Spiritual Ups and Downs

This a guest post from my good friend, John!

So how many have been to a Christian summer camp?

               Didn’t you feel a spiritual rush? Like you loved God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength? But when you got home, how did you feel then? Did you still feel that same zeal for God?

I’ve been going to a certain Christian summer camp the past three years called The Wilds. This camp is an amazing camp that re-energizes Christians, and sets their affections back on God. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. But there’s one problem. I would experience this “camp zeal” while I was at camp, but when I got home, I lost it. What’s the problem?

              

               Well, there are several factors that play into this loss of zeal. But I’d like to first examine why I got this spiritual rush at camp. At camp, we had 3 sermons a day, memorized Bible verses, and we couldn’t have iPods or phones or anything to distract us. Everything was aimed at glorifying God, and there were few possible ways to participate in the world. However, when I got back home, those distractions were re-introduced. I again had my computer, iPod, and whatever else I would use to waste my time on.

               So I believe a lesson to learn from my Wilds experiences is this: when you only feed yourself things of God, you will have a zeal for Him. If you mostly feed yourself with the garbage of this world, you will become like the world. If you start down a road that leads to the south, you cannot expect to end up in the north. In the same way, if you spend most of your time in the world, you cannot expect to end up with a zeal for God.

               Another lesson I believe I learned through camp is to carry through with convictions. After my first Wilds trip, I came back home, and after a few weeks had lost my convictions I made at camp. After my second Wilds trip, I came back home, and participated in a Bible study with several of my friends that had gone. This was so powerful! We studied God’s word, prayed, and confessed sins to each other. This Bible study helped me keep my convictions in mind. So it is important to act out convictions. In fact, the Wilds gave a good illustration of keeping your convictions. It’s this: if you have a fire, you cannot expect it to keep burning unless you fuel it with wood.” In other words, if you have a fire for Jesus, you cannot expect that fire to keep burning unless you continually fuel it with God’s Word, prayer, speaking with friends about God, and so on.

               But so far, I’ve been mostly limiting zeal for God to a “camp zeal.” Zeal for God can come after a sermon, or a great devotional, or when the Holy Spirit suddenly moves on you. The question is, what are you going to do about it? I gave a devotional a couple weeks ago on idolatry. I was blessed at the moment with an incredible amount of zeal for God. But soon after, I lost that zeal. I found that it’s easy to serve God when you are filled with a zeal for Him, obviously given to you by the Holy Spirit. But it’s harder to serve Him when the road is tough. When you can’t see Him through the storm. But we should worship God when we have it easy and when we have it hard. In the words of Job, “But he said to her [Job’s wife], ‘You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?’ In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” (Job 2:10)  We are to worship God both through our spiritual ups, and our spiritual downs. The road may be difficult, but God is at the end of the road. As long as we have our eyes fixed on the end of this road (a.k.a God), we will experience much more joy and peace. As I saw once on a church sign, “God does not promise a safe flight, but a safe landing.”

                So how can we increase our zeal and love for God? As I just mentioned, keep your eyes on Him. Also, be with Him constantly. The more we are around Him, the more we will be overwhelmed by Him. Something I need to work on is my prayer life. Prayer is a great way to be around Him. Some of the most amazing Christians you will ever meet most likely have a great prayer life. Spending a ton of time talking with God constantly forces you to think about Him, and it shows His awesome power when He answers prayer!