Temptation
After I gave in again I stopped wanting to pray or read anything at all. The guilt has killed whatever appetite I had for God.
“Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.”
Hosea preached to a nation that had wandered badly and knew it, and this is the people's own line about going back. What stands out is the direction of travel: they return to the God they assume did the wounding, because they expect the same hand to heal them. Hosea's whole book insists that God's response to unfaithfulness is pursuit rather than withdrawal.
“And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”
Jesus tells this story to religious people scandalized by the company he kept. The younger son's speech is barely rehearsed and his motives are mixed at best, and none of that matters, because the father is already running. The detail that he saw him a great way off implies he had been watching the road for a long time. Return is met before it is finished.
A path forward
Go back before you feel like it, because the appetite returns through the practice rather than ahead of it. Five minutes and one psalm is enough, and waiting until you feel worthy of a longer session just extends the drought.
Pray the honest sentence instead of the polite one: 'I did not want to be here and I came anyway.' God is not startled by that, and it is a real prayer.
Tell one person that you have gone quiet spiritually, not only that you slipped. Withdrawal after failure is the part that does the long term damage, and it is much harder to sustain once somebody knows.
Closing verse
“It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”
- Lamentations 3:22-23
Coming Soon
Want to ask your own question?
Revealed is building a feature that lets you ask anything and receive a Bible-rooted response drawn from both Testaments. Join the waitlist to be first to know when it launches.