church, extend hospitality, and love my family well.
Why is that? What has tarnished my relationship with God? Do you sometimes feel this way? (Please tell me I’m not the only one!) What do we do when our relationship with God has become dull, unexciting, and uninspired? Is this the moment to give up the fight altogether or throw up our hands in defeat? Absolutely not.
First, determine if sin has come between you and your Father. Examine your heart and be courageous enough to ask, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). Be brutally honest with yourself and God. Confess and repent of any sin that has wormed its way between you and Him. Ask God to restore your relationship.
At times, though, an honest self-evaluation does not reveal unconfessed sins. We are in communion with God, but for some reason, our fellowship with Him has become lukewarm, maybe even downright cold. Like spouses who have lost the enthusiasm of their love, and their relationship grows ho-hum and perfunctory. They would never dream of separating, but the tepidness has gradually dragged their communion into ruts of apathy. Intimacy with our Savior can suffer the same fate.
What causes a relationship to cool? Laziness, fatigue, distractions, addictions, busyness, lack of discipline or purpose, grief, or doubt. The reasons are legion. Any one of these can creep in and cause us to fall into complacency and apathy. Is complacency a big deal? It is not, after all, listed as a “thou shalt not” in the Ten Commandments. As far as I know, no one was ever stoned to death because of apathy. But by no means does this mean it is harmless. Apathy can cause just as much harm as intentional sin.
In Amos 6:1-7, God issued a warning to His apathetic people. Because of their apathy, the Israelites were the first to enter exile. While these people were guilty of other sins such as idol worship and neglected worship, above all, God condemned their complacency. Feeling “secure on the mountains of Samaria,” they stopped relying on God for deliverance. They no longer feared or respected Him. Like a wayward spouse, they allowed the fire of their first love to cool to ashes.
Content with the status quo, the Israelites saw no need to change anything until it was too late.
The reason for the dullness that crept into your life may be an idol of a different sort: smartphone, tablet, social media, Netflix, online games, or chat rooms. Perhaps even gambling or pornography. Anything that comes between us and God or distracts us from what truly matters can dull our relationship and result in lukewarmness and complacency — the very opposite of Jesus’ command to love the Lord with our hearts, souls, bodies, and minds (Matthew 22:37).
Do you have a war going on inside you? Our culture has a deep-rooted problem. It tells us it’s not cool to care about things that matter; being indifferent or laid-back is better. Social media has conditioned us to become numb to the truly remarkable and alive to the trivial. This paradox is increasingly challenging. Our days become a vicious cycle of running to social media to escape uncomfortable feelings. There, we are fed a steady diet of sensationalism, conflict, and comparison.
I don’t know about you, but I want to get off this roller coaster ride. But how? We can’t talk ourselves out of apathy. The key is to take a hard look at the root causes and commit to weeding them out. Remember that list earlier? Laziness, fatigue, distractions, addictions, busyness, lack of discipline or purpose, grief, or doubt? The treatment for these symptoms is to cultivate practices and attitudes that counteract these inclinations. The Apostle Paul reminded his readers in Romans 13:14 and Galatians 3:27 we are to “put on Christ” to defeat the sinful tendencies of the flesh.
Laziness & lack of discipline and purpose: These go hand-in-hand with procrastination. I, for one, am an expert at putting off till tomorrow what I don’t feel like doing today. This boils down to a lack of self-discipline, which leads to less Bible reading, praying, attending church, meeting with our small group, reading good books, and so on. Proverbs 6:6-11 is unmistakably clear about what God thinks of laziness. After praising the ant for her industriousness, the writer switches gears: “How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.”
If you feel a lack of purpose is behind your apathy, perhaps a change in mindset is the cure. In Colossians 3:1-2, Paul instructed the church to set their hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Aligning our priorities on what matters in light of eternity will motivate us to do good work.
Fatigue: Whether we like it or not, our souls are firmly attached to our bodies until God calls us home. Consequently, our physical health constantly influences our emotional and spiritual lives. Fatigue, hunger, thirst, illness, arthritis, headaches, and more contribute to an overall sense of well-being.
If your body is perpetually tired, your spirit will feel the consequences. Do not feel guilty about prioritizing adequate sleep and proper nutrition. Taking care of the body God gave you is part of your worship of Him and is just good stewardship. Being more rested will also help you concentrate better when reading your Bible and not fall asleep while praying!
Distractions, addictions, busyness: I’ve lumped these together because I believe they are interconnected. Our always-on, hyper-connected society never shuts down. I remember when television channels went off-air at midnight, forcing night owls to go to bed or find entertainment elsewhere. Today, hundreds of cable TV channels broadcast around the clock, and streaming services provide 24/7 access to every movie and TV show. Social media lures us with titillating glimpses of other peoples’ lives. Texting, ads, notifications, games, apps, and more vie for our attention. We never have downtime to allow our souls to quieten. Shutting out the noise takes real effort and self-discipline.
If screen addiction, constant distraction, and busyness are coming between you and God, I recommend a hard reset. Memorize Hebrews 12:1-2 and make it the lock screen on your phone: “Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Grief and Doubt: These are often hushed up or swept under the rug. While I suffer occasionally with the other symptoms listed, grief and doubt are most often the reason for the distance between God and me. Over the past two decades I have experienced some very high mountains and equally deep valleys. For years, I fasted and prayed fervently for an answer to a single request, only to feel as though God were ignoring me, or my prayers were bouncing off the ceiling, while others received miraculous answers to their prayers. I’ve suffered soul-crushing grief, which caused me to beg God to tell me why He allowed such a thing to happen. Not surprisingly, I never received a direct answer. Apathy comes easily when it feels we are praying in vain, or that God is not intervening as we hoped. “Why bother praying?” we ponder. “Why put in the effort if nothing will come of it?”
The Bible shares numerous examples of people who prayed, begged, and waited for a very long time. I love the example Jesus gave in Luke 18:1-8 of the persistent widow. Despite the callousness of an unbelieving judge, she kept pestering him with her request for justice until he finally responded. Jesus concluded, “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him?”
Abraham and Sarah, Hannah, Job, Elizabeth, Noah, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel — each of these heroes of faith (Hebrews 11) had long periods when they continually cried out to God for justice, deliverance, children, or answers. The Lord did not always grant their requests. Job never received direct answers to many questions he asked. Instead of miraculous deliverance, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel saw Israel go into exile. Sarah had all but given up on her dream of becoming a mother. Before she finally conceived Samuel, Hannah endured years of teasing and ridicule from her husband’s second wife. Under questioning stares and ridicule of a befuddled community, Noah labored a century building a boat in the desert. All these heroes have one thing in common: they never allowed the unanswered questions to interfere with their relationship with God. They kept praying, asking, reaching, and pursuing God despite their burden. Some received answers in their lifetime. Others didn’t. But they never gave up.
These examples of faith help put our own questions into perspective. Unanswered prayers can easily become a stumbling block in our relationship with God. When we focus on what He hasn’t done, we lose sight of all He has done, and the latter far outnumbers the former. I am certainly not belittling the suffering unanswered prayers can cause. I know firsthand how brutal that can be. But
I want to encourage all of us not to lose sight of the big picture. We become apathetic in our relationship with God when we get stuck thinking these short years on earth are all there is, when we lose sight of eternity.
C.S. Lewis discusses this lack of perspective in The Weight of Glory. When discussing the desires of our hearts, he observes, “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
You know that request you’ve begged God to answer? The questions you’ve been asking? The blessing you are craving? All are “mud pies” compared to the glory awaiting us. If we could only catch a glimpse of that glory, we would not doubt God’s goodness again. Remember when Moses was allowed to see God’s back (Exodus 33:17-23)? From his physical appearance to his ministry, that glimpse changed Moses completely because he now had eternity in view.
What is the cure for dullness in our relationship with God, the apathy and complacency that get in the way?
Focus on the true goal. Let’s fix our eyes, not on the finish line, but on what lies beyond the finish line — eternity. We all want to finish well, to run our race worthy of our calling. But the finish line is not the end. It is the beginning. If we could only glimpse eternity, our grief over unfulfilled desires and unanswered questions would vanish.
My goal is to hear the Lord say, “Well done, my good and faithful Cristina. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter the joy of your Master.” I can hardly wait to experience His joy and feel His approval of the mud pies I offer Him. Will He one day reveal why I had to go through certain valleys? Maybe. But it doesn’t matter in the end. Friends, let’s stay focused on what really matters.
About the Writer: North Carolina native Cristina Price and her husband Matt have been IM missionaries to France for 21 years. They have twin 14-year-old daughters, Madeleine and Emilie.
