Highs and Lows
andy,
I thought I would drop you a quick word on the highs and
lows associated with really entering this walk with God. I
noticed in your email to me that you were having some of these
fluctuations.
1. First of all, these
fluctuations are actually normal. Don’t beat yourself up over
these lows or dips when they do come. We humans are imperfect
and are thus not capable of reaching complete and total
perfection like God. There is no way everyone can maintain a
perfect high all the time.
God knows this and accepts these lows when they do come. The
only thing that He asks is that you never have these lows knock
you out of the game. The best analogy I can give you is the
professional baseball player.
Every professional ball player will occasionally go into a
slump. However, what they don’t do is get mad, quit, and walk
off the playing field. They know that these lows or slumps will
occasionally occur. They simply keep playing the game, keep
taking their turn at bat, and sooner or later they are back
into their regular flow and are flying high again.
2. We all live in a fallen and cursed world
because of what happened in the story of Adam and Eve. There
are a million and one things that could cause these lows -
either emotionally or psychologically. Bad things happen all
the time. What matters is how we deal with these
adversities.
You will always have down days and up days. Just
recognize the down days for what they are and don't let
these types of days or seasons shut you down from keeping
yourself progressing with God and with what He wants to do
with your life. The show never stops with Him.
3. As you get further into this walk with the
Lord, you will find the down days actually getting less
frequent and when they do occur, you’ll find yourself bouncing
back up much more quickly than you have in the past. This is
because the Holy Spirit will start to become much stronger on
the inside of you and you will find Him pulling you up very
quickly if you start to sink too low for too long of a period
of time.
Another one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit is to "keep
us." The Bible says that God is our keeper. This means
that God will help keep us emotionally and mentally uplifted
when we do start to sink too far too quickly.
The above also applies to your emotions. Everyone is always
on fire for God when they first get saved and pulled in.
However, after the initial blast wears off, you’ll find your
emotions starting to subside and wind down. Again, this is all
normal. Don’t mistake this gradual winding down of your natural
emotions for really losing your enthusiasm for God.
Again, one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is to keep
your fire lit and going for the Lord. You will start to pick
all of this up as you progress further in your walk with God
and start to really enter into the realm of the Holy
Spirit.
Most of this does not occur overnight. God will work all of
this into you at a pace that He knows that you can comfortably
handle.
What you will find as you progress further in
your walk with God is that your activity level with what He
will do in your life will pick up. It’s God’s job to keep
you stimulated and motivated so you have a desire to want
to keep progressing in your walk with Him.
4. What you may be going through on the above
is how many beginning Christians backslide and eventually drop
out of God’s plan and call for their lives.
Sometimes God will actually test you at times. He will allow
these lows to come, and then He will see if you will stay in
the game with Him or if you’ll bail out on Him like some
newborns do when their initial emotional intensity starts to
subside. This is the time that you have to show God that you
mean serious business with Him. You simply have to tell God
that you are not bailing out, that you will stay the course
with Him, and that you will stay on the path that He now has
you set up on.
The Bible talks about "holding fast to the
Lord" in your walk with Him. This is a major key
principle every Christian needs to get worked into their walk
with the Lord. It will mean the difference as to whether or not
you will end up being successful in the Lord in whatever He
will be calling you to do for Him in this life.
5. One last thing. What you will also find is
that God likes to move in what I call waves. You’ll feel a
leading from the Holy Spirit to spend some time in the Bible.
Then all of a sudden, you’ll feel the anointing come off
reading the Bible and then God will lead you into another book
or two to read. You read those books, and then all of a sudden
you’ll back into reading the Bible again. Then the leading
comes off that, and then God may have you into something else
for a little while.
You only have so much time in a day or week to accomplish
everything that God wants to do with you. The Holy Spirit will
lead you as to what needs to be accomplished on a daily basis.
God will build you up through many different avenues and the
Holy Spirit will be the One to lead you into all of the
appropriate chess moves.
But always remember - the Bible will always remain the
number one source from which you will learn about God and all
of His ways. But just learn to be sensitive to the leadings of
the Holy Spirit as to how much time to spend in each of the
different ways that God will use to build you up in the
knowledge of Him and all of His ways.
I hope the above has helped you out in understanding what I
comically call the rollercoaster ride.
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Trust in the
Lord
Does God Promise Long
Life
How to Handle Negative
Feelings When Wronged by Someone Else
Michael Bradley Bible Teaching and
Bible Commentary,
Over 150 Free Bible
Lessons
Scripture taken from New King James
Version.
Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2005-2008 by Michael Bradley.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
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