One of our parishioners reflected on a recent sermon about not losing zeal in the midst of the busyness of life:
Just wondering if there’s practical ways of thinking about what it looks like to ‘regain zeal’ if you’ve ‘lost it’ … If a person responds by saying ‘I just don’t feel excited about it anymore and I don’t want to go through the motions of serving if it’s not genuine’, where is a good place to start?
I can relate to this challenge. I’m at that stage of life where I have a mortgage and my kids entering their teen years. Many afternoons are spent ‘Ubering’ them to their after-school extra-curricular activities. It’s easy to be so busy and distracted you lose your zeal for the Lord. I wonder why my life isn’t more reflective of the great moments of Scripture. I want to be like David, slaying my personal Goliaths and dancing around the ark of the covenant in exuberant worship. But life has a way of interfering, draining me, tiring me, and making me wonder if I’m really all in for Team Jesus.
The Christian Life Is Like Test Cricket
We too easily forget that the scriptural narrative is a highlights reel of Israel’s history, the life of Jesus, and the early church. It’s like a one-hour recap of a five-day test cricket match. You get to enjoy all the big moments of the match: the fours, the sixes, and all the wickets without the tedium of all the dot balls. The fact is test cricket is mostly dot balls but that doesn’t mean they’re unimportant. It’s just part of the grind of a five-day test match.
There lots of dot balls in the daily grind of the Christian life. But just because I’m not hitting every ball for six doesn’t mean I’m not invested or lacking in zeal. There are times in a test match when players tire and go through the motions. That’s all part of the game. Even in those moments players are doing what they can to win the game. It just isn’t spectacular. In fact it’s often quite dull. So also in the Christian life. But you never know what the next ball will bring, so you must be on your toes waiting to take the God-ordained chances that come your way.
Pruning and Fruitfulness
Another reflection that has helped me come to terms with my fluctuating levels of zeal has come from reflecting on John 15. Jesus portrays himself as the vine and his people as fruitful or unfruitful branches. Jesus’ analogy is a powerful one: vines are generally steady and reliable, drawing nutrition from the ground to feed the branches. But branches go through seasons of growth, harvest, pruning, and rest. The branches of a vine don’t produce grapes all year around. Believers likewise experience times growth and harvest: times of fervour, zeal, and fruitfulness. We also experience down times of pruning and rest: discipline, perseverance and rejuvenation.
These seasons of pruning and rest might seem to lack zeal but are no less important in our walk with God. To borrow from Isaiah 40, sometimes it feels like we soar on eagle’s wings, sometimes it feels like we’re running well; other times we might be trudging or even crawling through the mud. The good news is that God in Christ is faithful, even in the down times. Sometimes the discipline of just showing up is the W for certain seasons. Our zeal might ebb and flow, and we’re called to faithfulness in the daily grind as well as the times of triumph.
In every season of the Christian life, God remains kind and faithful so you can be “confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:6).
