Are you a spiritual loser?

It's fair to assume that most of us have heard a sermon or two (or maybe even hundreds) on the importance of connecting with God.  Often the words used in church are things like "quiet time" or "devotions."  You've heard these sermons with their "magic" formulas that we leave feeling convinced that THIS is what I have been looking for all along.  I will finally get my relationship with God on track.  Here is what it really looks like though:

Day 1: You do it.  You check off that you read and prayed.  Way to go!

Day 2: You do it again.  Well done!  Connecting with God is easy, right?

Day 3: You have a "quiet time" for a third day in a row.  Now you're AWESOME!  Well, kind of, but since you read so fast, you don't really remember anything an hour later.

Day 4: You want to do it, but you're so tired that you tell yourself you'll do it later in the day...but you don't.  It was a long day, and now your favorite show is on TV.

Day 5: It's Sunday, so you have yourself a "bye day," because church is basically an extended quiet time where you're getting spiritually filled.  You'll get back on track with your new disciplines tomorrow morning.  (Plus, Monday is the same day you always start your new diet.)

Day 6: Monday.  Too tired after a long weekend.  Need the extra sleep.  Hit snooze button.  Feel a little guilty, but the tiredness drowns out the guilt.

Day 7 and following: During the next week or so, you find some victory with your program, but you meet more defeat.  Guilt reemerges because you're not as consistent as you want to be.  Even when you do connect with God, you're tired and unfocused.  It feels more forced, more like obligation than desire.  You're just going through the motions in order to check off that box that will haunt you if it's empty.

Sound familiar?  I know that there has been more than one time in my life, even recently, where that EXACTLY describes my "spiritual life."  It is things like this that makes me feel like a spiritual loser.  I just can't seem to get it right.

Tomorrow, I'll come back and tie this up with what Doug Fields suggests that we do so that we stop feeling like a "Spiritual Loser."

[Thoughts in this post are inspired by Doug Fields' new book titled REFUEL]