Nobody
can escape the Funk, it attacks everybody like a ninja assassin in the night
when you least expect it.
Now
I am not talking about the style of music played by James Brown or Earth Wind
and Fire that is known for repetitive bass lines and using the word “fat” to
describe things in a good way. Nor am I talking about the Funk that happens in
your pits after trying to work out a New Year’s resolution to get in shape,
though that kind of funk could easily be compared to a deadly ninja assassin as
well.
No
I am talking about the Christian Funk. This is the Funk that happens a few
years after God radically changes your life and gives you a vision and a dream
that keeps you up at night with passion and excitement. This is after you have
told everyone about Jesus, started reading everything in the “Christian
Inspiration” section at Barnes and Noble and destroyed everything from your old
life in a bonfire of excitement.
Now
life is boring, your job is depressing and nothing cranks your tractor like it
used to. You do not remember doing anything wrong but for some reason God seems
more distant than He has ever been before. You are in the Funk and you do not
know what to do about it.
Calm
down, it is going to be OK.
The
Funk is not a new plague; it is as old as there are people. Abraham was the
social equivalent of a Fortune 500 owner who God told to wander through the desert
to a new land he had never heard of before. Jacob was called to receive an
awesome inheritance but wandered in the desert and worked manual labor for 14
years before finally wrestling with God and getting his name changed to Israel.
Job was rolling in the dough but had to lose everything he had and start over.
Moses grew up in an Egyptian palace but spent forty years in the desert running
away from his destiny. Then, after being obedient and rescuing the people of
Israel he had to spend another 40 years in the desert because the people he led
complained too much. Elijah was filled with boldness to prophesy doom and gloom
to the most evil king of all time and then had to run into the desert and be
fed by filthy birds that had to steal food from other people to feed him. David
was anointed by Samuel to be king of God’s people, miraculously slayed a giant
and then went on the run in the desert to escape the crazy demon possessed king
who was trying to kill him. Then he had to run into the desert again to escape
his rebellious children, who were also trying to kill him. Jesus was publically
anointed and the literal voice of God spoke over him at his baptism and
immediately was sent into the desert with no food to battle Satan for well over
a month.
These
were all good people. They were, for the most part, just doing what they
thought God wanted them to do when everything crashed down on top of them. They
all had moments of “wow God this is awesome” followed almost immediately by
“hey God, you still there?”
If
all these Sunday school heroes felt the Funk then it makes me not feel as bad
for feeling it too, but because of their Funk, here are some things that I have
learned about my own:
The desert is confirmation
of the Promised Land. All of these people had incredible
vision and promise over their life that God had been planning since the
beginning of time and God had to use this desert to draw something out of them
that was not there before. Most of the time, we feel that God has stopped
working out His plan if we can no longer see what He is doing. We think that He
has forgotten about His promise when we stop feeling him move like we used to
when really God is putting you through this season because of the things he has
planned for you. If your life stayed easy, you would not be accomplishing
anything worthwhile. The fact that pursuing God and His plan for your life is
hard means it is worth something. Praise God when the bills come in, the
opportunities fall through, and nothing works out the way you want it to- it
just means you are going somewhere only a God big enough to provide can take
you.
The Funk increases your
intimacy. Now
if I were still talking about body odor this would be a very funny sentence,
but I am not so I guess it is a little bit more serious. It is in the seasons
of Funk and desert that God draws us closer into Himself than we could ever go
if everything were OK. God wants to be intimately known by you and if it takes
putting you in a season of boredom and monotony to do it then He will. When you
need God to show up, He does bigger things than when you just kind of want him
to show up. If this is hard to grasp for you, you may want to reconsider what
you have been pursuing in life. “The Promised Land” where all of your dreams
come true and everything is working out perfectly is not the final destination.
So often we get so distracted with what God is promising us that we forget that
it was Him we fell in love with in the first place. When all is said and done,
our future ministries dreams and plans will not matter because we will spend
every moment of eternity sitting at the feet of Jesus and getting to know Him
better. Growing in intimacy with God is the only thing we will do forever and
God does not want us to wait until we die to start. This Funk seems like a
distraction from your goals, but it could be right in line with God’s plan to
get rid of all of your distractions and have quality time with you.
The Funk is not about you. I do not know about you,
but when I am feeling funky I like to think back on the times in my life when I
could visibly see God working through me. I look back on past seasons with
nostalgia and think “God I want to be used like I was back then.” Then I read
some pages from my journal from those same seasons and find that what I was
feeling at the time was very different than how I remember. I have consistently
found that those seasons that in retrospect I felt completely right with God I was
actually having the hardest time hearing God’s voice and finding motivation to
live for Him. On the outside people around me were being changed but on the
inside I felt the Funk all over me. I never thought that those seasons I needed
God the most were the seasons He used me the most. There is something about
waking up every day with no vision and motivation yet still going after God
anyway that just naturally changes people around you. You may not see it while
you are in the Funk, but God has a way of revealing these things to you right
as you are leaving that season to show you that it was all worth it. It almost
makes me want to tell God to bring the Funk more often if other people will be
changed by it.
If
you do not feel God like you want to, it is not because God has abandoned you
or because you are a terrible person. Hold on and keep doing what you know to
do. Things are going to change soon.
What
are some things you do in these dry seasons? How do you maintain hope?
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