How can I get excited about being a Christian again?
Question:
Hello,
I have a question basically on how to desire God more and want to go on with the sanctification process, rather than being complacent and being that Sunday Christian. I'm hoping you can help me with some tips on how to want to desire to go on with my walk with The Lord.
I will tell you a bit about my Christian life. From the age of 10-20 I was hooked on pornography (was still attending church) but by the grace of God after age 20 I stopped watching it and then began taking my Christian life seriously. I changed my entire lifestyle (I am a female by the way). I was constantly in God's Word and was desiring God so much to the point that as I speak I received a prophetic utterance from the Lord that I am meant to be a servant of God, such as a teacher, preacher, or evangelist.
However, fast forward to this year my spiritual walk has been on a decline as in I slowly was feeding distractions, such as a boy (stupid stuff), became preoccupied with other things and interests and my time spent with God was getting minimal. I was slowly losing interest in the Word. I began just halting in my spiritual walk. I have never gone back to the sin of pornography though. Throughout this time God was trying to get me to spend time with Him, but it just wasn't the same anymore.
As I speak I'm finding it difficult to go on in my walk because I have backslidden spiritually so much. Rather than having a desire for God and His Word, I just feel like going back to being that mediocre Christian (without pornography in my life) as in praying in the morning and night, church on Sunday and that's it. However, this can not be so! I know there are souls to be won and that's why I know that it is upsetting God.
Anyway, I will face consequences if I don't fulfill my destiny. I have made many attempts to take it seriously again, but I get distracted. Sadly I can see my full desire is not there and that's why it's becoming so hard. It's now I'm bored. I'd rather do something else. Where is my desire now? On stupid stuff, just listening to the same old garbage music, checking my favorite websites out, clothing, all materialistic things, celebrity garbage, all stupid stuff. It's like now I'd just rather watch a stupid TV show or movie than read my Bible or something. In the past it was no second-guessing, without a doubt I would pick up my Bible or flip to a Christian channel than sit down and watch ENews. At this moment I'd probably watch ENews or something.
I can tell my desire was really there before and I was so passionate. That's why I didn't get distracted and found it so easy to be committed to the Christian walk. I have to go on with the journey as in, I need to commit back onto the journey. What can I do to do so? I never used my being young as an excuse for not committing to the Christian walk because I do see I am young. Maybe that's what is affecting me? But I think it's just an excuse. I was called by the Lord. He called me for a reason. At the moment this is disobedience. What should I do?
Answer:
It is clear to me that you confuse your personal feelings with God speaking. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). You act based on your feelings, but feelings naturally change. What is absent is obedience to what God said in His Word.
You are probably annoyed or even angry with what I just said, but allow me to show you areas where you are not considering what God said:
God said that prophecy would end when the Bible ("that which is perfect) was completed. "Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away" (I Corinthians 13:8-10). Yet you claim to have an ability that God said He wasn't giving to people for hundreds of years.
I know that this "message from God" isn't from God because Moses explained that God never contradicts Himself. God doesn't tell people to do things that violate His law.
"If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, "and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods' -which you have not known-'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice, and you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst" (Deuteronomy 13:1-5).
But you claimed that God called you to be a preacher or an evangelist. That contradicts what Paul stated: "Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church. Or did the word of God come originally from you? Or was it you only that it reached? If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 14:34-37). While I know this command isn't popular in the modern age, it still remains the Lord's command.
If you want true fire for the Lord, pick up His word, learn it, and apply it. "Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does" (James 1:21-25).
