Pushing Through Spiritual Apathy

Do you ever just get into a “funk”? Mentally, emotionally or spiritually? Where you just go on auto pilot and sort of phase out? Or maybe that’s just me, but that’s where I am right now. I don’t always notice it right away, it usually comes to my attention when I am spending time in the Word. My motivation to get up early to journal, read, and study is very little, and I sort of just go through the motions. I hate that!

Two weeks ago I lost my job due to being laid off, and though God is continuing to give me peace and keeping me from entering freak out mode, I just feel “blah” as I would say it. I don’t know what direction God is pointing me in, I don’t know why I am unemployed for the second time in 4 months after following God’s leading to move, I don’t know what I am supposed to do with my life. These big questions cloud my mind and I just get into a funk.

This weekend I noticed that I am sort of entering a place of apathy due to the lack of a job and ultimately feeling like I don’t have purpose. Those are some big questions and issues to tackle, and things that God is clearly teaching me in this season. But I don’t want to approach God’s Word with that apathy, without a real desire for the Word and for Him! So I’ve just been praying for that desire, for a hunger and thirst for His Word, for a refreshed soul, for an awareness of my need for Jesus and Him alone, for apathy to have no place in my walk with the Lord. And He is faithful to answer those prayers!

This morning I read Psalm 119:18 in a study, the third appearance of this verse in my life this weekend.

“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.”

Psalm 119:18 ESV

A prayer, for God to open my eyes to the wondrous (beyond one’s power, surpassing, marvelous), things that His Word has to offer!

It is so easy sometimes in my walk, and maybe yours too, to forget the living power that is God’s Word! It is alive and moving, not inanimate and still. When I sit down and read God’s Word, study it, live it, breathe it, it changes me. He changes me through His Word. So when I may not feel like reading, or studying, or praying, when I choose to turn my heart towards Him instead of away from Him, He can change my heart!

Maybe, like me, your quiet time, your study of God’s Word, your prayer life sometimes becomes a chore, a routine, a check mark on a list. Instead of sitting in that “season”, seek His face nonetheless and He will renew your desire for Him, your hunger and thirst for the only thing that can satisfy you, and then He will be faithful to fill you up!

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Psalm 23