Recently at our Good Friday communion service I was referring to the fact that the cross of Calvary proves how much God loves you when He allowed the soldiers to stick a sphere in His side, put nails in His hands and His feet and put a crown of thorns on His head, let people spit on Him, take your sin and my sin on Him. If there was any other way to go to heaven besides Jesus dying for you He wouldn’t have wasted the effort. But there was no other way for you to get into heaven.
That’s what love is. And when He stretches out His hands it’s as if to be saying, If this doesn’t soften your heart, if this doesn’t melt your heart, nothing will. That day, I was thinking, although did not say it in the service, if you can think about the cross of Christ and not be moved, it is a sure sign that have a serious spiritual problem. You are in a spiritual slump and your heart has grown cold. I think that is the danger of a spiritual slump. The longer we go in a slump the more hardened our heart can get towards God. What is the solution? Ask God to soften your heart and bring you close to Him. Say: “You made me and You formed me, You planned me, You have a plan for my life, You want me to live in heaven with You. I’m missing out on the whole purpose of life on less important things by not being all You want me to be.” The secret of getting out of a spiritual slump is you need to fall in love with Jesus Christ again. Get back to your first love. Ask God to tenderize your heart, to light that fire again, to bring you close to Him. During IGNITE I have been asking God to do that in my life and he has been doing it. It has been exciting.
I want to have a deep relationship with God. It is too easy to let your heart grow cold and let a routine replace your relationship with God. My continuing prayer during IGNITE is “God, I want You to be first in my life so that I can return to my first love with you. IGNITE a renewal in my heart.”