Stuck Points in Spiritual Quicksand......

     

    Christian relationship begins in a wonderful place - The LORD preserves the simple; I was brought low, and He saved me.  (Psalm 116:6 NKJV) Finding the saving Grace of God is thrilling, but that initial exhilaration is unable to sustain a maturing relationship with the Lord. Most Christians experience either plateaus or worse, stuck points. Relationship with the Lord seems to exist in one of two opposing states - advancing or retreating. When we experience a stuck point , the vibrancy of our relationship with Jesus fades into retreat. Many things can cause a stuck point. Today we'll concentrate on three.

Common Christian Stuck Points --                                

• We can get stuck and retreat if we toss the relationship responsibility to God and act as if He is retreating when instead we are.  Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me. (Psalm 139:7-10 NKJV) To be released from the spiritual quicksand of blaming God we need to renew our pursuit of Him. Pursue His Word. Pursue His presence in prayer. Pursue his Grace through fellowship with other Christians.Pursue His mercy and forgiveness for our sins, and pursue His love through worshipping Him.
• We can get stuck and withdraw from God when we sense we have lost the path on our spiritual journey. Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.  Because  narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:11-14 NKJV) If we find ourselves on no particular path we can be certain that God has not put us there. To renew God's call on our lives we need to find silent time with God where the noise of the world is diminished so we can hear in the faint shadowy corners of our hearts His gentle directing voice ordering our footsteps. Instead of retreating from God. we need to retreat to a time of spiritual solitude.
• We can get stuck and retreat into flesh feeding rather than spirit feeding. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. (Romans 7:5-6 NKJV) No bawdier voice exists than that of our flesh. It is demanding, self centered, greedy and lustful and will not tolerate peace. When it claws its way forward in our lives, our spirits wilt. It mutes our prayers, drowns out the Word and quenches the Holy Spirit. Only our daily appeal to the presence of the Spirit of God through prayer and washing in the Word can bind our lustful flesh. To break the back of dominant flesh God has left us the habit of fasting. After just a few days of the spiritual discipline of fasting the flesh retreats and the Spirit can again dominate as God intended. I've heard many Christians say that they can't fast. With rare exception most of them mean that they won't.

   None of these methods are easy, but they are all very simple, designed by the Lord to be easily understood and applied to our lives.

   Are you stuck? Is your relationship with Christ diminishing? God wants you released, refreshed, emboldened and empowered. Don't struggle through your days. When you are in spiritual quicksand, the more you struggle, the deeper you sink.

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