That Moment When You Feel You're Losing Deep Connection With God
What’s the point of praying or worshiping right now? I don't feel like it and I'm pretty sure that since I haven't done either one the way I know I should lately, neither one will rise past my ceiling.
I recently had a conversation with a friend and we both started talking about this feeling.
I don’t know about you...but sometimes I feel like my faith is running on empty. Like if I prayed right then and then, God would call my bluff and shake his head at me. You've probably been there before...where you feel like you are disconnected from God and somehow just going through the motions.What do you do when your faith tank goes on empty? Here are a few practical things to remember:
1) Don’t feel guilty:Its the wrong emotion to feel in this moment. It’s the easiest thing to feel but the most unproductive in regaining our connection with God because...
God does not function in our guilt.
Guilt doesn't help to rebuild a connection with God, it helps to reinforce and justify the reason for the disconnection.
Feeling guilty is in fact dangerous.
Guilt makes us feel like WE should be on a cross.
Guilt is what Judas felt after he betrayed Christ. It ate him from the inside out.
Instead of Guilt, what you need is BROKENNESS.
Guilt makes us run to the JUDGMENT seat of God and declare our own sentence. Brokenness makes us run to the MERCY seat of God and ask for help to be better.Tobi Atte
Brokenness is what David felt when he realized he had done things to break connection with God. He remembered how good God had been to him and ran back to God in emotional rags
.2) Don't overcompensate with works:
When we feel disconnected, if the enemy of our soul doesn't get us with feeling guilty, he'll try and get us to overcompensate with "works". We dash to volunteer in the XY department in church, we attend every single service, and start to look for opportunities to do things that should make God FEEL more connected to us instead of doing things that actually reconnect us to him.
Pause. So when I feel disconnected from God, I shouldn't go to church more or do things for God?
Of course you should. This just means that you have to be very aware for your motives. In other words, do those things with the motive of finding Him…being able to hear Him, learning and loving Him, rather than doing those things to make yourself (or Him) merely “feel” connected for the moment
3) Share with a brother or sister in Christ who you can trust your heart to:
Meaning..."who won’t look down on your spiritual inadequacies". Someone you can share with who won’t over simplify your plight and make you feel spiritually dumb for not being at your spiritual best.Someone who will call you out but do it lovingly and is available to GO ON THE JOURNEY with you.
I know people like these are not always easy to find but they are important to have.Galatians 6:2 says "Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ"
That’s what its about. Having a burden for God that is greater than our capacity to handle by ourselves and having people around us to help nudge us along the way.
4) Don’t compare yourself to others:
There are two ends of this spectrum.
Compare yourself to people who you perceive are doing spiritually better than you and you would be comparing their grace to your grace and since you are not the giver of grace, you are pointing fingers at the one who is.
Compare yourself to people who you perceive are failing spiritually (so you can feel better), and you would be comparing your righteousness (which is like filthy rags) to theirs and asking God to pick you because you are better.The first is like Moses comparing himself to Elijah and the second one is like the Pharisee who is praying in Luke 18:11 and says " God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.
"Neither one is good.
When you feel disconnected, don’t compare yourself to others but do what Galatians 6:4-5 says "Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load."
5) Create/review your testimony log:
One of the easiest ways to reconnect with God without having being overwhelmed by guilt or feel like you have to depend on "works", is to simply remember.
Yup, Simply focus on remembering...bringing to your recollection the faithfulness, greatness, mercy and love of God from your own past. This is what Jeremiah did in the book of Lamentations in the Bible.
In chapter 3, he is BEYOND disconnected. He basically says he feels like he is being used as target practice by God, that God doesn't listen when he prays, that God has let him down so much that it takes his peace away that God has broken his bones and so on.
I was SHOCKED when I read this. It was so RAW (FOR REAL - this is what he says- read it)
It literally captures what you and I go through sometimes when we feel like God is not being a loving God to us.So how did Jeremiah regain connection? How did he yank himself out of that feeling?
The answer lies in verse 21-25:
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.
22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” 25 The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him.
6) Meditate on a SPECIFIC moment in a Bible characters life:
This is such a big help in those moments where your faith may be running on empty or your connection signal fading.
So for example, feeling like you've done something that should get your heaven card revoked? Think of Paul... SPECIFICALLY that in-between moment as he was going from Saul to Paul. How he must have been feeling…. suddenly realizing that he has been so off course with God. When you think on how he felt, how he handled the moment, how he found strength in God and how God did not use his past to judge him, you can’t but draw strength from that.
Or working on something and feeling so frustrated that it’s not working out like you planned? Think about Peter...but think SPECIFICALLY about the moment when Jesus asked him to lower his net and he had been working all night. How must he have been feeling...how are those feeling similar to yours? How did he handle the moment? How did Jesus handle Peter?
The more you do this for your low moments, the faster you may be able to establish connection with God
7) Beware of Moral Rigidity:
This is one of the fastest ways to seal the DISconnection.
In a nutshell, moral rigidity sounds like this:
"I am already so bad...what’s the point of trying to be good now?"
"I’ve already been soooo disconnected and just "out of it" with God…what’s the point of trying to come back now?"
Don't do that to yourself. With God, you can always come home. You can always attempt to find your way back and the beauty of that is that it is always easier than we think (if we can just get past the guilt)
8) Start over ...from ground zero:
Sometimes you just have to start over. Sure you were a spiritual teenager when you fell off the bandwagon. There is nothing wrong with going back to being a spiritual toddler and starting from the basics of what it means to be broken and yet loved so much.
IN FACT...that’s exactly how Christ recommends we do it.
In Luke 10:14, Jesus is having a conversation with some folks and he says “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
In other words, don’t be so spiritually grown up about this. Don’t be so hard on yourself and measure your disconnection from God by your spiritual age. Don’t beat yourself up thinking that "Certain sins or thoughts or errors should have been beneath you at your level” and therefore encountering them means you are a spiritual failure.No.
As far as God is concerned, we should all be spiritual kids. Permanently.
This doesn’t mean there isn’t an aspect of maturity that comes with growth in God. It just means that as we learn and we fall...we should do so like children. Never tiring in our pursuit of our father, falling and never tiring of picking ourselves up, never tiring of trying again, and always growing in what our father shows us.
Falling off track happens to the best of us. We all have those moments. We are all work in progress. Even the Bible greats had issues and flaws.That’s it...now share this and go get your connection back. He is eagerly waiting.