Choose to live out your beliefs, even if your feelings aren’t cooperating. Your feelings can’t dictate your actions. And the good news is that eventually they’ll catch back up.
2. Invite Others to Keep You Accountable.
The thing about doing something really difficult is that you should never do it alone. So if you find yourself in a situation where you’re feeling spiritually apathetic, don’t struggle alone.
Invite close friends and loved ones to help you through this process. Have them keep you accountable to your goals, whether that’s to your bible reading and prayer goals, or other disciplines you’re trying to cultivate (or habits you’re trying to kill, for that matter).
Ask your accountability partners to check in on you regularly. Choose friends who are both empathetic and disciplined to ask you how you’re feeling and to check in on how you’re doing with your goals.
And this may sound obvious, but don’t lie to your accountability partners. It defeats the entire purpose of making them your accountability partners. Be honest with them, and know that if you have chosen the right people, they won’t make you feel shamed for not being perfect.
As you journey back from spiritual apathy, give yourself grace, and allow yourself to experience the grace that others will give you during this time.
3. Watch out for Sins You’re Holding Onto.
This isn’t always the case, but sometimes the reason you feel distant from God has something to do with the sins and bad habits you have allowed to creep into your life. And the more you give your heart over to sin, the less you have to enjoy God with.
Sin has a way of lulling us away from spiritual things, making us see them as pointless or boring. And before we know it, we’re far further down the road than we ever expected to be. Don’t let that be you. Take stock of what you’re allowing to enter your life. And where necessary, make adjustments.
We have to constantly keep close watch over ourselves, lest we begin to slide. Even, and especially, if we’re in any kind of leadership. This is what Paul tells his young friend, Timothy.
Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. (1 Timothy 4:16)
We’re all prone to temptation. Use this time of searching to begin to root out where you might be giving the enemy a foothold.
4. Don’t Give up.
Perhaps most important in this process of fighting back against spiritual apathy is that we not give up. That’s what our apathy is constantly telling us to do, but we just can’t listen.
