Church Feels Hard Lately
Church feels like a chore lately. I struggle to spiritual engage with the Sunday worship service. I say that as a full time pastor. Can you relate?
Why I am writing this
This article is a bit different that ones I might usually write. I like exploring topics and writing about them or sharing what God has taught me recently. But today I write for another reason. Today I write to process something I do not have an answer for. Writing has always been a helpful way for me to think and work through obstacles in my life. As an introvert and internal processor, this is my way of having a dialogue, rather than it being with a person, it is with my keyboard.
The reason I am making this public is because maybe someone else feels the same way in this season of their life. If so, I have left the comments on at the bottom of this article. Please write me and share your experience. Perhaps we can learn from one another.
Strange Season
For the last 3 months, church has felt weird to me. It is not the people. It is not because I prefer some other style or way of church more, although maybe something new could spark fresh affection. It isn’t even about the skill of those who lead us, they are great. It is that I feel strangely apathetic when the service starts and I do not know why.
I feel apathetic about the worship and the sermon. During worship, try as I might to enter into “being” with God. Trying to focus on thinking on Him and less about what I might get out of the moment, distractions run rampant, my mind spins, and my heart feels cold to the words I am singing. “I am not singing from my heart, but just repeating these words” my heart says.
When the time for the sermon comes, I pray for the pastor who preaches. I pray for my own heart. I earnestly try to listen and yet, the overwhelming feeling I have is apathy. I have no interest, even though I desperately want to. Although I agree with most of the points and think my pastor is being faithful and helpful, I find it hard to spiritually engage. It is as if I cannot find God in the church service.
Writing about this even feels difficult because I struggle to put words to the exact feeling and experience I am having. I know that feelings are not everything, but they are important parts of our humanity. Part of love for someone is the hope that they feel loved by you, so I imagine that even though God’s love and presence in my life are real and constant regardless of what I feel, God does care about my feeling, or grasping, of his heart for me.
Temperature Taking
It is not healthy to always be taking your spiritual temperature
I cannot find the original author of this quote, but it has felt helpful over my life. As someone who is prone to overthink and dig deep into how “my spirituality is going”, I know that it is not good to always be trying to gauge how my spiritual life is going. I need to be rooted and secure in the Gospel more than my performance and especially more than my feelings of my spiritual health. There is a level of “spiritual temperature taking” that is not healthy.
But there are times to take a spiritual inventory, to ask what God is doing and why things are the way they are. God is often doing things in our lives to teach us, train us, form us. (Hebrews 12:11) Conviction for instance, although unpleasant, is God’s way of showing us we are in sin and that there is a better way for us to walk. It is to the spiritual life what a fever is to the physical body, an indicator that something is wrong within.
Is this apathy in worship services a type of spiritual fever, showing me something is wrong inside?
Reasons
I have tried to dig within and search out an answer for why this is happening, but I cannot find one. I do not sense any major sin in my life, nor have my friends pointed anything out. I am involved in community with other believers. I am attempting to stay consistent in my private time with Jesus. I am serving, trying to tithe both monetarily and with my time. Again, I don’t think feelings are everything and I don’t think we should gauge God’s nearness based on how we feel. But after months, it has begun to feel that God, for whatever reason, has felt far.
I do not doubt His love for me. I do not doubt His care for me. I trust that He has good and meaningful reasons for all He does, even when he feels far.
In writing this article, I looked back on an old article about when God Is Silent, written back in 2020. I want to quote part of it here:
A LIFTING UP OF THE DOWNCASTThe great “doctor of the soul”, William Bridge says it better than I ever could. Bridge is responding to his original argument of “can someone be discouraged if they hear silence from God?”:
“If Christ therefore forsakes His people for a moment, that He may not forsake them for ever, and has a design of love, and nothing but love, upon them in His forsaking; then have they no just cause for their discouragement. Now I ask, what is the reason why God forsakes His people for a time, or a moment? Has He any design but love? Does He not withdraw Himself from them, that He may draw them to Himself? Does He not hide His face for a moment, that He may not turn His back upon them for ever? Does He not forsake them for a moment, that they may die unto all the world, and long after heaven, where there is no forsaking? Does He not forsake them for a moment, that they may die unto the way of sense, and learn to live by faith, which is the proper work of this life? Does He not forsake them for a moment, that in this winter of their desertion, the weeds and vermin of their sins may be killed and mortified? Does He not forsake them for a moment, that HE may see their love to Him?”
-A Sermon from Psalm 42:11, Preached in 1648 by William Bridge. Find the collection of his sermons here.
Bridge says that in every silence of the Lord, is a design of love. God’s ways are truly mysterious. Like a wise King, he knows sometimes we need gentleness, tenderness, nearness. And sometimes what is best for us is a hard journey. I don’t claim to know why you are in silence right now. There are millions of reasons God has led you where you are. But could you believe that it is, as Romans 8:28 says, for your good?
I can confidently say this with tears in my own eyes, God truly works all things for our good, even difficult things. I have walked in that silence. I was in high school when I walked through that barren wasteland from God. It was the most difficult, confusing, and frustrating time of my entire Christian life. I was seeking after God and yet I found nothing for months.
I was always trying to find something to hold, some sort of anchor to latch onto in that season. I often thought it was payback for sin, as if God was punishing me. Some nights I even thought I had been abandoned because I was too far gone. I didn’t understand it. But, on the other side, I can truly say, it was for my good. I saw the evilness of sin in that season. I dove deeply into God. I saw His heart for me. I became more of a sensitive Christian, instead of the self-righteous and arrogant one that I was. I gained a great love for teaching, and my calling to be a pastor was born from that season. There truly was a design of love behind that season of silence.
My own words feel helpful to my soul now. We might not understand the reasoning behind silence, or God feeling far, but we can know its design. God is working all things for our good. Even silence and apathetic souls.
What might God be teaching me in this season? Perhaps this is His way of showing me that my ministry assignment is moving somewhere else? Perhaps I’ve grown too self-reliant and God would have me more reliant on Him? Perhaps He is testing my faith? Will I continue on in the spiritual disciplines and church attendance even when it feels easy to quit? Perhaps He is pruning my motivations, from duty to love.
I don’t know what He is doing, but I look forward with faith to learning.
Humbly,
Josh.