Have you ever felt that God seemed so distant in your life? You start to question, why? You know that you go to church, you are in the ministry, and never miss a church service at church. Yet, when you are alone, you feel broken. Your prayers are empty and your time with the Lord is just out of duty. Not as sweet as it used to be.
Those outward services that we do for the Lord are not proofs that we are okay inside. There are times that because we do those things, we think that we are still okay. But when we search deeper inside, we realize that we have drifted away from the Lord. It can happen slowly. Sometimes, abruptly. But we just simply forget the love that we once felt for the Lord. When things are great and our lives are good, we feel the emotions of love towards God. But what if, we just go with the flow and things are just mechanical? We still do those duties though. The sensation of love suddenly stop. Can we still say, “we love the Lord,” not out of emotions but commitment?
Remember when we are just new in the faith? We feel excited and enthusiastic to do things for the Lord. As time goes by, the burning passion that we keep inside start to fade away. Until such time that we could no longer remember the last time we spend time with the Lord hours in prayer and devotion.
If you felt that way, you are not alone. Those who have been in the Christian journey for quite some time can relate with this. As a Christian, despite knowing the truth, we still have the tendency to drift away from the faith and from the presence of the Lord. No one can ever say that she has never experienced drifting. The Lord gave us the church of Ephesus to illustrate the principle of forgetting our first love (Revelation 2). When this happens, can we still come back to Him? The Lord says, “remember where we have fallen and repent.” We need to search our lives and account what had happened that led us to where we have forgotten our first love. Drifting away is not the end. He stays where He is no matter how far we have drifted.
Reasons We Drift Away
There might be many reasons to drift away but the common reason I see is our busyness in life. We become too preoccupied with so many things to keep up in life. That is one of the subtle ways that Satan uses to make us think that we are still doing the right thing. Being busy is not a sin, anyway. It is only that forgetting the Lord and prioritizing the worldly things is. The Scriptures reminds us in Hebrews 12:1 “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, 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,” – lay aside every weight and sin cause we cannot run the race with focus if we have so many things in life that hinder us to stay put.
Another reason is sin. In relation to Hebrews 12: 1, sin can make us drift so easily from God. I am talking about diverse sins that we keep hidden. We feel guilty, and we think that we do not deserve to be in the presence of God. We feel reluctant to connect with Him because we focus on the issues of our lives. I read an article about sins being compared to parasites. It will damage our spiritual vision and health. If we keep it and never cure it, it might lead us to die. In the same way, sin works that way. A little issue of pride, lust, anger, discontentment, hatred, lying, and so on can pile up into so uncontrollable parasite that will eventually destroy our spiritual life. I have been there many times.
Moreover, discouragement can cause us to just unknowingly drift apart. We can be discouraged because of our situation and even because of people. Being a Christian for so long, I had so many discouragements with people. But then again, people are people in the flesh – looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). If you stop and get bitter because of people, then your faith is with people, not with God. You are focusing on people, not God.
There is this another reason which is our misplaced affections. We have wants and likes in life. Often, things and people grab our devotion with the Lord. It is not that we should not have any because I believe God is not kill joy. We only need to hold things loosely and never put our devotion to them above God.
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
How do we come back then?
Sometimes, we tend to just run away but it won’t do us any good. Instead of running away, we have to confess and forsake those things that make us fall. Like what the Lord said, repent and turn to the Lord once more.
There is confession (1 John 1:9). What ever those sins are, God wants us to confess them and repent of those. This is where the journey of coming back starts. Our love for the Lord is not based on feeling but of truth. We need to go back to the Bible to know the truths of His character. And one of those truly is His kindness to a sinner like you and me. It is His kindness that leads us to repentance.
Prayer. Our prayers remind us that God is God and because of His love and compassion, we are given the privilege to commune with Him. I like Psalms so much. It is a soul therapy indeed. We can see how the heart of David is aligned with God. He is full of emotions. But in the end, he acknowledges that God is over all these happenings, and it is never coincidences. All are in His divine care. He can be mad, joyful, repentant, sorrowful, angry, discouraged, and all. Likewise, we can be vulnerable and gullible in the presence of God. He is the one who will never judge us. Our secrets are secured in Him. He hears our prayers, no matter what state we are in.
(to be continued. . . )
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