When we invite Jesus into our life, God’s grace comes on the scene to help us at a whole new level. Our desires begin to change. We set our “…mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2). I remember when I asked Jesus into my heart at age fourteen. I suddenly had an unusual desire to start getting up fifteen minutes early each morning to read the Bible before getting ready for school. No one ever taught me to do this. God just put the desire in me, and I responded.
When I learned new things from God’s Word, I started doing them. Over time, I started to see God’s hand on my life in ways I never expected. I remember one day in my early twenties. I had a business appointment scheduled with a young woman. When I met with her, we began talking about the business as planned. Then right in the middle of the conversation, the young woman looked at me with wide eyes and blurted out, “I need to get my life right with God!”
It turned out the young lady had become distracted from her relationship with God years earlier and even used to attend the same church as us. God was able to reach her heart through this meeting together and the young woman got her life reconnected with Him.
Jesus told us as believers, we are to be the salt and light of the world. (See Matthew 5:13-14.) He instructed us to, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). I never even mentioned God to the young lady, but when we keep an open heart to serve Him in whatever opportunity may arise, He’s able to work through us!
REIGNITING THE FLAME
You may be thinking to yourself right now, “I used to be excited about God, but somewhere along the road I just lost my enthusiasm. I still call myself a Christian, but quite frankly, worldly things are more exciting to me than following God.” Well, friend, it doesn’t have to be this way. You can be more excited about your relationship with God, thirty years after making this commitment than you were the day you gave your life to Him. This applies to marriage as well.
People often think when they’ve been married for many years it won’t be as exciting, and the honeymoon eventually goes out the window for everyone. This doesn’t have to be true for you! We know couples married twenty, thirty, and forty years who are more excited about their marriage now than they were on their honeymoon. They have better communication, better physical intimacy, more fun together, more affection, and an overall greater bond than when they first married. God never intends for us to backslide in our relationship with Him, and He also doesn’t intend for us to backslide in our enjoyment of the marriage relationship He created between husband and wife.
What can you do if you’ve fallen into a lack of desire for the things of God? This can often be traced back to a time when we disobeyed God’s direction or didn’t follow doing what we knew in our hearts was the right thing to do. The Bible says in 1 John 3:20-21 that our own heart condemns us. When our heart condemns us, it’s not God being mad at us. It’s basically our heart convicting us after we’ve done something to step back from close relationship with our loving Father. All we need to do is apologize to God for not following His love, then our heart will become confident in His presence again.
When someone chooses to ignore His Word and the promptings of the Holy Spirit, they dull themselves to the voice of God on the inside. Then the next time the Holy Spirit says something, it becomes a little bit harder to hear with our spiritual ears. As a person disobeys more and more, they eventually come to a place where the things of God just aren’t exciting to them anymore. They feel like they never hear from God, and it’s often because they have tuned Him out through ignoring Him.
We cannot selectively choose what we are going to obey or not obey with God’s Word if we want to walk in His blessing and receive His direction. If this has been true for you, you can simply ask God to forgive you for not listening and choose to have a yielded heart to Him from now on. Then turn to His Word again, and you will receive direction and guidance.
I pray this blessed you,
Pastor Amy
