Overcoming Spiritual Slump: A Story of Acedia and How God Can Get You Back in the Game by Lenny Luchetti

Author:Lenny Luchetti [Luchetti, Lenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781628249071
Google: YoN7zgEACAAJ
Publisher: Seedbed Publishing
Published: 2021-06-29T23:38:20.532520+00:00

Breaking Good

Honestly, denial is an easier, less painful road than disgust. When we begin to feel initial disgust, detesting our slump, we are tempted to run and numb the pain in the palace of pleasures. At first, that’s what King David did. We are tempted to look for any Bathsheba we can find to distract us from the brokenness we begin to sense. The Bathsheba can be eating, napping, shopping, viewing, scrolling, drinking, overworking—you name it! These escapes might provide short-term relief, but cause long-term destruction. If we access the grace to lean into the brokenness caused by disgust for the slump, we will “grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ” (Eph. 4:15 NASB).

The more we glimpse the powerful beauty of God’s chesed (unfailing love) and racham (great compassion), the more likely we will overcome the slump and get back on a spiritual streak again. We need a Psalm 51 moment when we are simultaneously and acutely aware of God’s love and our sin. It’s a love-hate moment. Intensity of love from and for God fuels an intensity of hatred for our sin. This is brokenness.

Breaking Bad is not just a TV show about a chemistry teacher turned drug dealer; it’s a reality for many who, when broken, go off the deep end. But, when the love of God is central, there is such a thing as breaking good. In Psalm 51:17, David writes: “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” The Hebrew word David used twice here for “broken” is shabar. The word picture in the ancient Hebrew mind is the grain in the millstone being crushed to burst out the seeds from the hulls. Brokenness brings new life that makes us whole again. Breaking is good!

Brokenness is the wilderness that transformed Hebrew slaves into a holy nation. Brokenness is the gap between crucifixion and resurrection: the three days of disappointment, denial, and disgust that transformed odorous fisherman into apostolic leaders. Brokenness is the act that turned common bread into Christ’s body. Brokenness has the potential to transform ordinary slumpers into extraordinary sluggers. That is, if we let the hands of Christ lovingly break us like bread.

No pain, no gain. If you feel sick in your stomach because of your sin, take heart, you are heading in the right direction, out of the slump. If the stench of your sin is nagging at you, so much that you are ready to make necessary changes to grow spiritually, you are heading out of the spiritual slump. If you find yourself so remorseful that you are beginning to have hypersensitivity to sin again, like you did when you first fell in love with Christ, then you are heading out of the slump.

Adam Dunn was a superb baseball player for ten years. He averaged thirty-five homeruns per season and hit at least forty homers in a season five years in a row. But then he dropped to eleven home runs, batted .

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