OVERCOMING SPIRITUAL BOREDOM

It is God’s plan and pleasure to unlock the divine treasure chest and reveal the beauty of His Son to fulfill our longing for fasci- nation. Even now the way is being made clear for us to see the beauty of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is described as searching or discerning the deep and hidden things of God’s being in order that He may reveal them to us. Invited by the Spirit, guided by the glory of God evident through His creation and His Word, we have the privilege of searching out and discovering an infi- nite God.

But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. (1 Corinthians 2:9-12)

We have a beautiful God beckoning us to encounter His beauty, but we must understand that it takes time and energy to begin plumbing the depths of God. It takes time and energy to pray and fast and study Scripture. Those who expend all their energies in their jobs and ministries, and then in pursuit of en- tertainment and recreation, quickly find themselves depleted. Many of God’s people, well-intentioned people, find themselves without the time or energy to fast, pray or read Scripture. We

cannot throw ourselves headlong into a hundred pursuits at the expense of searching out and experiencing God. We cannot over-saturate our souls with activity. This can only lead to a dull spirit.

In his book, The Evidential Power of Beauty, Thomas Dubay traces the signature of God through the physical world. Rang- ing from the cosmic rotation of planets to the makeup of Earth’s atmosphere, through the wonders of biology on the molecular level and down to the behavior of atomic particles, Dubay sees the revelation of the beauty of God. To read this book with an open heart is to marvel at the intentionality of God and His amazing commitment to beauty. He makes things beautiful be- cause He is beauty. Since His creation speaks of Him, to en- counter these tokens of beauty is to catch a sideways glance at the beautiful God. Consider this, and then imagine the things of God that will exhilarate the human heart throughout eternity.

One of the great problems in the Body of Christ today is that of spiritual boredom. Many churches are made up of people who have been inundated with entertainment and recreation. Pastors feel compelled to compete with the things that grapple for the attention of their flocks. Listening to the Lord becomes secondary to figuring out how they’re going to hold the atro- phied attention of people demanding an instant shot of stimula- tion. A night out at the latest blockbuster movie moves us to tears, but the worship service the next morning does nothing for us, dulled as we are into expecting drive-thru fulfillment, rather than devoting ourselves to eternal fascination. It is tragic how we invest what limited passion we have in things that simply do not satisfy.

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