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Do you feel like reading your Bible is just another thing you have to do every day? Are you thinking about how you haven’t prayed in awhile and you have no desire to do it? Sometimes we can fall into a routine of contentment where we’re just living our lives, not really growing in our relationships with God. Here are five ways to get out of this zone of thinking and to start desiring gotten.

Today we’re going to dive into six ways to build a passion for God when you feel stuck going through the motions. Recently I’ve gotten a lot of text messages and emails about this because a lot of girls are feeling like they’re just reading the Bible because they have to. It’s on their to do list. It’s something that most good Christians do. It’s like a requirement of the day.

I totally understand that feeling. Sometimes the church makes it seem like we have to do things in a specific way in a specific order in our day. When, in reality, growing with God and having a relationship with him and desiring to be with him doesn’t have to be on our checklist. It can literally be in the background of every day and just constantly happening.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be something that we make into part of our checklist. Sometimes we just don’t feel like doing it. We just don’t feel like sitting and reading the Bible or praying. It can be for a lot of different reasons.

It can be because we desire to do other things more. It can be because we haven’t heard from God in a long time and sitting there trying is not going to lead to anything. It can feel like a waste of time. I completely understand this feeling like totally. I feel like all believers understand this feeling to a certain extent.

Of course some people struggle with it more in certain seasons of life than others, which is like the mountain highs and the valleys of life. It just changes. And so I want to share a little bit about my testimony, which I shared in a different post. Just to go into a little bit of how I grew up and my desire to grow with God.

Building a Passion for God is Flipping Hard

So when I was 16, I became a believer. I was at this summer camp and it was a time where everybody was praying. And in that moment I felt for the first time God was speaking to me. And when I felt that, when I understood that he was real, that everything that I had heard about him, everything that the church taught about him was all true. It moved from my head to my heart, which is totally cliche, but you know what I mean? I completely believed it and it connected me with God. And so ever since then really I’ve had this deep desire to grow with him more because I understood who he was.

Sometimes I struggle with it. I mean I have my bad days, like anybody else has their bad days, but ultimately I desire to grow with God. I desire to live out his will and I desire to follow his teachings and his commandments. It’s not so much about the rules but about what God’s laid out for me to live an abundant life.

All of his laws and commandments are foundation for us to be healthy humans the way that God created us to live. That’s my underlying belief about that in scripture and seeing it that way also makes it easier versus seeing God as someone who is telling us what to do and trying to make us live a certain way.

One of the ways that I also desire God is that I figured out what specific spiritual discipline I really am gifted in and desire and love and that for me is reading scripture and studying the Bible like that is my favorite thing to do. I write about it all the time. If you’re looking for tips and tricks, I’ll leave the links below, but I love spending time in scripture that’s the easiest way for me to sit and spend time with him and to hear from him.

8 Steps to Reading the Bible Confidently as a Beginner

But I know I have other friends who prayer is their easiest or some people like meditating, worship, there’s so many different ways that we can connect with God and feel really close to him. Just discovering what our unique way of doing that is and what our specific personality and giftings are can make it easier to desire him. Soon I’ll release a podcast that dives into the 12 spiritual disciplines so that you can hear a few new ideas to spend time with God, but today we are going to dive into six ways you can build a passion for God.

#1 Remember when you First Met Him

When we originally meet God and connect with him and start to believe that he is real, usually that’s a mountain top experience. It’s like one of those really emotional, really life changing like huge events in our lives.

Sometimes it’s eventful. Sometimes it’s not. You know, everybody’s different. Mine was at camp and that experience of when I like finally understood who he was and that he was real for you, it could have been something simpler. It could have been at church and just as simple feeling and understanding and knowing that he’s real, it comes differently. But remembering and sitting in how you felt in that original moment of, Aha, it can change your mind now I can remind you of who he is and that original desire you had a can grow that back too.

The original passion and motivation is there. Sometimes it’s just sitting in reliving that, asking him to show up and show you in life today and help you move past the feeling of being stuck and not desiring him. A couple of other tricks that I’ve used to remember that experience is reading my old journals cause I totally was a journaler, definitely been a journaler for a couple of years more consistent in college but definitely had some very embarrassing journals when I was in high school and they are currently in my room.

Another way you can is to ask a friend who was there in that season of life with you. Like my mom, I would probably go to my mom and ask her because she, when I came home from camp, I can tell you I felt different and I can tell you, she could tell I was a little different than I was before.

I was a believer before. I lived out the faith, I did the right things. But at that point the love and understanding of who God was came out in a different way. And so I know my mom could help me and just tell me what she saw and remind me of that original passion I had for him and how awesome he is.

#2 Explore Who you Think God Is

The next step is a little bit more looking at yourself and asking yourself some questions about what you believe about God. So number two, explore who you think God is. So I feel like this is something I’ve come across a lot and I do it sometimes too.

We can miss identified God so easily.

We can make him seem a little bit more human than he is since he’s perfect. We can connect with the human level of Him because that’s what we’re used to. That’s what we know, that’s who we are and so we’ll make him seem like something that we’re familiar with versus sitting in who he is, which can be unfamiliar because he’s so perfect. We can’t comprehend that.

But when we align what our beliefs of who God is with what scripture says and who He actually is, then we have a better picture of God’s character. We can then connect with him on a relational level because that’s essentially what we’re trying to do.

We’re trying to grow in our relationship with God and we’re trying to build the desire to grow in that just like we would anybody else. Just like we would go sit with a new friend and talk over coffee and ask them questions about themselves and learn about their character. And then we feel drawn to certain aspects of them.

That’s what we have to do with God because he is based in character traits that doesn’t change. He is love and he is faithful and he is steadfast and seeking us. We just have to remember his character because then we actually will start to desire to know him more and better because of who he is. Who we think God is, will determine how we feel towards him. So we have to explore those aspects of it and how we specifically view him, not how other people view him or how we’re suppose to view him. But how we actually view him.

So for an example, if you view him as love, he will seem loving. If we remember everything he ever did is rooted in his love for us and for his creation and for us as a whole and our healthiness and our wholeness. He will seem like a loving father. But if we see him as demanding our obedience, then we’ll see him more as a dictator. Or if we see him as a god who is just waiting for us to mess up, then we’ll see him more as a judge.

So for you to be able to really figure out how you view God, you have to sit in silence and you have to really think about it. Think about the emotions that you feel towards him. Think about how he has shown up in your life recently and how that’s made you feel.

Think about all of those things and just meditate on it awhile and then write down a few character traits of how you feel about God. That way you can figure out where you’ve missed identified him because that can be a clear, clear, clear block that stops you from desiring God.

#3 Rediscover who God actually is in Scripture

So I’m going to leave down a link below that’s 15 bible verses about who God is. So when you get the chance, sit and go through these scriptures and see if they align with how you’re choosing to identify and God. Now, are those character traits lining up with who you think he is? Is it accurate? According to scripture, scripture is our truth. It is our tangible way of seeing and hearing from God and getting answers to questions that we have.

So it makes sense it’d be a place that we would go, especially to learn about who God is. Because literally within every story of scripture is an explanation, a character trait, and an expression of who God is. So let’s dive into scripture to figure out who we need to be identifying him as.

15 Scriptures about who God is

#4 Ask God to put a Passion and Desire in You

On to number four, ask God to put a passion and desire in you. Why don’t we turn to him faster. I have no idea. I do it all the time. I always forget he’s there, but he can come in and help us and build this desire and passion for him in us. We just have to ask him for help.

Sometimes simply asking God for something seems almost too simple, but if you don’t ask, you don’t receive, so it’s worth giving it a try. Just ask him and see what he does.

Be observant and be open to what he’s trying to show you. I promise he’ll show up. I promise. I promise.

#5 Seek Him in a New Way

If you typically read your Bible, try praying. If you usually pray, try meditating. I personally love meditating. Every time I talk about meditation, I always think crossing your legs and sitting Indian style on the floor, that’s always what I picture. But you don’t have to do that to meditate.

Meditating on who God is is in scripture. So there’s an app. I absolutely love it. It’s called Abide and it has Christian guided meditations and they have a lot of different topics and they even have ones that are on sleep, which is what I typically use when I go to bed. It can be 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes or an hour for the sleep ones specifically. And so I’ll just turn that on and I’ll listen to it as I fall asleep.

Meditation can be something you try or if you don’t like to journal, try writing your thoughts out to God. So instead of your typical way of praying or reading your Bible, try taking out your notebook and writing out a prayer to God and being very specific about what you tell him and what you ask from him.

Another way is if you haven’t volunteered to serve others in awhile, try doing that. It can be a eye opening experience. It can be so life giving and telling of your personal gifts and talents when you go to serve other people because it is pushing you usually outside your comfort zone a little bit. Also outside of your normal realm of the way things work and it shows you what’s going on in your community, what’s going on in your church and where needs are.

#6 See Him Anyway

Okay. Now number six, the final way to break that stuck feeling of I have to spend time with God is to seek him anyway. It’s a nice thought that every day of our lives we’ll actually desire to seek God, but it isn’t true. I don’t know anybody that actually says I 100% of the time want to seek God above everything else and spend all my time with him.

Most of the time our flesh will come in and try to deter us from that and we have to seek him anyway. We have to get up in the morning and spend time with him. We have to pray when we don’t feel like it and we have to just seek him. I promise. I promise he will show up. Especially if we’re consistent and we’re desiring him and we’re open to him.

He will show up. So you have to try seeking him anyway and then try it again tomorrow and then do it again the next day. It has to be consistent. Consistency will open the door for God to speak and when he does, you’ll never want him to stop. It is so, so cool how that works. So cool. So for number six, seek him anyway.

All right friends, that’s it. That’s the six ways to keep seeking God and build a passion for him. Even when you feel stuck going through the motions. I am just getting started talking about this topic and there will be so much more fun stuff coming soon about this too.

Tell me are you passionate about seeking God right now?