God has been dealing with some of my spiritual laziness lately. When I am on a religious high it is easy to follow God. I can get into worship, I can pray for hours on end. However, all it takes is a few changes in my body to bring me down from this state. If you make me tired or hungry, you reveal my zeal for what it really is: emotion. This all wouldn’t really be a problem except for the fact that I tend to get tired and hungry and grouchy fairly often, and that seriously cuts into my ability to seek God. I want to be the steadfast Christian that will follow God in difficult times. Like Peter I promise Jesus that I would die for him, but when it comes time for my faith to be tested, I shrink away.

I don’t think the problem stops with me. I see it in the larger Church around me. A youth minister, named Nick, once told me about the Tarzan effect; I was a victim. The Tarzan effect is where students sustain their spiritual life by swinging from retreat to retreat, grabbing the next vine as it comes along. It is easy to get excited about God and make tear-filled confessions when you are removed from your parents at a retreat location. It is easy to tremble in the presence of God when you are hyped up on eight cans of Mountain Dew. However, you come home and in two weeks you are faced with the reality of life. You are left depressed and looking for the next retreat, the next fix. If you miss that next retreat, you really start to plummet fast. It’s a bit like heroine really.

This inability for us to push through in everyday life reveals two problems in us. First, it reveals our ‘high points’ as just that: cheap highs. Second it reveals that we have an inner laziness that is not willing to put in the work necessary to know God on a deeper level. We must be willing to overcome our flesh and press on in prayer. We must be willing to seek God even when we don’t like what we hear. We must put in the effort that it takes to maintain a disciplined life. God does not like being a cheap thrill that is used up and thrown away when we no longer have a desire for him.

This all sounds so trite and useless unless there is a way out. I cannot simply confess to you that I get lazy and do nothing about it. However, in my flesh, I see no solution. The problem is that I can only push through that wall of laziness when I have a spiritual zeal and fervor to motivate me. See the catch 22 here? This is why we must draw upon the strength of God. I think the solution has something to do with John 15 when Jesus tells his disciples “abide in me and I in you”.

There must be a deeper motivation within us than the excitement or the desire of the flesh. We must drink of Jesus, the river of life. I think he meant what he said when he told the woman at the well, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” There is a spiritual truth here that gets lost when we view verses like this as some abstract or poetic description of salvation in general terms.

I’ve recently been reading a wonderful book called Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard. I’ll review it here when I am finished. I want to end the discussion today by mentioning the importance of discipline in the Christian life. So often we pray when we feel like it or when we feel we ‘ought.’ However, it is essential that we do things like pray and fast regularly whether we feel like it or not. The important principle here is that our spirit should reign over our flesh, not the other way around. However, you will be quickly defeated in this effort unless you are strengthened by the Father.