We all know the spiritual crash: a week (or ten days) after a retreat, a revival, or a conference, you plunge into total self-loathing despair. Whatever high you felt during that song, whatever commitments you made at the altar, whatever subpoints you learned from the life of David — it’s like someone yanked them from your soul and pulled the heart out with it. You’re jogging all dandy in the sun and suddenly fall into a manhole of shame.
You know what I’m going to say next: that it doesn’t have to be that way. Except it really doesn’t. Here are five reasons why we experience spiritual crash and how we can not only prevent them, but re-define the “high.” It’s not a quick fix or a comprehensive band-aid, but you’ll know what to expect and where to start.
1) Emotional Persuasion
2) Unrepentant Sin
3) Guilt Minus Grace
4) Fears and Doubts
5) The Wrong Gospel
1) I don’t feel it anymore. — Unfortunately, big events like youth conferences pull a lot of heartstrings. The speaker wields the weapon of emotional persuasion and listeners make decisions based on their feelings. Like a wise pastor once said, emotions make a good caboose but a terrible engine. I like to say that emotions are good tires on a truck but never the fuel.
There’s no doubt that we’re emotional beings and God created us with a spectrum of feelings, every single one for a reason. Emotions can help us get to a place of vulnerability and joy and brokenness with God, but if feelings are the only reason we’re coming to His throne, we won’t be there very long. Feelings are transitory, coming as quick as they leave. It’s the great lie of the century to base all our actions on how we feel.
Ten days later: The common quote after a big event: “I don’t feel like I did at that retreat anymore . . . so something’s wrong with my spiritual life.” That’s a sad expectation of our impact from God’s presence. Of course the emotional component is a pretty big part and no one wants a neutral, intellectual faith. But when emotions run the show and control the thermostat, there will always be disappointment.
How to fix: A right estimation of emotions. They’re the table for the centerpiece, the grease of the chicken, the the oil for the engine (my pastor wit kicking in). Not everyday will feel like a super juiced-up rocked-out light show of happiness. Our love towards God is not merely what swells inside our hearts but is a choice made by the will. Love is a choice. Feelings come and go; our decisions must stick and stay. Remember: Satan hates it when you obey God regardless of your feelings. Next time the emotion-monster rears its emo head and questions your integrity, just know that God loves you and you love God no matter how you feel.
2) I didn’t totally surrender. – At the event, you made some commitments. You promised God you would let go of those idols, those lies, those pursuits in the flesh. But when you leave the bubble world of the retreat back to the open world of temptation, it’s easy to forget the commitments. And so you continue with unrepentant sin.
This is probably the most common cause of spiritual crash and one of the hardest to overcome. Most of us don’t want to stay in sin, but the call of our flesh is so overwhelming that we fall mercy to its fangs. I know it’s not easy: I’m not here to make you feel worse than you already do. But you did make a commitment, and if you’re only half-committed, then expect spiritual crash.
Ten days later: You thought it was done. There was total surrender and repentance and a whole lot of crying at that revival, and now you’re back on that website, back in that relationship, back on that drug, back to gossiping. But this time there’s suffocating guilt. You fall for the lie: I will always just be a mediocre Christian.
How to fix: Most big events are bad about accountability. There’s almost never any follow-up from counselors, pastors, leaders. You need a friend or a mentor to keep you in check, someone who won’t let you off the hook, someone who is straight up biblical with you. So be upfront about your problems, make a battle plan, be serious about it.
Even with all that you’re still guaranteed to mess up a little, at least from the start. If you remember your first bike ride, your first math problem, your first job, you didn’t start off so well. Don’t be discouraged: take heart. Pray for the Holy Spirit to work, and even more than that, pray for the desire to overcome. It’s not that you have to or even want to overcome, but you get to. Carrying the cross is about denying yourself and staying humble before Him.
3) I messed up real bad. – This might sound like unrepentant sin but it’s really more of a perspective problem. At those big events we sometimes see our chains for the first time: that’s your sin, the bondage. Then we forget to take the chains off. This is guilt minus the grace. It’s the fast track to legalism, a religious life of proper conduct under the fear of punishment. The slightest misstep puts us under a self-evaluation of shame. We equate “forgetting to do QT” with “dropping a baby on its head.” If you’re there, you forgot to move from guilt to graciousness.
Ten days later: You’ve bought all the good Christian books, found five awesome podcasts, got into the Christian music scene, and you got that awesome Fire Bible Student Edition. But it’s all a manic rush and you feel like you have to do these things or else God will slap you in the face.
How to fix: Your sin is big but God is bigger. The magnitude of God’s grace has covered our offenses. Even more than that, He wants a relationship with you. Not a get-up-at-five-in-the-morning everyday and salute Him with a memorized prayer (thought that’s awesome if you do that), but a real dynamic loving relationship. If you embraced Him, it’s time to be dead to sin but alive to Christ — yeah, I just Romans 6:11ed you.
The Christian life is not all solemness and misery; you don’t need to be a monk to honor Him. There is joy in serving, not in the serving but in who we’re serving. I heard once in a sermon: it’s not so much what you do for Jesus Christ but what you do when you’re with Jesus Christ. Spend some time alone with God and really learn to love Him.
4) Fear and self-loathing in El Crisis. – Forgive the corny title (you have to forgive me anyway). It’s all safe and sound in the bubble world of Christians, but back in the real world people are haters, liars, thieves, and out to get you. You and me included. It’s jarring to get God’s love because you go back to a world that doesn’t have much of it. They beat you up: “Oh you think you’re different? You’re changed? Give it a week, we’ll see what’s what.”
The doubt creeps in, the fear, the loathing. Some of us run to the extreme of self-righteous judgment: criticizing those who didn’t go where you went, who didn’t see what you saw. This is more or less compounded by a crisis moment, when you’re hit with an extra spicy trial. Job gone, wife sick, exam failed, kids in jail, car accident. It’s life catching up. And you ask, “Why God? Why do I suffer?”
Ten days later: “I thought after I committed to You, life would be awesome. But my family’s the same, work is the same, school is the same, I’m still bankrupt, and that car I prayed for isn’t showing up on my driveway. I’m starting to doubt You exist and I’m afraid to tell people about You. Plus all these new problems have come up and …” Life usually gets even harder after Jesus Christ. The mockery, the scoffing, the conflicts at church, the spiritual attacks — there’s a lot aimed our way.
How to fix: I know: it’s callous to say that God never promises an easy life. Even though it’s true, God also promises the toolbox of His Word to get you through the best and worst of things. God also promises Himself. He is with us; what can be against us? Fear and doubts will happen but that’s the faith part, the trusting in God. In crisis moments, in those doubts and fears, we do what we can by the empowering of the Holy Spirit and surrender to God in the impossible.
5) The wrong gospel. – So you prayed a prayer, repeated some words, accepted Jesus into your heart. You got the soft sugarcoated gospel of love and peace and happiness. Jesus, just one more thing inside your heart there. Maybe make room for him next to my porn and my anger. I could fit Jesus between my lunch appointment and afternoon jog. He’s the happy machine, the self-help feel-good wisdom-proclaiming therapist. Some call this Prosperity Theology: I’m saved from my problems, I’ll get the money, I’ll taste the rainbow. Smiles with Jesus, my homeboy and and roommate and housemaid who cleans up after me.
Ten days later: This is the worst sort of spiritual high. It crashes and burns like an exploding jet delivering gasoline and fireworks. Sometimes it even goes the opposite way and retains a high for a long time because of all the happy-happy feel-good stuff, but in the end it leads to major disappointment. When the fake gospel promises you a totally changed life based on circumstance and doesn’t deliver, you’ll barely crawl out of the mess you made.
How to fix: This could be prevented easily but the modern church has been fronting this fake gospel stuff for a while now. It’s easy to expose this: the first and most obvious aspect of the gospel is sin. Because of sin we deserve infinite punishment; without that realization of great sin, there is no great savior.
A soft gospel will only talk about God’s love with romantic language and pampering anecdotes. The real gospel is in the cross, the blood of Jesus Christ, the sacrifice made for we undeserving sinners. That’s the real picture of grace. Did you get it? Did you get the truth?
Bible Passages To Get You Through:
The Parable of the Sower: The Four Seeds
The Wise and Foolish Builders: Our Rock In The Storms
Jesus: The Vine and the Branches
David’s Prayer of Confession After His Adultery and Murder
