How to go on when you hit a spiritual valley.

The song ends, the lights come on and the swaying mass drop their arms and settle into chairs. The pastor crosses the stage and starts his sermon: “One out of every two of you will fall away. In two, five, 10 years from now, half of you will stop believing. Your lives will look no different than anyone else’s.”

I remember it well. And there was a time not that long ago when maybe I would have said: “I’ve fallen away. I never thought I’d be this far from God. This cynical. This hard-hearted.” I was ashamed and all I wanted was to get back to the spiritual fervor of that earlier time ... but I seriously doubted it would ever happen.

If asked, any of us would readily admit the spiritual life is one of highs and lows, valleys and mountaintops. And yet, if pressed further, many of us would also admit to having despaired during a low time—to having given up on ever seeing a mountain peak again.

So how are you supposed to carry on your faith during a low time? How do you survive and come out still believing?

The post-graduation slump

Though the cycle of spiritual peaks and valleys will go on indefinitely throughout life, for many, that first big drop happens right after college.

There are a few people who are called into full-time ministry, but the vast majority leave college and start careers in the secular workforce. And that time—the first years in a new job and maybe a new city—can be extremely taxing on spiritual lives. Starting a career demands a time and dedication that college jobs and homework rarely ever do. And, of course, in our mid-20s many of us get married and start families. Suddenly, it’s three years after college and a spiritual life has taken a backseat to so many other concerns. After such a rich time of community and spiritual growth, the inevitable valley is that much more devastating. The questions that come along with it can truly rock your faith: Why does God seem so distant? Why is it so hard for me to connect with Him? Am I even still a Christian? Was any of what I experienced back then real? Why can’t I find a church as alive as my community in college?

Grasping at straws

The knee-jerk reaction to such questions is to try and figure out how to get back to those spiritual highs. And, as with so many things in life, the tangible and measurable are the easiest to remember: the hour-long daily quiet times, the Bible reading, the journaling, the every-other-day prayer meetings, the small groups.

It’s easy to look back at the good times and feel like it was the forms—the activities—that made those times what they were and want to reengage them. According to Josh Loveless, pastor of STATUS Church in Orlando, Fla., such a pursuit is a dangerous one. “You have to stop trying to recreate what worked last year,” he says. “Stop playing that worship CD that ‘did it for you’ three years ago.

“The danger is that your relationship with God can move into a relationship with religion rather than God,” Loveless continues. “You feel like you found a way to connect with God, but maybe you need to ask if there are other ways that God wants to meet with you.”

To try and recreate the spiritual high by recreating the activities of that time can lead to frustration, burnout and legalism—ultimately decaying your relationship with God.

It’s easy to forget it was because of God’s grace and His Spirit moving in your life that those spiritual forms and activities helped you connect with Him in the past. Those activities flowed from an intimacy and relationship with God ... not the other way around.

Only the real deal

Of course, there is an opposite extreme to be wary of. In the avoidance of empty forms, it’s easy to simply do nothing. For many in our generation, the pursuit of authenticity has trumped all other pursuits. Above all else, we desire to be real. We relentlessly question our motives and the motives of others, testing them for any sign of falseness, for any indication of forced affectation. We don’t want to make ourselves do anything—we want to want to do it.

It’s a legitimate concern, of course, and one that can lead people to seek ways to connect with God during dry times that are outside of the box and the prescribed means of finding God. Growing is never an easy thing, and the Christian call is one that requires living unselfishly—which means sometimes you really do have to do things you don’t want to right in that moment.

“There’s a sloppy thinking that starts when you realize there are some false motivations in your life,”  says Curt Harlow, the west coast area director for Chi Alpha Campus Ministries. “You go from, ‘This is not the right reason for doing it,’ to, ‘OK, then I am not going to do it,’ instead of asking: ‘What is the right way to do it? And how can I rediscover it?’

“So a lot of times we abandon the standard because we realize we have been doing it for the wrong reason. The right response is not to abandon the standard, but to have the standard birthed out of something more correct, more true, more authentic, more sustainable.”

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