Break off the funk

Do you ever feel like your passion and zeal for the Lord or vision for your life is a million miles away and a distant memory from yesterday? Do you ever wonder why many times you can go to bed feeling completely fine but then wake up just a few hours later feeling completely uninspired about your relationship with the Lord and somewhat despaired or confused about life in general?

These kinds of feelings and emotions are tricky because many times these feelings come from an attack of the enemy, or maybe unrepentant sin, or because the Holy Spirit is gently tugging on our hearts saying, “Hey, it’s been a while since you’ve talked to me and that’s why you’re feeling this way!” However, there are also time’s when we just feel that way simply because that’s the way life is!!

If we think about it, it actually makes sense. We are made in the image of God and were originally made to live on the earth in paradise. But a simple look around makes it clear that we’re very far away from paradise. So as we live as aliens and strangers in this age it does make sense that there might be some discontentedness sometimes and some ups and downs that we might experience in our emotions.

This took me a while to understand this because I grew up hearing preachers declare from the pulpit with zeal about how I should be feeling the Lord in this perpetual state. This gave me an unrealistic expectation. Then when I wouldn’t feel Him I ended up condemning myself and thinking that God was angry at me which in turn drove me further away from the Lord. The truth is that there will be many times in this age when we don’t feel the Lord!

My point is NOT that we settle for this state - quite the contrary actually. My point is that we would feel empowered to press through these feelings of dullness and not run the other way because we feel shame that we haven’t lived up to the expectations of what we heard we were ‘supposed’ to be feeling.

Now just to be clear, many times it is our sin that can keep our hearts from connecting with the Lord, and many times we’re feeling the attack of the enemy against our life. But there are also just the times when we’re just in a funk and we need to recognize it and pray and press into the Lord until it lifts. It was incredibly helpful to me when I realized several years ago that believers are all the same in that we all feel mundane at different times on a near weekly basis.

I want to draw out a point made in the book of Galatians because I believe the same principle applies here. Galatians 5:16 says, “Walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of your flesh.” The promise given to believers here is that if we talk to (or walk in) the Spirit on a consistent basis that we will not fulfill the sinful desires that are in our hearts.

The truth I want to highlight here is that Paul never says you won’t HAVE the lust of the flesh to deal with. He simply says that you will not FULFILL them. I believe the same to be true with us and the mundane feelings that we many times feel. Because even if we have a vibrant relationship with the Holy Spirit, many times we will still feel the curse of the fall in the form of mundane emotions or lack of vision for our life – but we don’t have to dwell and remain in that place and we can rise up quickly.

The key is to recognize when we’re feeling these emotions and instead of condemning ourselves and agreeing with these negative emotions and getting oppressed for three or four days, we rise up and war against them! As I’ve been paying attention to these feelings in my own life for the past few years I’ve found that they usually hit me in the morning when I first get up or in the afternoon or what I like to call the “afternoon slump”.

I encourage you to ask the Lord to begin giving you divine insight into what you’re feeling and why you're feeling it. Ask the Spirit to help you break out off the ‘funk’ that you’re experiencing and that you would feel power on your heart (Ps. 84:6-7; 2 Cor. 3:18). Though many times I don’t feel inspired to pray my way out of these feelings, still I will gently say out loud to the Lord “Thank you for divine inspiration of Your Holy Spirit on my heart.” Sometimes after five minutes it lifts, other times you’ll have to stick with it for an hour or longer, but I promise you that it will lift and you will feel such inspiration on your heart to press into the Lord with a fresh zeal.

Thank You God that you are my strength and though my flesh and my heart may fail me, You are the strength of my heart, and my portion forever. (Psalm. 73:26)

© 2010 Justin Rizzo