Spiritual Ennui

Thursday 10/16/2014 5:00 AM

I have been battling spiritual ennui for almost a year and I feel as if I am finally succumbing to it. For many months I had my regular time of reading the Bible and meditating on it but seldom had any insights that I would consider to be earth shattering. Over the past couple of months it seems like I have completely given up on hearing God speak. My devotional time has been haphazard, cursory, or nonexistent, and the voice of God has been completely muted to my ears.

Jaci and I agreed to be co-leaders of a small group Bible study at our church in which we are studying God’s great love for us. When discussing what an appropriate response to that kind of love should be, I feel like a big hypocrite. There was a time when I felt close to God, when I regularly heard his voice and was comforted by his presence, but now it all seems like a distant memory. I have always believed that to be used effectively by God in the building of his kingdom one must maintain a vital connection with him. If that connection and relationship is severed, at best, I have nothing to offer and, at worst, I am a hindrance.

Psalm 86 is my psalm for the week. It begins with these words, “Hear me, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Guard my life, for I am faithful to you; save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God; have mercy on me, Lord, for I call to you all day long. Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you.” I can relate to the poor and needy part and the plea for joy part, but the faithful part, the calling all day long part, and the trusting part do not strike a chord with me at all. If God’s protection, God’s mercy, and the joy he gives are dependent upon my faithfulness, my pleading and my trust, I am SOL.

The writing of Simon Tugwell, in his book Prayer, brings a little hope this morning. “Blessed are the poor! How easily we take that always to mean somebody else. Yet if we want to be with God, we must learn to hear it as ‘blessed are we who are poor’, we who have not got anything very impressive to give to anybody, whose giving my very well be rather a nuisance, but who still have not given up giving. … God invites us into this conspiracy of the poor, making himself its head, giving himself in poverty and weakness, knowing that if we will only receive that humble gift of his, it will transform everything. If we are prepared to be poor enough to learn and to appreciate the manner of God’s giving we shall find in that poverty the seed of all perfection.” Lord, please use me in my poverty.