Are you bored with being a believer? Are you bored with having a quiet time because nothing really happens in your quiet time? Are you bored with church, ‘same-o-same-o’ every Sunday? Bored with other believers and their testimonies? Heard it before! Only one reason why people get spiritually bored!
Spiritual Boredom defined: Knowledge without application eventually becomes boring and unfulfilling – every time!
If all you do is sit and listen, listen and listen again to the Word of God without ever taking steps to apply it to your life, you will eventually get to a place where you have heard, heard, have heard it again. So much of the Word, that you are sick of hearing it! Instead of anticipating hearing from the Lord, it will be “oh no, not another sermon!”
A bit exaggerated you may think, but do you find yourself never actually finishing a book of the bible that you started reading? Do you find that a book about quiet times or some aspect of spiritual growth, never gets finished and you find you have set it aside to pick up another? Perhaps you are regularly browsing the Christian bookshop, just looking to find someone who is coming from a new angle, new aspect, anything, just let it be new! Or perhaps you go from one Christian novel to another, never actually reading the stories referred to in the bible, but looking for some new entertainment to while away some hours.
Do you find yourself not wanting to go to church, or visiting other churches just to spice up your Christian walk a little bit? Do you find a gathering of Christians boring, or someone who shares a testimony hard to listen to? These are some of the symptoms of spiritual boredom.
If the word of God is unfulfilling and without meaning then perhaps you are spiritually bored. I have been bored and it took a hard look at myself to realize that a pattern in my life had settled in. James warns us clearly: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive ourselves. Do what it says!” James 1:22 (NLT)
The problem is not the Word! The problem is knowledge without application is boring! God’s word is meant to be acted upon. We deceive ourselves when we build knowledge without applying it to our lives.
Here is a truth:
If you would simply do what you have already been told to do from scripture, in other words, that which you already understand from scripture, you won’t have time to be bored! According to Rick Renner in Sparkling Gems of the Greek, applying the Word we already know into our lives will require from us:
- A considered and purposeful prayer life…
- Great personal discipline…
- It will demand that we learn to crucify our own wants and needs, and…
- Be obedient to walking like Our Lord wants us to, this will require every ounce of focus we have got.
You will be so busy trying to obey what you have already received from the Lord, you won’t have time to be bored!
Perhaps in your own spiritual life, the problem is not what you believe; the problem is not how much of the word you have been exposed to. The problem is that you have allowed yourself to get bored by not applying to your life the knowledge you have gained.
Perhaps the reason you have not observed much of God’s power in your life, is that you haven’t applied His principles to your life.
Lord, I confess that I have not been paying attention to how I am implementing your Word in my life. Neither have I creatively found ways to start implementing personal discipline into my life. I have allowed myself to get bored with You and your word because I have not responded to it. Please forgive me. Help me identify what I know I need to address right now and start aligning my life to what I already know about Your Word.
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