Gary Thomas

Renewed Passion:
Breaking Out of a Spiritual Rut

by Gary Thomas

One of the best things that happened to my marriage was breaking my wrist. This was a serious break--it required surgery--and all the sudden, Lisa and I were thrust out of our routine. We did most everything together, in part because I needed so much help. Since my exercise was limited to walking, we took near-daily walks. We shopped together. We answered email together (initially, I couldn't type). For awhile, Lisa even helped me get dress (okay, you trying tying your shoe with one hand!).
Being out of our routine, Lisa and I discovered a deeper and newer love. The romance was always there, it had just been buried under the accretions of always doing the same thing.

I've found that many people face the same dilemma in their walk with God. It's not that their love for God has dimmed, they've just fallen into a soul-numbing rut. Their devotions seem like nothing more than shadows of what they've been doing for years. They've been involved in the same ministry for so long they could practically do it in their sleep. It seems as if nobody in their small group has had an original thought for three years.
Have you been there? Are you there now? Let's look at some ways to break out of a spiritual rut.

Get Outside
After a thirty-year absence from space, John Glenn returned in the fall of 1998 and found...God. "To look up out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible," Glenn told a news conference. "It just strengthens my faith."

No surprise here, as the Scriptures explicitly proclaim, "The heavens declare the glory of God." (Psalm 19:1)

We don't have to go up to space to experience this awakening; we just have to get out of doors. For too many of us, our "inside" worship and ministry is shutting us off from a valuable tool to awaken our heart's adoration: God's good creation. After all, paradise wasn't an expensive resort, a five-star hotel, or a ballpark: it was the garden of Eden.

The famous preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a big fan of seeking God out of doors. "Surely everything that comes from the hand of such a Master-artist as God has something in it of himself!" he wrote. "There are lovely spots on this fair globe which ought to make even a blasphemer devout. I have said, among the mountains, 'He who sees no God here is mad.' There are things that God has made which overwhelm with a sense of his omnipotence: how can men see them, and doubt the existence of the Deity?"

In this, Spurgeon simply echoes the truth behind one of the Church's favorite hymns, "When through the woods, and forest glades I wander; I hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;/When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur and hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze;/Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee,/How great thou art! How great thou art!"

If you're sensing that your small group times have become rote exercises of religious obligation or your own personal devotions have become a strain, take your Bible and your prayer partners and hold a meeting in a forest, beside a river, or under a tree. See if God's good creation can't re-awaken your heart.

Liturgize
I was raised Baptist and then traveled through various churches as we moved from town to town--interdenominational, Presbyterian, charismatic. Every service was a rather informal affair. Written prayers were considered suspect at best, and dead religion at worst.

Then I started attending an Episcopalian prayer and communion service on Wednesday afternoons, which was held right across the street from where I worked. There wasn't a single guitar to be found, and we followed the prayer book service to the letter. For the first few weeks I was lost, not sure when to rise, when to repeat a phrase, or when to go forward.

But once I got the routine down, I found a treasured friend in the liturgy. Far from being full of "dead words," the liturgy helped me to "wade" into worship through confession and repentance, which was a particularly valuable service during those seasons when I wasn't doing as well, spiritually.

Kathleen Norris, a Presbyterian poet and writer, found great solace in attending Benedictine services. "When I started attending their liturgy," she writes, "they would sing or recite psalms, have a Bible reading, and some prayers four times a day. Being able to say and hear poems out loud was a whole new approach for me, even though it's about 1,700 years old. It really nourished me and made me a better Presbyterian."

You can buy old prayer books rather cheaply in used book stores, and these can be used personally or with a group. Sometimes, it helps to read prayers. I wouldn't want to do it all the time, but I've found that occasional forays into more structured times of worship can be very beneficial.

Beautify
Too often, we value God's work as redeemer over His work as Creator. His "redeeming" work seems more spiritual, and we tend to denigrate "natural" gifts (God's work as Creator) accordingly. There's no biblical warrant for this, and it can affect our worship in many negative ways, particularly by keeping us in a rut.

Henri Nouwen, whose books on prayer and the spiritual life have inspired millions, once found great spiritual renewal by looking at a painting. He had just finished an exhausting lecture tour and was "dead tired" as well as "very needy." Then he came across a reproduction of Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son. I'll let him describe the reaction.

"Rembrandt's embrace remained imprinted on my soul far more profoundly than any temporary expression of emotional support. It had brought me into touch with something within me that lies far beyond the ups and downs of a busy life, something that represents the ongoing yearning of the human spirit...This seemingly insignificant encounter with one of Rembrandt's masterpieces set in motion a long spiritual adventure that brought me to a new understanding of my vocation and offered me new strength to live it."
Nouwen spent three full days sitting in front of the original. How's that for a creative quiet time!

In Old Testament times, God gifted Bezalel and Aholiab to do "all manner of workmanship" in creating a beautiful temple through the use of gold, silver, bronze, and wood, not to mention embroidering and elaborate weaves. Beauty can draw us into God's presence because it fills our hearts with a sense of transcendence.

W. Phillip Keller, a best-selling Christian author, has discovered this in his own life. In one book, he writes of being a university student confined to a "rather cramped and drab home." Keller found escape in a picture of a "magnificent sunset scene....Again and again I absorbed myself in its loveliness. It was a tremendous uplift and inspiration amid what otherwise would have been unbearable surroundings."

Let beauty into your life. Visit a museum; discover anew the power of Handel's musical Messiah; look for ways to be inspired and renewed through art.

Change Your Spiritual Diet
"You should read Teresa of Avila," Dr. James Houston, professor at Regent college challenged us. "She's as different from you as anyone can be. She's a female, and most of you are male. She's Roman Catholic, and most of you are Protestant. She's from Spain, and most of you are from North America. She wrote the book near the end of her life, and most of you are near the beginning of yours. She sought God in the sixteenth century, and you're living in the twentieth."

In short, her radically different perspective would allow us to explore new avenues into prayer, aspects of which we couldn't ever arrive at on our own.
Like many evangelicals, I can't wait to get my hands on the newest book by Dallas Willard or Phillip Yancey. But it's always helpful to broaden my reading with some of the great Christian classics, even though that may take me out of my tradition. Especially for mature Christians, who are well-grounded in the fundamentals of theology, reading outside your particular denomination can provide all manners of inspiration.

If you haven't read the works of Fenelon, Francis de Sales, John of the Cross, or Jeanne Guyon, you don't know what you're missing. As a group, instead of going through evangelical study after evangelical study, consider reading the work of a classic Christian author.

Get Active
Amy Grant sent audiences laughing many years ago with her song about a "fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat baby," referring to a Christian who always eats and never ministers. Forming a Christian mind and spirit is crucial, but there comes a time when we need to be stretched through action.
Francis Shaeffer challenges us, "as Christians we are not only to know the right world view...but consciously to act upon that world view so as to influence society in all its parts and facets across the whole spectrum of life..."

I've listed many of the classics (giving each one a short introduction) on my web page. If you desire to learn more about these great works, consult www.garythomas.com.

If you've never walked a picket line, served a homeless person a cup of soup, or volunteered for other "active" ministries, you're limiting your faith. It's similar to always eating but never exercising. A quiet time or small group divorced from active and concrete concern for the world in which we live in is a sham--and certainly no threat to the devil.

John Wesley argued that "there is no holiness but social holiness...and to turn Christianity into a solitary religion is to destroy it." Christians have always led the way in challenging social injustice, be that racial discrimination, slavery, child labor, or abortion. If you're facing a rut, ask yourself if perhaps you've haven't become too introspective or inactive--and then stretch yourself by taking your faith to the street and applying it there.

Celebrate
I tend to be "over serious" in my faith and was greatly challenged when I came across an old book written by Elton Trueblood, The Humor of Christ. Trueblood writes, "Any alleged Christianity which fails to express itself in gaiety, at some point, is clearly spurious." He has plenty of biblical warrant to back this up.
There were at least three major feasts prescribed in the Old Testament--Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles--as well as many other religious celebrations. These could be elaborate affairs. The Feast of Tabernacles, for example, involved a seven-day feast in which the Israelites were commanded to rejoice and forbidden to mourn.

God is worthy of unceasing celebration. Jesus said at one point that if the crowds had not broken forth in praise, the very rocks would have cried out. God forbid that we get shown up by a bunch of rocks!

I have to constantly break out of my "serious" rut. That's just my nature. I tend to look on celebration as "flighty" or less reverent--but that's a personal prejudice I'm trying to get over. On one occasion I did this by doing what for me was a very radical thing. I had just finished my second book, representing years of hard labor early in the morning before I started work at my "real" job. The sense of fulfillment as I typed the last word was high. Nobody else was in the office, so I actually tried dancing before the Lord. I could never do this in front of others--I'd be too self-conscious and end up thinking about me more than God--but alone in a hotel room or empty office, I've found occasions to stretch my faith.

Another way that we celebrate is to observe the sabbath. By taking a day off, we celebrate God's work and the fact that God is able to complete what we lack. When I get too serious, I often find that I'm taking too much onto my own shoulders. "Burn out" is one of the deepest ruts there is; taking a day off on a regular basis is a God-ordained antidote.

Celebration can be as simple as inviting your friends over for a potluck and letting the conversation be filled with mirth. I attended one "celebration" honoring the life and work of C.S. Lewis. The host cooked an English meal, and invited us to show up in a costume representing one of C.S. Lewis' characters. We had a great time and then, later, a more "serious" reflection as we read some excerpts from Lewis' books--though we made sure to include some of his humor as well.

During one small group meeting in college, the leader allowed us to start telling funny high school stories. As guys shared their best tales, our sides began to hurt from laughing so hard. Afterwards, a young man who was going through an extremely difficult time said, "This was exactly what I needed. I can't tell you how much laughing ministered to me tonight."
"Laughing ministered to me tonight..." On my own, I don't think I would ever have come to the realization that laughing could "minister" to someone. Organizing a "laugh fest" is certainly not something you want to do every meeting, but during finals or other intense moments, laughter can be God's best medicine.

Perhaps your rut is also rooted in an overly serious faith. Add some celebration to your Christian diet and see if that doesn't renew your worship, passion for God, and joy.

Get Satisfied
John Piper has done the church a tremendous service in his books through reminding us that God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him. Much of our dissatisfaction comes from mechanical, rote religious exercises. A.W. Tozer reminds us, "The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. We have almost forgotten that God is a person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can."

We need to "romance" God as much as we would cultivate a friendship or nourish a marriage. That means getting creative, doing new things, and exploring new avenues of relating.
Christianity is not a way of life, a religious exercise, or a spiritual discipline. It's a living relationship that needs to be cultivated. If you find yourself in a rut, make a special "date" with your creator. If your small group has become lifeless, change your surroundings. If your ministry has become boring, venture out into new ground.

We serve a dynamic, life-giving God who is not honored by static, heart-empty routines. Above all, don't give up on God just because your routine has become unbearable. Give up the routine, and discover God anew.

Close this window