Where Has All The Excitement Gone?

I love roller coasters. The jubilant feelings of waiting in line and the excitement that builds up while I wait. And after riding the roller coaster, I want to tell all my friends about how great it was and how badly I want to ride again. If you’ve ever ridden a roller coaster, you know what I’m talking about. Thousands upon thousands of people flock to amusement parks every year to experience these same feelings and embrace this same excitement.

But, where has this excitement for Jesus and His church gone?

The Bible says in Mark 7:36-37, “Jesus urged them [the people of the town] to keep it quiet, but they talked it up all the more, beside themselves with excitement. ‘He's done it all and done it well. He gives hearing to the deaf, speech to the speechless.’”

In the passage above, Jesus has just performed miracles, healing the deaf and the mute in front of the multitudes. Then something interesting happens, He urges them to shut up! However, the multitudes keep talking about it even more, professing their excitement to anyone and every one around them. They just couldn’t hold back their urge to talk about Jesus and all His goodness because they saw it first hand!

What has stopped us from being as excited for Jesus and His church? The answer lies in where we place our excitement – in what we are excited about and why.

This past summer our youth group Generation Next went to a youth conference in Georgia; it was an amazing, Spirit-filled experience that left our entire youth group and leaders with an excitement for Jesus. Unfortunately, after a month or so that excitement dwindled and the passion for Jesus that was so consuming burned out. As I recall on my own excitement, I noticed that I relied more on a conference to change me than Jesus. My passion was more about going back each summer to rekindle that fire than fanning the flames and increasing it through the year. My point here is that when Jesus becomes the source of your excitement, it well never be exasperated because your faith and hope comes from an everlasting God who continually shows His power and goodness like he did to the multitudes in Mark.

If we implement this knowledge into our everyday lives – if we base our excitement in Jesus and what He has done for us on the cross, our circumstances won’t dictate how much excitement we have for Jesus. No amount of time will diminish our passion because we are connected to an unquenchable source. The enemy will try to do everything he can to steal your joy, believe me! He knows that if we get excited about Jesus circumstances won’t affect our steadfast faith, but he also knows that if we are not rooted in Jesus circumstances lead us to exhaustion and tirelessness.

This leads me too my next point, for most Christians, myself included, church becomes an exhausting ritual and quickly fades. I have seen many Christians come to church like Jesus never died on the cross, never broke the chains of death, and never rose again on the third day. Cheer up! Jesus lives and when we come to church it is a sincere testament that what He did is true. In essence, church should be the happiest place on earth where lives are healed, the lost are found, and the captive are liberated.

Even if you don’t see God’s miracles at this stage in your life or if you are looking at a one-way road down the avenue of disappointment, you can still rejoice knowing that God has everything in position to bless you tremendously, that Jesus already paid every price for us to be alive in Him, and that our sins and inadequacies are wiped away. This should get you excited!

The best feeling in life is not riding a roller coaster, despite how much we love it; the best feeling is when we don’t allow situations in life, big or small, to determine the precious value of our excitement. Walk around knowing that God’s divine, supernatural, and all knowing favor is on you – you have a reason to jump, dance, and shout! We are chosen; let’s act like it!

Why You Slumpin'

Slump - To fall or sink heavily; collapse

What does a slump look like? In baseball, a slump means that you go a certain amount of at bats without hitting the ball, thus keeping you from moving forward to the next base.

Slumps can happen in our walks with Christ too, and they function in a similar fashion. A slump occurs when we Christians go through seasons in life where it seems like we can’t do anything right or like we’re stuck in one place spiritually fighting off the same struggles that we always have been. Well then, how do we maneuver our way out of a slump?

When a coach notices “A player in a slump”, he keeps the player out for a couple of games to better his technique and climb out of the slump.

The Bible says something similar in Matthew 11:28, when Jesus says, “Come to me all who are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest”. This feeling of being burdened and heavy laden is an even better way of defining the slump. The first three words of this verse are “Come to me.” When we are graveled under burdens and a heavy heart, Jesus instructs us to simply but effectively go to him. If you are experiencing a “slump” you easily slip in to a routine, slump on Saturday, go to Jesus on Sunday, and back to slumpin' on Monday. For the ones who enjoy this routine you can stop here, but for those who don’t – keep reading.

The last step you must take in order to live a slump-free life is preventing the slump. Preventing the slump in my opinion is the toughest part of the process. Preventing “The Slump” means discovering the root of the problem and uprooting it so that its negative influence over you ceases. Unfortunately, people quiver at thought of changing themselves even when it is for the better because, believe it or not, it requires effort. Yes, I said it! Don’t hate me for it, but it’s true! An effective Christian life requires effort! Effort to remove yourself from compromising situations, effort to grow in our knowledge of God, and effort to reject the slump immediately when it comes at our doorstep.

I will be honest; this seems like something tiresome and unchanging. Many of us sometimes, myself included, try to follow similar steps in beating our own slump, but we come up empty handed and frustrated. The problem is many of us go into it thinking that we can change ourselves alone. We don’t acknowledge the power and the necessity of grace in our situation. The definition of grace in essence is getting what we don’t deserve. We didn’t deserve to be saved through Jesus’ death on the cross, but by grace, although we had sinned, God “has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation” (Colossians 1:22). In the same way, we can only change ourselves after acknowledging and believing that we need grace. We are only changed when we trust and believe that God is the only one who can change us, and there is freedom in that!

Ultimately, the more we seek a relationship with God, the easier it will be to reject the slump. In the words of worship leader Jeremy Riddle, “sinful choices and attitudes stem from a lack of intimacy with God.” As a result, the more we seek God and develop a relationship with the Father, the more we will want to reject the slump and the more we will walk in His purity and purpose.