Contact
SubscribeSpiritual sluggishness, apathy, and lack of discipline
So you feel distant from the Lord, cold, and unmotivated by the gospel. You would not openly say that you disbelieve what God says in his Word, it’s just that your life and actions show that you don’t believe it wholeheartedly - like the man in the mirror in James 1:22-25, you assent to its teachings but walk away unchanged in any deep way that will affect your future behavior or thoughts. You know that you need to avail yourself of the “means of grace”, to read the scriptures more, have them preached to you more, and to preach to yourself, to participate in the Lord’s Supper, to come to the Lord in prayer and ask for the grace to change and to grow.
But what do you do when you can’t even bring yourself to do these things? What do you do when you know that the only reason you come to church and take communion is because you are more afraid of what other people think and say than what God thinks and says and you don’t want them asking questions or criticizing or offering lame advice?
What do you do when you feel like the Bible has nothing new or helpful to say (or at least not to you - like maybe you’re not the intended audience), and most of the time you can’t do anything to make yourself read it, or at least read it with attentive hopefulness?
What do you do when it seems like your prayers are nothing but echoes into a big dark empty room, or maybe a room filled with the members of someone else’s family all crowded around someone else’s loving father, and you can no longer even bring yourself to open your mouth to speak to him for fear of somehow confirming your suspicions.
What do you do when people tell you what you need is just to pray more and read the Bible more, but you have run out of all motivations to do so (even the wrong motivations, like trying to make yourself and others think that you’re better than you really are)?
What do you do when you know that your biggest problem is that you don’t love and fear God enough (if at all), and that fact (and its very recognition) has effectively eviscerated your impulse to do anything else for the right reasons?
What do you do when the sluggard of Proverbs 26:14-16 and Israel as described in Jeremiah 2:25 both sound like you?
What do you do when the Bible tells you to change, and then also says that there’s nothing you can do to change yourself? Do you sit and wait? Do you do whatever you can do and hope that God will maybe give you the grace to do more?
Please, give me your thoughts, responses, and counsel.
You have a lot of honest thoughts there. I appreciate your transparency and the way you have put the struggle. I certainly resonate with a lot of these sentiments. I have a lot of thoughts too; why don’t we chat tomorrow?
Ah my friend! How sad to read these words, and how clearly they paint this struggle! To be so full of recently acquired teaching and wisdom through seminary education and yet slow to see the Spirit’s application of His truth to our hearts is the frustration of so many of us. I share the same frustrating lack of motivation and discipline, the same fear of the lack of others’ approval, and often the lack of hope and faith that things will ever change much. How the Spirit who has been given to us as a downpayment of future grace actually works that grace in us is a mystery that probably cannot be described in a simple or universal patterns and methods. You know the right answers for what you should do, but how will He help you to even care? And how will he help you when you fail to act and fail to care?
Coming to a real answer of that question, however, isn’t exactly what we need, I don’t think. It would be nice if we could answer how the Spirit is going to work in us, and perhaps there is some comfort and counsel to be had in seeking an answer to that question. But the real thing I need is to know that He is, in His own mysterious and unhurried way, fulfilling His promise to finish the new creation He has begun in us. If I could experience that work and yet not be able to perceive His sublime method, I think I should be satisfied. So rather than resolve all the perplexing questions, maybe it is helpful to set our eyes on the definite promise of a future resurrection like Christ’s, of a final and full restoration, and to His promise to work in our lives now, even if that present working seems slow in coming. We are, after all, promised that this disappointment with ourselves will not last forever.
You are quite a unique man, I have learned.
But you are not so unique as to be the only one who walks through this kind of desert. The heart-breaking image of standing alone at the edge of someone else’s living room watching children congregate around someone else’s father might take on a different meaning if the lights were turned up enough to reveal quite a lot more people standing on the edge, looking longingly and hopelessly at the father, or else anesthetizing themselves with some lesser pleasure than His warm embrace. You are certainly not the only one now, or in the past, to feel that you do not belong. Wasn’t this George Herbert’s deep sense when he, as the learned minister that was, wrote these words:
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d any thing.
A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
-George Herbert, “Love (3)”
The perpetual fear that we do not belong because we do not yet feel our hearts responding as they ought needs to be challenged. It is comforting, perhaps, to remember that the Lord didn’t speak a word against Peter’s place in the kingdom, even when he predicted his denial. Instead, Jesus comforted him and told him of his own unbidden intersessions for Peter.
At the risk of drawing my response out too much longer, or of seeming too much the sappy poetic type, I also draw some comfort from one of our shared favorite authors, that even if you cannot find any words or thoughts comforting now, it doesn’t remove the promise of comfort still to come.
They all were looking for a king
to slay their foes and lift them high:
Thou cam’st, a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.
Oh Son of Man, to right my lot
Naught but Thy presence can avail;
Yet on the road Thy wheels are not,
Nor on the sea Thy sail!
My how or when Thou wilt not heed,
But come down Thine own secret stair,
That Thou mayst answer all my need-
Yea, every bygone prayer.
-George MacDonald, “That Holy Thing”
Sounds great Tommy. I look forward to it.
Thanks for your careful and encouraging words David (Smith) :).
Dude, Joel, we can’t fix your fix (as in add a fixture to relieve you of your predicament). But know that people love you and people are thankful for you. I know that can be hard to receive when you don’t feel as if you are someone to be thankful for. The cold fact (dare I say with sardonic-tongue-in-ironic-cheek ‘brute fact’?) that you are uncomfortable being in this place and ready to tell others is a good thing - possibly a good you can’t feel, but a good that can be seen from the outside.
Seminary is such a fertile place for fruit and for danger. Existential volume is at 11 in sickness and health. We can and unfortunately do get used to studying God like an object for examination; just a subject. We can find the depth of truth commonplace. We can find it hard to talk to people who aren’t in or haven’t been in seminary.
I know it is little comfort now, but even this dryness will be used for your good, the good of your family, and the edification of the body. It may not help right now, but even having walked through this ennui prepares you for ministry.
Remember the end of the matter in Qoheleth, yeah?
Well, look, we miss you guys. We love you guys. We have been and will be praying for you.
Trying not to be a “Job’s friend” while hopefully being a real friend,
MIke N
PS As I was telling David S. recently, the South is way better. You could be experienceing a supressed accumulation of culture shock.
My friend,
It was really nice talking with you about this on Saturday. Something you said that really stood out to me was that you feel as though you are learning about God’s story, and you are teaching the story to others, but you do not feel like you are a part of the story yourself. What fascinates me is the fact that you are struggling with this and even understand it in those terms proves you are part of God’s story of redemption! He has plans for you, and maybe part of his plans are for you to be here for awhile. That’s okay. Please know that you are not alone in this place. I would be a hypocrite to judge you for not wanting to ever read your Bible. Sometimes the Bible just feels like a textbook and unfortunately, Seminary is usually a very spiritually dry place. I just challenge you to stay in relationship with people through this time. Do not distance yourself out of shame. I so look forward to seeing you again in January and will be praying for you until then.
Love,
Joe
Hello friend,
Thanks for this post! And thanks everyone else for the amazing replies!
Imagine, it’s been about half a year or more already since you posted this, and people like me are still reading it! =)
I’ve been seeking answers to similar questions!
I’ve been reflecting and praying a lot about it for a long time, and God has answered! =)
Remember friend, that even though it may seem at times that He is not your Father, He is.. He’s calling and drawing you closer to Him each minute of each day of each hour!
In Isaiah 43 He tells us,
“1 But now, O Israel, the LORD who created you says: “Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine.
2 When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you.
3 For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I gave Egypt, Ethiopia,* and Seba as a ransom for your freedom.1
4 Others died that you might live. I traded their lives for yours because you are precious to me. You are honored, and I love you.
5 “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”
Here’s a verse from the Bible that God showed me to encourage me when I was first starting out in ministry.. I haven’t forgotten it since.
Here it is, taken from the RSV version of the Bible..
Hebrews 12:
“1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. 4 In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
5 And have you forgotten the exhortation which addresses you as sons? –”My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are punished by him. 6 For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”
7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.
11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
12 Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. 14 Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. ”
————————————————————
I have found also, that it is important to wait upon God, often in silence, to allow Him to comfort, console and to speak to us.
I once went for a spiritual retreat, where I initially desired so much to be touched by the Spirit, that I began to desire the gifts more than the Giver.
I was quite disappointed and kept feeling this sense of abandonment by the Father on the first two nights of the retreat cause nothing spectacular happened to me.
But even in that sense of abandonment, God planted these words within me…
“Wait, you wait… Keep on desiring the love( 1 Corinthians 13). And because you would have waited so patiently and faithfully, when it comes, it will be even sweeter, because you have waited for it.”
It was later confirmed in prayer when I read Lamentations 3:22 - 33
“22 The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. 24 “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” 25 The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. 26 It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. 27 It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. 28 Let him sit alone in silence when he has laid it on him; 29 let him put his mouth in the dust–there may yet be hope; 30 let him give his cheek to the smiter, and be filled with insults. 31 For the Lord will not cast off for ever, 32 but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; 33 for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men. ”
So do not give up! Even in the seminary, God is there with you! If you ever doubt His love or faithfulness to you, remember your guardian angel, who is there with you now,and has been there since you were formed in your mother’s womb.
A prince of heaven, powerful and mighty, yet gentle and loving, charged by God to protect and guide you. Is that not testimony enough of God’s love for you? =)
Take care my friend, keep on the straight and narrow path of the faith, knowing that He is beside you, no matter how tough or bleak it might get, and that you have but to run back and wait on Him, knowing that He sees your heart and is pleased. =D
God Bless,
TiM=D
Thanks for your thoughtful and encouraging words Tim