DN, Vol. 2: Part 1b of Why Spiritual Plateaus can be Gifts

Edgar Martinez: Seattle all-star famous for his work ethic and disciplined training. 

Last week we began this series by looking at how spiritual plateaus [i.e. times in our lives when our prayers feel lifeless or empty, when our bibles feel like they have covers that just don't want to be opened] can actually be much needed bumps in the road that help get our souls out of ruts. Like painful symptoms that warn us of the presence of a dangerous disease, encountering spiritual plateaus in our lives can expose the presence of unnoticed wedges between us and God. The wedge we looked at last week was trusting a method to connect with God rather than God himself. The wedge we'll look at today is, simply put, living passively.  

I chose the picture above for a reason. I remember reading an article in ESPN the Magazine about Edgar Martinez's incredible training regimen. Although every professional baseball player is gifted with the exceptional ability to hit a small, fast moving ball with the specific spot of a relatively small wooden stick [there are many who describe the act of hitting a baseball as one of the most difficult in all of sports], Martinez set himself apart as someone who constantly worked at developing his gift, enabling him to play professionally into his 40s, despite the fact that he developed an eye condition that made it harder for him to see anything, much less a small object moving at 95 miles per hour [one training method I particularly remembered from the article was Martinez writing numbers on tennis balls, loading them into a pitching machine, and then reading the numbers as the balls flew by at nearly 100 miles per hour].

The reason why people like Martinez are the exception rather than the rule is something I think we all understand quite well. All of us have things that we know we should do, that, cognitively, we recognize as beneficial and good. And most of us have a hard time doing those things consistently, if at all. Unlike Martinez, the decisions that we make tend to be guided by immediate rewards: eating a candy bar instead of a salad, watching a movie instead of exercising, illegally downloading a movie instead of paying money for it, and...you get the idea. 

Spiritually, it would be an incredible mistake to think that making disciplined choices earns us any respect from God. Actually, God relates to us on nearly the exact opposite premise: we cannot earn his love and acceptance, he chooses to give it to us freely. But it would also be a mistake to think that God's desire for us is to live life settling for whatever choices are the easiest, most comfortable, or most immediately rewarding. Just because he welcomes me, as the song goes, "just as I am", doesn't mean I should stay there. 

When we hit spiritual plateaus, we get a great opportunity to look and evaluate what kind of spiritual discipline [if any] exists in our lives. For me, I find that what often leads to these times of spiritual dryness is living passively, i.e. not actively engaging with God, and instead settling for the most comfortable and immediately rewarding choices. In this sense, our relationship with God is really like any other relationship: if you choose to discipline your time and energy in investing time and actively engaging with a friend, you'll be rewarded with a vibrant and exciting relationship. If, on the other hand, you sit on your couch and just wait for the relationship to grow on its own, it is very unlikely to. 

So, how exactly should we actively engage our relationships with God? Everyone's different, but let me suggest a few disciplines that probably apply to all of us: 

1. Remind yourself of the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ in your own life 

"Therefore...we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...God shows his love for us in this that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Every day we are bombarded with the message that we are not good enough until we have done this, bought that, or own this other thing. But the reality that Jesus' message proclaims is that, in Him, we are totally, utterly, 100% completely accepted, no conditions. We have nothing to earn and nothing to hide, no matter what our history is. It takes discipline to remember this, and the beginning of spiritual discipline is confessing this truth daily, if not more often.

2. Thank God

This discipline, of course, is related to the first. The truth is it's pretty easy to get caught up in what we don't have or like. But this obscures the reality about God and what he is doing in our lives and in this world, paving the way to complaint and envy. The discipline of thankfulness, regularly noticing and thanking God for what he is doing, keeps reality planted firmly in front of us, no matter how loud the message of advertisers, despair, or our appetite for things, status, and power becomes. 

3. Read Scripture  

I can't stress this enough: if you want to talk with God, you've got to read what he's written you. Truth be told, as much as I've had seasons in my life when every verse of the Bible I read seemed to jump off the page and into my life, I've probably had as many times when I could read entire chapters and not get a thing out of them. But that was never because there was a problem with Scripture. Especially when we don't feel like opening the Bible, we must dig into it. God's message to us in it doesn't change, it is the rock we need as we are tossed about by life.