I don’t feel in touch with God anymore. I have to drag myself and my family to worship. We have been coming less and less. I feel apathetic about my Lord. I rarely pray. I hardly ever read my Bible or anything else that might stimulate my spirituality. I always seem to be unhappy with the church, my brethren, the elders, the preacher, the deacons, and even with myself. I have begun to invest myself socially and emotionally in things that give me the illusion of filling that ever growing void in my life!
Does any of this sound familiar? Can you identify with any of this? It’s what often happens to us over a period of time in our walk with God. We either seem to lose our spirituality, or fail in our struggle to take hold of it. Are we left to despair? Are we losing ground with God?
First of all, let me begin with a word of encouragement. It is not “wrong” or “sinful” when you begin to feel this way. Just as no one can live on an emotional high 24 hours a day (without needed some sort of psychiatric treatment), no one stays an the spiritual mountaintop 24-7. Like it or not, our spiritual life is full of peaks and valleys. The key to spiritual health has to do with what you do while you are in the valley.
Have you been all the way to the bottom of the valley before? Maybe you are there right now. What should you do?
Get Angry
After all, it is most likely not your fault you’ve slid all the way to the bottom of this canyon. Someone has been pushing you around, so it is surely their fault. Think about it, you have every right to be angry. People may think that you have a problem, but you know that it is their problem. They should be the ones to pull you out of the canyon, it’s not your fault you slid way down to the bottom.
There are several blamers in the Bible. Do you remember any of them? There are some of the more well known ones such as Adam. Remember the story? When God had asked him if he had eaten from the forbidden tree, he blamed Even for giving it to him. Then when God confronted Eve, she blamed it on the serpent, and the buck stopped there. Then there was Job. Remember him? He was about as low as you could get in the bottom of the valley. It had to be someone’s fault since he didn’t deserve any of what came on him. So he blamed God.
Let’s focus on another blamer, one that is probably not as well known to many of us.
(Genesis 16:1) – “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife had borne him no children, and she had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, "Now behold, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Please go in to my maid; perhaps I will obtain children through her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. After Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Abram’s wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife.”
Now God had previously promised Abraham more than once that he would have a son. As a matter in fact, he made a covenant with Abraham in chapter 15 to bind himself to this promise. He wanted Abraham to trust that he would keep his promise. But years went by, and nothing happened. Abraham and Sarai are old enough to be great-great grandparents, and no children! Now if you are not familiar with the culture, to not have children is a slam on a woman’s self worth. Part of being a wife meant bearing children. So Sarai is feeling pretty low. So what does Sarai do? It surely is not her fault she has no children, so she blames God for it.
Then she comes up with a plan. She was going to have a child one way or another. She had a female slave, Hagar, who could still have children. Why not use her slave as sort of a surrogate mother? She owned this slave, so she could have a child by her. She gives Hagar to Abraham, and Hagar conceives. At last! A child! She feels like she is finally soaring above the valley all the way to the mountain top where she belongs. Not even God can keep her in the valley!
But notice how her plan begins to unravel even before it unfolds:
Gen 16:4 - He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight.
Sarai came crashing down to the bottom again. She was lower than she was before. Even though the child was Abram’s, the child still was not Sarai’s Her slave got the honor of having Abram’s first child! So Sarai repents of her foolishness and lack of faith. She decides it was wrong to blame anyone right? Wrong.
Gen 16:5 - And Sarai said to Abram, "May the wrong done me be upon you. I gave my maid into your arms, but when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her sight. May the Lord judge between you and me."
Once again, Sarai places blame on someone else for her woes. It was Abram’s fault! Those of us that can see the big picture in a way Sarai does not know better. It was not God’s fault, and it was not Abram’s fault. It was no one’s fault she did not have children …… yet.
You see, the problem was that they were not patient. Sure they may have felt low, but God would lift them up and bless then just like he said he would. What did her anger and blame get Sarai, only more sorrow. It only brought her lower than she was before.
That is what happened to a woman I once knew. I will call her “Rita.” Now Rita grew up with an abusive father. It wrecked her self image and caused her to be so emotionally needy that she was never able to have a decent relationship with anyone. Her father eventually left them, but the scars were so deep that she was never able to leave home on her own. She just did not have the emotional security to do so. She lived life as an angry door-mat well into her forties. She spent her life angrily blaming her father for her woes in life. For her lack of a husband, her letting people walk all over her, for not being able to make sound decisions in life, and on and on and on. It took her years to realize that the reason she was living the life she was living was because she kept blaming her father and could not let it go. She just kept getting lower and lower.
It’s kind of like what marriage counselors tell you. They often tell you that you cannot talk about your spouse. You cannot change your spouse. The only one that can change your spouse is your spouse. The only person YOU can change is YOU. No one else can do it for you.
So, blaming someone else is no way to get out of the valley. As a matter in fact it will keep you there. So getting angry and blaming someone else for your spiritual lows will not do you or anyone else any good. Getting angry and placing blame is not a good thing to do then.
Maybe you should make the best of it
After all, is it really that bad in the valley? The trip down was not all that bad, but the climbing back up, well, that just looks like so much effort. There are good things to eat down here that you won’t find up on the mountain. It’s warmer here, and there is less wind. Plenty of materials down here to build a nice home. Besides, there are nice people that live down here in the valley.
And so, you could build a nice home, get involved with the locals and their way of life, and you may find that it was really silly to try and expend all that effort to climb up some silly old mountain top. If you never settle down, what will you have to show for all that effort? Nothing!! On the other hand, these folks in the valley, well, they have nice homes they have worked hard to build all their lives.
So don’t just sit around laying blame and getting angry, make the best of it. Get involved and make a life for yourself in the valley. You can find fulfillment and happiness there without the stress of trying to climb the mountain. Besides, most of the people that climb the mountain are poor, while those who stay here in the valley, well…. They have made a pretty good life for themselves.
There was a man who investigated life in the valley. You may have heard of him. His name is Qohelet. He is the epitome of hard word, shrewd planning, and higher learning. He wrote the result of his lifetime of experience into a book entitled “Qohelet.” We call it the book of Ecclesiastes.
Eccl 1:2 - Notice his opening line: “Vanity of vanities.” Or your Bible may say, “Meaningless! Meaningless! All is meaningless!” The Hebrew word used here is “Hebel,” and it literally means something like “breath” or “vapor.” Used figuratively, it carries the idea of something with no substance. So we translate it, “meaningless.” After a lifetime of monumental achievements in all areas of life, he sees that it all amounts to nothing. Nothing in the valley, or “under the sun” as he calls it, amounts to anything. It will all be gone. He calls it a “striving after the wind.”
What, do you mean building a good life for yourself in the valley is nothing? Yes. Do you mean investing and saving up in order to increase your net worth as much as possible is nothing? Yes. Do you mean working long hours to provide for your wife and children in the valley is meaningless. Yes. After a lifetime of doing these very things, Qohelet finally realized that it was all meaningless. The only thing that had any meaning was to honor God and keep his commandments. By the time he realized this, his body was already breaking down.
Eccl 11:10ff - So, remove grief and anger from your heart and put away pain from your body, because childhood and the prime of life are fleeting. Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, "I have no delight in them";
He is describing the process of aging. There will come a time in your life, that your body is so old and worn down that you will “have no delight” in your years.
Eccl 12:2 before the sun and the light, the moon and the stars are darkened, and clouds return after the rain; in the day that the watchmen of the house tremble, and mighty men stoop, the grinding ones stand idle because they are few, and those who look through windows grow dim; and the doors on the street are shut as the sound of the grinding mill is low, and one will arise at the sound of the bird, and all the daughters of song will sing softly.
Your body will stoop and tremble. Your “grinders” will be replaced with dentures, you will have trouble seeing and hearing.
Eccl 12:5 Furthermore, men are afraid of a high place and of terrors on the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags himself along, and the caperberry is ineffective. For man goes to his eternal home while mourners go about in the street.
Caperberry was a type of aphrodiziac. It will be ineffective. And then it will all be over. So Qohelet says,
Eccl 12:6 Remember Him before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the well is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. "Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher, "all is vanity!"
You see, Qohelet had wasted the best years of his life. What did he waste it on? Himself! How could that be a waste? Most of us would not think of it as a waste, yet here it is. A man who had it all, yet had nothing.
Settling down in the valley is a dead end. Don’t get comfortable there and start investing your lives in what it has to offer. Satan will make it look so attractive.
Have you read the legend of Satan’s worldwide convention? In the opening address to his evil angels, he said, “We can’t keep Bibles away from Christians. We can’t keep them from going to worship. We can’t tempt most of them to become hateful, mean and immoral. But we can keep them from forming a close, abiding relationship with Christ. We can keep them in “first grade” in their Bible knowledge for a lifetime. So let them go to church services, let them lead good, moral lives. BUT steal their time, so they never grow to maturity. He continued, “That is what I want you to do. Distract them from Bible study, prayer, and meditation.”
“How do we do that?” asked an angel. “Keep them busy with nonessentials. Invent unumbered schemes to occupy their minds. Tempt them to spend, spend, spend, then borrow, borrow, borrow. Persuade wives to go to work for long hourse and husbands to work six or seven days a week, ten hours a day or more, so they can afford their lifestyles. Keep them away from their children as much as possible. As the family become fragmented, their homes will offer no escape from the pressures of work.”
Satan added, “Over-stimulate their minds so that they cannot concentrate on the word for more than just a few minutes. Entice them to p0lay the radio or CD wherever they go, to keep their TV, VCR, CD’s and PC’s going constantly in their homes. Fill their coffee tables with magazines and newspapers. Pound their minds with new 24 hours a day. Invade their driving moments with billboards, talk radio, and Top 40. Flood their mailboxes with junk mail, sweepstakes, mail order catalogs, and every kind of newsletter and promotional pamphlet offering free products, ESSENTIAL services, and false hopes. In their recreation, let them be excessive. Have them return angry, exhausted, and disquieted. Don’t let them stop to see nature and reflect on God’s wonders. Send them to amusement parks, sporting events, concerts, and suggestive movies. And when they do meet for spiritual fellowship, involve them in socializing, gossip and small talk so that they leave with troubled consciences and unsettled emotions. Let them be involved in good causes, but crowd their lives with so many ‘good causes’ that they do not have time for church activities. Soon they will be sacrificing their health, family, and spirituality for the “good of the cause.”
It was quite a convention in the end. The evil angels went eagerly to their assignment. … Christians everywhere got busy, busy, busy, and rushed here and there.
Do you see how Satan works on you while you are at your lowest spiritually? He has a way of making you forget that you are at the bottom of the valley. He makes you think you need to invest your life into bottom of the valley. But there is nothing for you in the valley.
How successful has Satan’s scheme been in your life?
So staying in the valley just will not do. If you are there now, don’t fret. I’ve been there many times. It is not a sin when you slide into the valley. Even Jesus spent time in the valley. What did he do while he was in the valley? Notice what he did NOT do. First of all, he didn’t lay blame. When he was just about as low as you can get, he mustered up his strength and prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Second, he didn’t get comfortable in the valley. He grew up in Nazareth, and with the new metropolis of Sephoris being built just three miles from his home, he could have made a pretty good life for himself as a carpenter. But he never settled down. He did not invest his time, emotion, effort, and spirit into a home to live in or building his net worth. As far as we know, he never owned a home of his own while on this earth. He did not stay in the valley. The Bible tells us that God lifted him up, and now he sits and the right hand of God reigning in his kingdom. You can reign with him someday (Rev 22:1-5). I don’t know exactly what that means, but I do know it means he will lift you forever out of the valley and put you on his mountain.
