Small business owners who have built successful trades and strong reputations; Teachers and Pastors who are well respected by their classes, congregations and peers; Business Professionals, Attorneys and Physicians who hold the esteem of clients, patients and colleagues: These are just some of the people i have spoken with over the past year or so that have communicated to me that they have lost passion in their lives.
Each of these individuals calls themselves Christian. Personally knowing these individuals, i attest that over the years they have definitely lived determined and faithful lives in service to God. So where has their passion gone? Why have zest, vibrance, vitality and zeal seemingly vanished? Is it due to mid-lifefaith crisis?
Christians are to have a splendid and glorious purpose to live out to extremes in hope and fervor and enthusiasm for all they do. Countless books on Christian living profess a mind-set that should be continually joyous and full of hope, life and laughter. Likewise, this is propagated from the front of churches every weekend.
i sometimes get exasperated at ministers who are all fired up on their platform. When you talk to them one on one their zeal/zest isn’t nearly as vibrant and sometimes altogether missing. It’s like they are putting on a performance or acting when they get in front of a podium, morphing into a divine cheerleader. Because, in fact, that is not real life 24/7.
Many have sought God to find fulfillment. In so doing find initial elation in a newly discovered relationship with The Savior, which over time fades. Disillusioned, many tend to waiver and disregard their faith. Which is indeed an oxymoron, for there is the exact point… it is after all called “FAITH.” Faith is trusting even when you don’t feel like doing so; 
when there may be no sense of emotional connection; or when certainty dims and doubt shines.
The Psalms are filled with songs of pain, frustration, even ambivalence in the midst of faith. Not always happy, joyous dances of praise. Even the Apostles sought that their faith would increase (Luke 17.5).
It is really not worrisome to me that fervency has flickered in the lives of many. Sometimes that’s just life. Because someone doesn’t feel passionately about an issue doesn’t mean they don’t believe or support it either. Real faith holds on in the midst of these circumstances.
Being “lack luster” too is the working out of Faith and Salvation. God is truly continually purposeful towards us, refining us. At times this is through violent surge of flood waters breaking off chunks of our riverside. However, it is most often by erosion, the slow gentle trickle of the ordinary and constant. This is the menial, the average, the mundane of life. Both methods result in a changed landscape: To be better, to build character, to be refined, distinguished, reshaped for His purpose.
Progressive French inventor, apologist and mathematician Blaise Pascal noted, “The power of man’s virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doings.” Sometimes life is simply mundane. It is purposeful enough to live, love and do the right thing. Indeed, God’s purposes and glory are often expressed in our faithfulness in living out the trivial, banal and ordinary aspects and routines of daily life, without the flash or miraculous.
How has your faith/trust in God survived passionless points?
How do you see God working in you through trivial day-to-day tasks?
What have you learned from seasons of ambivalence and doubt?
~End bourgeois~
lifeVertical 