In Search of a Spiritual High by Andy McDonald

The one consistency I have found in myself and fellow humans is that we are inconsistent with great consistency. Nowhere is that more evident than in the life of devotion to God. Each year, or post each excursion into sin, we make a new pledge to spend time with God and his word. For those who follow through, there is an initial “high”. To be in the presence of the God who forgives, loves and restores—the God of grace, is exhilarating.

For those who have been there before, even in the ecstasy of the moment with God, there is a far off rumble – the sense that this will not last. A fear that the excitement and thrill of grace will wane, our commitment to time with God and his word will waffle, and at some point we will withdraw from our exercise of devotion.

It isn’t unlike any other human promise. Whether dieting or exercise, study or hobby development, at some point the joy – the vision of what might be – fades. We move on to new challenges or enter a mood of depression from our failures.

An illustration of this could be intimacy with one’s spouse. There is a clear sense of oneness and bonding when a husband and wife share the pleasures of sexual intimacy culminating in the “high” of oneness. In too many relationships, this sexual intimacy high becomes the focus and the primary, if not sole, moment of intimacy.

In contrast, the healthy couple realizes that this special intimate moment is just that – a moment in the larger picture. To expect any relationship to feel that way 24/7 is not realistic. Yet that is what too many new and old Christians alike expect from their relationship with God—that it must nearly consume them in the joy of oneness from spending time together in devotion.

Such expectations are absurd and unrealistic. These expectations set us up for discouragement and failure. It moves us toward a dissatisfaction of anything relationally less than a spiritual high. Our relationship with God varies. During Jesus’ time on this earth his relationship with God varied. It was never disconnected, but different. When Jesus is alone with his Father on the mountain, the intensity of their relationship was different from at the cross, or garden, or even the transfiguration. Certainly every prayer prayed by Jesus was not the same as the one in John 17. Never out of contact or out of the will of the Father, but the intensity of relationship would change. Life has rhythm with high and low points even in the life consistently connected to God.

To operate with unrealistic expectations of our relationship with God will sabotage the development of true intimacy. Intimacy is created from the ebb and flow, the closeness and distance, the in-your-face awareness and the sense of aloneness, the reuniting, and both the casual and deep conversations. It is not created from just the wonderful, overwhelming, brief and fleeting as they are, moments of spiritual ecstasy.

The Christian life—a growing relationship with Christ—is more like watching an oak tree grow rather than corn. Change is happening – there are dryer years and wetter ones. Storms, fires, and floods come and go. Measured against last year, the growth may seem insignificant but we are still growing.

Knowing dry times will come helps us not presume we are in the desert, but only that there is no special rain today. It will return as we continue to build a depth of everyday friendship that does not rely just on moments of ecstasy for its validation. We are God’s children. On rainy days, feeling refreshed by the Spirit, we are God’s children. In those times when it feels as if our prayers don’t reach the ceiling and we are living in a dust bowl of spiritual dryness, still we are God’s children. The good news is that, once we offer Jesus our lives, we are his regardless of the spiritual climate.

Andy McDonald