I love the Lord and I spend a lot of my time at church serving or just sitting in service. This is great, but sometimes what happens (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) is we get in some kind of spiritual rut. The good news is that we don't have to stay in this bottom-of-the-pit, why am I even here?, mentality. The Lord will continue to grow us and bring us closer to him. Below are a few ways that I've come to believe can help bring us out of a spiritual rut. This is by no means a code that works for everyone. God might work His way back into your life in a completely different manner. These are just things that I've noticed have helped me in the past.
- Turn off the TV.
- Treat the world better than it treated you. You may be down in the dumps, but you will never regret serving others and placing them higher than yourself.
- Lose your fear of being wrong. Sometimes we stop in our tracks because we fear doing or choosing the wrong thing. But sometimes we need to take steps, praying and trusting God, even when we're not sure where we are going. There may be a time where you take the wrong step. I believe that God will make sure that it either doesn't work out, or shows you in some way that it's not his will.
- Go on a run & pray. If you hate running, go on a walk. Atmosphere can sometimes put everything into perspective.
- Listen to John Mark McMillan. (Bottom of post).
- Get a mentor. Find an older woman in the church who will listen and speak wisdom into your life. Or find a discipleship group.
- Read the Word of God. Instead of always trying to figure out what God is saying to you right at that moment, find out who wrote the book, who it was originally intended to, what the author is saying to them and what the circumstances were in that particular day and age. (I may do an entire blog post on how to study the bible).
- Go spend time with a friend and tell her everything. Girls like to talk, and the cool thing about best friends is they want to know what's going on in your life and they want to encourage you.
- Share your passion. Vision leaks. It's so easy to continue serving and forget why we do it in the first place, so even when you feel your passion is fading share it with someone in order to remember what it is and why you felt that way in the first place.
- Get a cute, cheap journal and pray. You can pray in a number of ways. Sometimes when I pray silently, I find that it's easy to drift off track. So what I like to do is journal my prayers. It organizes my prayers, puts my thought in order and usually by the end of my prayer, the Lord somehow changes my heart or reminds me of his faithfulness.
- Go to Starbucks, get a fancy drink & read a book. There are a lot of books written by Christian women with the hopes that we may grow closer to our God. Some are very empowering, but always, always make sure to line up their words with The Word and see if what they say is really biblical.
- Remember God. Remember God and all of the times when He has proven Himself faithful in your life. He was faithful then, He is now. He may have you here for a reason.
- Serve. In times like these, you may not feel like serving. But this might just be a time where you need to trust Him. Serving may be what gets you out of this rut and remind you of Him.
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