5 Ways to Jump Start Your Walk With God

I had some car troubles recently. My poor, tired old battery just couldn’t pull its weight anymore, and I had to get jumped by friends and strangers on several occasions. What once worked with ease now needed an additional aid just to get going. I need an influx of power in my car before it was worth a hill of beans.

Does that remind you of your walk with God? What was once a vibrant and passionate love affair is now stale, dry, and burdensome? Time and again, I go through this process of being “on fire” for the Lord, and then out of nowhere I realize I haven’t even been warm for a fortnight. The Christian life is riddled with mountaintop moments of victory, and humbling hauls through valleys that seem to stretch through the horizon.

Having a few tricks up our sleeve to help jump start ourselves back into the water-walking, mountain-moving men and women of faith we are is essential to any Christian that’s going to be sticking around for the long haul. Here’s 5 that I’ve picked up along the way:

Devote At Your Peak Hours

I happen to be a morning person, I spring out of bed happy as a jaybird before the sun even rises. My sweet wife? Not so much. She prefers the solitude of night, and tends to sleep in at every opportunity. So for both of us the idea of a set quiet time at anything other than our “peak” hours is simply not gonna happen. Since I rise and shine so early, I turn into Cinderella’s pumpkin at night. So I get up and spend some time of study and adoration first thing in the morning. If wifey tried that, she’d slug through the motions, but wouldn’t be of much use to anyone for a solid 3 more hours. Traditional Christian culture has told many of us that the only “right” way to do devotions is first thing in the morning. If that’s not working for you, feel free to adjust your devotional time to a better fit for your personality and lifestyle.

Take Up A New Discipline

Admittedly, this is very similar to the “Do Something Different” – but it’s slightly, well, different. There are 12 Spiritual Disciplines, and a renewed focus on any of them might add a new dimension to your walk with God. These 12 Spiritual Disciplines are:

Prayer
Meditation
Fasting
Study
Simplicity
Submission
Solitude
Service
Confession
Guidance
Celebration
Worship

As you can see, there’s plenty of room to work with here – and most of us do not faithfully practice half of these, let alone all of them. There’s ample room for all of us to grow in any one of these arenas. Discipline, it’s the new “in” thing!

Ask God For Help

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If you’re anything like me, you tend to like to do things your own way. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that (at least that’s what I keep telling myself), but when it comes to transformative change in our lives, we need some help from God. Fixing us beat up jars of clay is kind of his specialty. If we could do it all on our own, we wouldn’t really need him, now would we? But sincere prayer of asking for guidance, grace, and direction always yields results. If not immediately, then eventually. How many times, after we’ve tried everything else, do we finally submit and ask God for help? They are manifold. Humble yourself, and ask for the grace needed to love and serve God like you know he deserves. It’ll be the best thing you ever do.