Episode #85—Am I Drifting? Recognising and Recovering from Spiritual Decline

There are seasons in the Christian life that feel like wading through quicksand. The Bible sits unopened. Prayer feels hollow. Church becomes a chore. These are not simply bad weeks—they may be signs of something more serious: a heart growing cold toward God.

But how do we recognise the warning signs of spiritual decline, and what should we do when you find ourselves drifting?

One of the difficulties with spiritual decline is that it tends to blind us to itself. Sin has a way of dulling our perception, so that we may be drifting without even knowing it. This is precisely why we need a church—but more on that shortly. For those with eyes to see, there are several indicators worth examining honestly.

The first question to ask is a simple one: what excites your heart? When you think about how you would like to spend your spare time, do the things of God feature at all? There ought to be some appetite for Scripture, prayer, and worship—not necessarily an all-consuming fervour every moment of every day, but a genuine, recurring hunger. We are, after all, in a spiritual battle, and so that appetite will fluctuate. But if it has disappeared entirely, that is a serious warning sign.

Our thoughts are revealing. Do you ever find your mind wandering, unprompted, to how Scripture might apply to some aspect of your life? Do you think of the Lord when no pastor or preacher is standing before you, calling you to attention? Conversely, do you find yourself increasingly aware of your own sinfulness—or has that sensitivity faded? Our thought life is a window into the state of our hearts.

A useful image here is that of a cup. If you want to drink water, you need something to carry it from the source to your mouth. The means of grace are that cup—the instruments by which the living water of Christ is brought to us. They include prayer, reading and hearing God’s word, meditation, and gathering with the church. The grace itself comes from God; but we are called to make use of the means he has appointed.

So ask yourself, where is your heart in relation to these things? Are you pursuing them? Or have they been quietly set aside?

Is there an area of your life where, if Christ were to stand before you and say, “You need to surrender this,” you would hesitate? Think of the rich young ruler, who had kept the commandments, yet when Jesus said, “Sell all that you have” (Luke 18:22), it was too much. He went away sorrowful.

Often the issue is not that we knowingly cling to something sinful, but that we have convinced ourselves it is not a problem. I can be a Christian and still enjoy this. The test is not whether you enjoy it, but whether you would be willing to let it go if it were required of you.

This is also where other people become significant. It need not be Christ standing visibly before you—it may be a spouse who lovingly points out that something is harming your relationship, or a friend who notes that a habit is affecting your parenting or your engagement with the church. And if your elders or pastors come to you with a concern, it would be foolish to dismiss it. Christ has given them to care for your soul. To wave off their counsel is, in a real sense, to wave off his. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” (Hebrews 13:17).

Pastors, this cuts both ways. Equipping the saints (Ephesians 4:12) sometimes means having difficult conversations. Like Ezekiel the watchman (Ezekiel 33), you may be the instrument of someone’s restoration. Do not shrink back.

First John puts it plainly: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). Are there people in your church toward whom you have hardened your heart? People you have quietly written off, or whom you find yourself resenting or criticising whenever they come to mind? This is an alarm bell. Our love for the visible brothers and sisters is an indicator of our love for the invisible God.

None of this is easy. It is simple enough to list steps, but we do not fight only against our own weakness—we fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil. And there is a further difficulty: You cannot simply pull the right levers and manufacture a warm heart. That warmth is a gift from God, and there are painful seasons where you may do all the right things and still feel cold. Those seasons are the Lord’s way of teaching us that we are utterly dependent on him, not on our own spiritual discipline.

That said, there are things we must do.

As those shaped by the Reformed tradition, we sometimes speak so fluently about grace that we forget we are still sinners. We can slip into thinking that sin is part of our past, now safely covered and no longer really ours. But you are still a sinner. Apart from the covering of the gospel, you still deserve judgement. Meditating honestly on this is often the first step back.

This is not morbid introspection—it is the beginning of gratitude. Honest acknowledgement of sin leads us to marvel afresh at what Christ has done. We see this in the Psalms throughout: The psalmists wrestle openly with God, admitting where they are, why it’s not good, and pleading for God’s help. The law, as Paul writes, drives us to grace (Galatians 3:24). Reflect on your sin, and let it propel you toward thankfulness for Jesus.

Gratitude is transformative. When someone is irritating you, pray for them—and pray with genuine thanksgiving. Something shifts. This principle applies to Bible reading, prayer, and worship. The world talks a great deal about gratitude today, but without an object worthy of it. We actually have something—and someone—to be thankful for.

One of the subtle errors of our age is the idea that doing spiritual things without feeling them is hypocrisy. It is not. Hypocrisy is pretending to others that everything is fine when it is not. Continuing to read your Bible and go to church while honestly telling God that you feel cold is faith. Faith is seeing what God has called you to do and doing it, trusting that he will supply what is lacking. Act like a believer, trusting that God will, in his time, restore the affection.

Pray. Read the word. Fast—it has a way of driving physical hunger into a deeper spiritual hunger. Come to the Lord’s Table, which is a reminder of your sin, of what Christ endured for you, of your standing before God, and of the glory that awaits. These are not merely religious routines; they are the instruments through which grace flows.

A piece of charcoal alone quickly goes cold. Put it back among the other coals, and it burns again. The same is true of us. We are not designed for isolated Christianity. Come back to the gathering of the saints. Let yourself be warmed by the community.

It also helps enormously to spend time with people you want to be like—people whose faith you admire. Read Christian biographies. There is a rich treasury of lives lived faithfully before us, and reading them has the power to rekindle something in us.

Tell someone where you are. Ask them to pray for you. We are not meant to struggle alone, and there is something powerful about naming our spiritual state to a trusted brother or sister. As 1 John 1:8–10 reminds us, to claim we have no sin is to deceive ourselves. Honest confession, in community, is part of the path back.

Finally, remember that this world is not your home. It is a vapour, an opportunity to serve the Lord and make much of his name before we are brought into his presence. When we begin to treat this world as the place where our reputation must be secured and our greatest satisfactions found, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment and drift. Read the passages about future glory. Let the hope of seeing Christ face to face recalibrate your perspective on the present.

If you have read this and recognised yourself in it—if your heart is cold and you know it—then act now. Phone a friend. Open your Bible. Pray, even if the words feel empty. Fast. Come to the Lord’s Table. Gather with the saints. Think carefully about what was preached last Sunday, and let it do its work.

And when you are restored, help someone else find their way back too.