At a standstill? Embrace it

Seasons of stagnancy come to us all: in our work, in our relationships, in our personal goals, and in our spiritual lives.

We can all be prone to feeling apathy, dissatisfaction, and a sense of standstill. Can you remember a time when you felt stuck in a rut?

We feel the frustration with the process not tending to progress, and with ourselves for not being able to get going and motivated to change old patterns for healthier, or holier ones. Despite all attempts at new routines, despite renewed vigour or activism, there remains little measure of success, progress, or gain in our lives.

We implement the suggestions from the productivity podcasts, yet work remains banal. We supplement with the latest vitamins and our energy levels and fitness remain stubbornly low. We spend more time spent volunteering at church, and yet our hearts and souls stay troublingly cold: stuck in a rut; at a standstill.

What's the next step when all steps have been taken?

Maybe, with our spiritual progress, the solution looks a bit like the problem. The solution to our standstill is just that - to stand and be still: to stand still.

The Lord's work in the Lord's way

Has activism unwittingly become the perpetrator of our apathy and the antithesis to true work and progress? Has our self-dependency become the distraction that has steered us away from our work? You see, our work is never really our own, but always the Lord’s.

Even when we consider our church "work," have we forgotten the truth that it is the Lord’s work we are seeking to accomplish?

In forging our own paths, in our deep dive into activism and eagerness to do His work, have we been so intent on pressing on, striving towards the goal, that we have missed the point that the Lord’s work can only ever be accomplished in the Lord’s way?

American theologian and philosopher Francis Schaeffer wrote on this, needfully preaching that only by standing still before these two truths - that it is the Lord’s work, and it is the Lord’s way - can we keep in step with The Spirit. We must stand still before the Lord who teaches and shows us His work and His way.

Which way is the Lord's way?

Christ came to show that the way of perfect righteousness and life to the full was not signposted with productivity endeavours or filled to the brim with busyness. Christ came to show a life dependent on and devoted to the Father, and lived to the full for the sake of others. He came to show that the full life was the life willing to be emptied; the life willing to die to self; the life willing to die.

Jesus' saving work was completed when He died and rose again. Still, He gave us work to do: leading others to taste and see that the Lord, His work, and His ways, are always good - this is the work we are all called to do.

The work of servant-living for the sake of others and the path of humility are the only ways to counter the world’s way of progress paved by productivity. The world's way has no place for pausing or for standing:

• Standing before others for long enough to see them as God sees them.
• Standing still before God’s word for long enough that we allow it to be the lens through which we see our true selves and the state of our hearts.
• Standing amid others long enough to plead with the Holy Spirit for the grace and perseverance to overcome our own pain and discomfort.
• Standing long enough to truly listen and hear the sorrow, loss, hopes, and desires, of desperate needy hearts in our world.
• Standing still long enough that we are brought to our knees in humble desperation pleading to the Lord in our incapacity, our inability to bring anything of ourselves, to take another step, or help another do so.
• Standing still before the words and loving actions of Christ Himself.

Because the Lord’s work can only be done in the Lord’s way. We must go forward in the way of humility, of desperation and dependence on The Holy Spirit. As a seed must die in the ground to spring forth fruit, so the work of living for the Lord must be found in the path of death. And what a work it is, and what a life it promises!

The Lord loves to entrust His work to His beloved, redeemed, and precious children.