One of the reasons that we love Jesus is his paradoxes.

In Jesus in particular, we see realities come together that our human instincts do not expect to be together, and then we see, with surprise and delight, that they do indeed fit together, contrary to our assumptions — and it makes our souls soar with joy.

The beautiful paradoxes of Christ expose our false and weak and small expectations. They remind us that we did not design this world. We do not run this world. And we did not design God’s rescue of us. And we cannot save ourselves, but God can — and does, in the Word made flesh.

As Christians, we confess that Jesus is Lord. That is, he is fully God. He is the towering, all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful God. As God, he formed and made all things, and every knee will bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus is Yahweh — the sacred old-covenant name of God revealed in Exodus. Jesus is creator, sustainer, supreme Lord of heaven and earth, almighty in power, infinite in majesty, our Lord and our God.

And we confess that Jesus is our Savior. Without ceasing to be God, Jesus took our full humanity: flesh and blood, human body and reasoning soul, with human mind and emotions and will, and with all our lowliness and ordinariness. Jesus had a normal Hebrew name: Yeshua, Joshua. In the incarnation, he added to his eternal divine person a full and complete human nature and came among us, as one of us, to save us.

So, Jesus is glorious as sovereign Lord, and Jesus is glorious as our rescuing, self-sacrificing Savior. And we come to Revelation 5 to linger in the paradox and beauty of majesty and meekness, of might and mercy, of grandeur and gentleness, in this one spectacular person.

Our Longings Met in Jesus

In verse 1, the apostle John looks and sees — in the right hand of God, the one seated on heaven’s throne — “a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals.” These are the eternal and hidden purposes of God to be unfolded in history, the mystery of his manifold wisdom to be revealed in the fullness of time, judgments against his enemies and salvation for his people in the coming chapters of Revelation. Centuries before, God had said to his prophet (in Daniel 12:4), “Shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end.” Now the sealed scroll is in the hand of God, in full view of all of heaven, ready to be unsealed.

John is riveted. He wants to know what’s in the scroll. What mysteries does God have to reveal? What wisdom of God, what purposes for history, might now be made known in this scroll? Then John hears in verse 2 “a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’”

Now, at this point, it might be tempting to run right through verses 3 and 4 and miss the weight of this moment in heaven. Not so fast. This is what the seasons of Advent and Lent are for: to slow down and feel the weight in the waiting. Instead of racing ahead to Christmas, or Easter, we prepare our hearts by pausing to feel some of the ache of what God’s people felt for centuries as they waited for the promised Messiah. Or the horror and utter devastation of what his disciples felt in the agony of Good Friday and in what must have seemed like the longest day in the history of the world on Holy Saturday. The pause, the waiting, helps us see and enjoy the risen Christ as the supreme Treasure he is.

So, the angel asks, “Who is worthy to open the book?” And verse 3 says, “No one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it.” No one in heaven. None of the four great creatures around the throne. None of the angelic elders who lead in worship. None of the angels, in all the heavenly host. Not Gabriel. Not Michael. And get this: not even the one sitting on the throne opens the scroll. Not the Father. Not the Spirit. So, heaven waits.

And if no one in heaven, then of course no one on the earth or under the earth. None living or dead is worthy to open God’s scroll. Mere humans like us are not worthy to unveil his great mystery. And so, heaven waits. “No one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it.”

Weep No More

John begins to weep, loudly. Perhaps he even wonders, What about Jesus? Verse 4: “I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.” John doesn’t tell us how long he wept, but mercifully, the announcement soon came.

In verse 5 — what an amazing moment — one of the elders turns to John and says,

Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.

So, now through the lens of verses 5–6, let’s look together at three aspects of the longing and aches of our souls fulfilled in Jesus, our Treasure.

1. We long for majesty and might.

We long to see and admire and benefit from greatness. And the voice rings out in verse 5, “Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered.”

“Lion of Judah” signifies that this is the long-promised king of Israel, the Messiah. In Genesis 49, as the patriarch Jacob neared death, he prophesied over each of his twelve sons, and said to Judah that his tribe would produce the nation’s kings:

Judah, your brothers shall praise you. . . . Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion. . . . The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. (Genesis 49:8–10)

Like a lion, Judah’s offspring will rule the peoples. Lionlike he will be king, with majesty and might.

“Root of David” is much the same, prophesied centuries later, in Isaiah 11:1: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse [David’s father], and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.”

So, Jesus is first shown to be majestic and mighty. He is king, ruler, the Lion. He is sovereign, and fulfills our longings for greatness, for a ruler strong and mighty to impress us with power and win our trust and protect us and provide for us and give us life.

But we long not only for a great human king. We long for God himself. And this Lion of Judah is not just Messiah, a human king. He is God himself.

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) famously spoke of the “infinite abyss” in every human soul. We try to fill it with all the wonders and the worst this world has to offer — food, drink, luxuries, work, relationships, sports and championships, learning, children, and so much more. But that ache in us, that restlessness, that infinite abyss in us, can only be filled by the infinite God himself. As Augustine so memorably said, God made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in him.

“When majesty and meekness come together in one person, they accent each other. They burst with beauty.”

So, I ask you this morning: Have you found your soul’s rest in God? Have you found what your soul hungers for in his eternal, divine excellencies? Are you still searching? Are you still thirsty? Have you found the One in whom your soul, in all the ups and downs of this life, will be satisfied forever? Or perhaps, did you learn it in the past, but you now desperately need to come back to it? Behold the Lion of Judah.

God wired your soul for him. Hard as you may try, you will not be truly, deeply, enduringly happy apart from him.

We long for majesty and might, and Jesus is the Lion.

2. We long for meekness and nearness.

Look at verse 6. Having just heard with his ear the announcement in verse 5 about the worthiness of the Lion, John turns, and what does he see with his eyes?

Between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.

In verse 5, John hears Lion, but in verse 6, John sees Lamb. And this is no disappointment. This is not a loss. This is gain. This is addition, not subtraction.

Jesus is the Lion of Judah, and no less, but he is also the slain Lamb. The Lion became Lamb, and gave himself to slaughter at the cross that he might rescue his people from their sins. His lamb-ness doesn’t take away from his lion-ness; it adds to it.

Jesus is not only majestic and mighty. He is meek and near, lowly, among us, as one of us. We not only want to see greatness from afar; we long to know greatness personally. We not only want a hero to admire. We ache for a brother to be at our side, a companion, a friend. And Jesus, as Lamb, is Immanuel, God with us. With us as one of us. With us to sacrifice himself for us. With us to shed his own blood that our sins might be covered and we might be forgiven. With us to befriend us and defend us.

God designed our souls not only for his greatness, but also his nearness and his meekness.

You might ask, If Jesus is God, and has been from eternity, what does his humanity have to add to his being our Treasure? His divine excellencies are infinite. Yet we are human, and his becoming human exposes to our view glories we otherwise would not see. This is why we love the beautiful paradoxes of Jesus. His paradoxes don’t take away from his glory; they add to it — and give him distinct glory.

In 1734, Jonathan Edwards preached a famous sermon on “The Excellency of Christ.” In it, he says,

Christ has no more excellency in his person, since his incarnation, than he had before; for divine excellency is infinite, and cannot be added to. Yet his human excellencies are additional manifestations of his glory and excellency to us, and are additional recommendations of him to our esteem and love, who are of finite comprehension. . . . The glory of Christ in . . . his human nature, appears to us in excellencies that are of our own [human] kind, and are exercised in our own way and manner, and so, in some respect, are peculiarly fitted to invite our acquaintance and draw our affection. (emphasis added)

So, the Lion, in becoming Lamb — the eternal Son in becoming man — while not enhancing his divine worth, became an even greater Treasure to us, who long for meekness and nearness, for a brother and friend.

3. In Jesus, we have it all in one person.

It is one thing to see and enjoy the divine excellencies of unmatched strength and knowledge. And another to see and enjoy the human excellencies of humility and friendship. And then greatest of all is to see and enjoy the full range of divine and human excellencies in one person. Because when majesty and meekness come together in one person, they accent each other. They burst with beauty. As Edwards says, they “set off and recommend each other.”

We see it first in verse 6: John says he “saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes.” This Lamb is not dead. He is not slumped over. He is not kneeling. He is standing, alive and ready. And he has seven horns — signifying the fullness of his strength and power. And seven eyes, meaning he sees and rules all. Nothing is hidden from him. That he is Lamb makes his lionlike work all the more glorious.

For the rest of Revelation, Lamb will be the main title for Jesus, as he displays his power and strength again and again. Here’s just a sample:

We’re told it is the Lamb who has conquered to open the scroll and seals (5:5; 6:1; 8:1).
The lowly Lamb ransomed people for God from every tribe (5:9).
This humble Lamb is declared worthy to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing (5:12–13).
The four living creatures and the angels of heaven fall down and worship the Lamb (5:8, 14).
Unbelievers tremble before the wrath of the Lamb (6:16).
The robes of the saints are made white in his blood, with the forgiving power of the Lamb (7:14).
The accuser of the brothers is conquered by the blood of the Lamb (12:11).
And this Lamb, in all his meekness, is seated on the throne of heaven (7:9, 10) and in the midst of the throne (22:1, 3).

And we not only admire the Lamb for his lionlike strength and power, but also the Lion for his lamblike gentleness and grace. He gives his own neck for our rescue.

We admire his greatness all the more in his nearness to us. And we enjoy his nearness all the more because of his greatness. Because he is the Lamb, and has drawn near to save us, we can enjoy his lionlike majesty and holiness without shaking in terror. And because he is the Lion, and wields the very power of God almighty, we can enjoy his lamblike humility and meekness and obedience to his Father — as man — without our worrying that he’s powerless to help his friends and brothers.

So, God designed our souls for Jesus. Not just a divine Father, and not just a human friend, but God himself in human flesh, fully God and fully man, in one spectacular person.

He is not only our Lord. And not only our Savior. He is our Treasure. He is the Pearl of Greatest Price. He is the one of surpassing value, for whom we consider all else loss. He is the Treasure hidden in the field worthy of selling all to have. Eternal life is to know him, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (John 17:3).

You were made not only for God, but for the God-man, for Jesus, who loved us and gave himself up for us and rose again to be our living, knowable, enjoyable King.

Lightning can be majestic. That is, from a safe distance. Or from a secure shelter that frees us from the threat of electrocution, and allows us to enjoy the spectacular show.

The concept of majesty first brings to mind great sights, like distant lightning. Whether it’s a scenic vista of purple mountain majesties, the skyline of a great city, the dazzling beauty of gold or precious jewels, or the grandeur of a royal palace and its decorum, we typically associate the noun majesty, and its adjective majestic, with stunning glimpses, panoramas, and sights.

Majesty captures a greatness, power, and glory that is both impressive and attractive. And as with lightning, what is majestic from a safe distance can be terrifying when right overhead, without shelter. And so it is when the living God showcases his majesty at the Red Sea — his enemies panic with fear (Exodus 14:24), while his people, whom he rescues, know themselves safe and praise his majesty:

In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries;     you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble. . . .     Who is like you, majestic in holiness,     awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? (Exodus 15:7, 11)

Yet when Scripture mentions the majesty of God, the reference is not exclusively to the visible. Thunder, not only lightning, also may strike us as majestic, when we don’t find ourselves exposed and at risk. And so, as Scripture testifies, God’s voice is majestic.

His words ring out with divine greatness, and tangible goodness, in the ears of his people. His speech is both authoritative and appealing, imposing and attractive. His voice both cuts us to the heart, and makes our hearts thrill. His words wound us in our sin, and we welcome it in the Spirit. God’s majestic words, spoken and written, surprise and delight his people, even as his enemies cower at his thunderings. Their fear is terror; ours is reverent awe and joy.

His lightnings enthrall his saints. As does the thunder of his words.

Greatness of His Word

Consider, first, the greatness of “his majestic voice” (Isaiah 30:30).

“No voice speaks with such authority — or remotely close to such authority — as the voice of the living God.”

No voice speaks with such authority — or anywhere even remotely close to such authority — as the voice of the living God. His words, unlike any other words, are utterly authoritative, and on every possible subject he chooses to address. Like no other mind and mouth, his words are not limited to an area of expertise. His expertise, as God, is all things, without exception.

But the greatness of his word includes not only his right to speak on any given subject (and every subject), but also his ability to speak to the most important subjects and do so extensively, and perfectly, and have the final say. He not only takes up far-reaching, bottomless, eternal, truly great topics, but he never speaks above his head, or out of his depths, as even the world’s greatest minds do when they come to the topics that matter most.

God never speculates. He never overreaches or overextends his knowledge. He never over-speaks. As God, he may publicly address any subject matter he chooses, and with unassailable authority, and he does so perfectly, every time, in all he chooses to say and not say.

In Scripture, he does give us an extensive word, but not an exhaustive one. He chooses to limit his spoken revelation to a first covenant and then a new one, 66 books, and 30,000 verses across the span of a millennium and a half. However, he chooses not (yet) to speak to every possible subject in his created world and beyond, but to speak with both clarity and repetition, despite the trends and undulations of every generation, to the realities that are most timeless and essential. And in doing so, he cues his people in on the subjects and proportions of his focus that prove most important in every time and season.

Power of His Word

Ponder also the power of his majestic voice. His divine speech is not only authoritative on every subject but indomitably effective in accomplishing every purpose he intends. His words do not return to him empty, but effect, every time, precisely what he purposes (Isaiah 55:11).

“God has the ability to do exactly what he says — and to do it simply by saying it.”

Like no other being in the universe, God has the ability to do exactly what he says — and to do so simply by saying it. “Let there be light,” he says, and without delay or uncertainty, there is light. And he keeps the world he made in existence — he upholds it — says Hebrews 1:3, “by his powerful word.” And when he chooses, he speaks into the deaf hearts of “those who are perishing” — those whose spiritual sight has been blinded by “the god of this world” — and he says, “Let light shine out of darkness.” At that moment, dead hearts begin to beat. Deaf ears hear, and blind eyes see the light of his gospel. They believe and are saved (2 Corinthians 4:3–6).

Well did Martin Luther, author of “A Mighty Fortress,” marvel at the majesty of the divine voice when he wrote that we tremble not for the prince of darkness — because “one little word shall fell him.” According to John’s Apocalypse, the God-man, with his risen, glorified, human mouth will speak the decisive, effective word in the end. On the isle of Patmos, John first heard “a loud voice like a trumpet” (Revelation 1:10), and turned to see — among the visible majesties of Christ’s robe, sash, hair, eyes, feet, and face — that “from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword,” and “his voice was like the roar of many waters” (Revelation 1:15–16). With no weapon in hand, but fully armed with the power of his perfectly effective word, Christ will defeat his enemies, making “war against them with the sword of my mouth” (Revelation 2:16).

From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. . . . And the rest [those who had received the mark of the beast] were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse. (Revelation 19:15, 21)

The day fast approaches when the risen Christ, as the divine-human mouthpiece of the Godhead, will have only to speak and fell the devil and his hordes with one majestic word from his mouth.

Glory of His Word

Finally, consider the glory of his majestic voice. Even more than greatness and power, glory comes closest to the heart of what majesty signals.

Majesty is typically emotive. It’s the worshiper’s word of choice, not the scientist’s. Applied to God’s word, his majesty relates to the moral beauty of his speech. The divine voice is not only great in volume and pitch but good in the ears of his people; not only powerful but wonderful for his church; not only true but desirable in the hearts of his saints.

More to be desired are [his words] than gold,     even much fine gold;sweeter also than honey     and drippings of the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:10)

And we note, in a fallen world like ours, and with sin-swayed palates like ours, the divine glory often comes with unexpected or peculiar majesty. His majestic voice rarely speaks as human ears anticipate. With our own short-sighted and sin-shaped notions of what a glorious voice will say, we find ourselves startled again and again by Scripture. Here, in the words of God, we find a majesty, a glory, that does not meet our eyes and ears like the world and sin have taught us to expect. His voice rings out with a distinctly divine glory, a peculiar majesty, that far outstrips our small assumptions.

His majestic voice upstages the wisdom of the world, and unnerves the scribes and debaters of this age. It arrests the wise, powerful, and nobly born according to worldly standards. It shames the world’s wise and strong, while exalting the low and despised (1 Corinthians 1:20, 26–28). As the Bible’s great meditation on divine majesty, Psalm 8, celebrates,

     Out of the mouth of babies and infants,you have established strength because of your foes,     to still the enemy and the avenger. (Psalm 8:2)

The one who “set [his] glory above the heavens” (Psalm 8:1) puts his peculiar majesty on display — or makes his majesty audible — in the mouths of the weakest, even babes and infants. And in such peculiar majesty, God’s people hear an undeniably self-authenticating glory: this voice is indeed God’s, not man’s. Humans may forge swords and devise missiles. They may construct towers and adorn palaces. But the Majesty on High will bring them down with the praise of children.

Victory of His Word

So we hear that when God himself came to dwell among us, “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). He did not come with the majesty man expected. The Word came to Nazareth, to a virgin, to thirty years in obscurity, with “no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). That is, no majesty for the eyes and ears of natural man.

But when God opens our eyes, and ears, we encounter his majesty. We hang on his words, as some did when he taught in the temple (Luke 19:48), and we testify in awe, with those officers who confessed, “No one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46). We say with the crowds in Galilee, Finally, a teacher with real authority! (Mark 1:22, 27). And we anticipate the day when he will smite our foes with the sword of his mouth, even as we his church praise him, with the tribute of Psalm 45:2, “grace is poured upon your lips.”

Then we will see even more of the majesty of his lightning, that comes with his thunderous word.

One of the most frustrating parts of my life is that I’m not as passionate about God as I should be. I imagine many Christians feel similarly. There are some, however, for whom this feeling goes deep and lasts long.

Some of us may find ourselves in the midst of a long stretch of feeling fairly indifferent about the things of God. We know that Bible reading, prayer, church involvement, missions, evangelism, and many other means of grace should capture our hearts, but we just can’t seem to get excited about them. We are spiritually apathetic. And while we may be aware of our apathy, we often find ourselves feeling helpless to pull ourselves out of it. It’s one thing to diagnose a disease, but quite another to heal it.

“Zeal — the antithesis of apathy — can be cultivated.”

Scripture is clear that we have a role to play in overcoming apathy. For example, Paul exhorts, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord” (Romans 12:11). The assumption here is that zeal — the antithesis of apathy — can be cultivated. So, how do we find healing from crippling indifference?

Three Questions for the Apathetic

The path to healing begins with coming to grips with the causes of our indifference. While there may be many causes (and many permutations of causes), I want to pose three questions that may help diagnose the possible issues underlying our apathy.

1. Am I living in unconfessed sin?

One possible cause of spiritual indifference is the choice to walk in sinful obedience to God in some area of life. If we are unremorseful or unrepentant about our sin, we likely will find ourselves feeling cold, distant, and disinterested. Our experience of apathy, then, may be God allowing our fellowship with him to cool in order to snap us out of our sinful stupor and draw us to him in repentance. David writes,

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away     through my groaning all day long.For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;     my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer (Psalm 32:3–4)

David interprets the emotional, physical, and spiritual exhaustion he feels as the result of his silence regarding his sin. In a similar way, the source of our listlessness may not be as mysterious as we might think. Those who are cold to God are allowed by him to grow still colder.

“If we sow to satisfy our sinful desires, we should not be surprised to find ourselves feeling distant from God.”

Paul echoes this scriptural connection between sin and deadness when he cautions, “God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Galatians 6:7–8). If we sow to satisfy our sinful desires, we should not be surprised to find ourselves feeling distant from God and less enthusiastic about what matters to him. This is not to say that sin is always or even often punished with apathy. Yet we do well to remain open to the possibility that willful and unconfessed sin may be blunting our passion.

2. Have I neglected God’s means of grace?

I fear that sometimes we make spiritual growth overly complicated. It seems we are regularly trying to find the secret key that unlocks closeness to God and power in our spiritual lives. Yet in our search for that key, we often neglect the basics. What are the basics? Here’s one: “Read your Bible, pray every day, and you will grow, grow, grow.” In other words, hear God’s promises and commands, and then respond to him — this will make you more like him. Dallas Willard is correct when he writes,

We can become like Christ by doing one thing — by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself. If we have faith in Christ, we must believe that he knew how to live. We can, through faith and grace, become like Christ by practicing the types of activities he engaged in, by arranging our whole lives around the activities he himself practiced in order to remain constantly at home in the fellowship of his Father. (The Spirit of the Disciplines, ix)

What did Jesus do? He prayed, studied and meditated on God’s word, and regularly served others (among other activities). Those are the basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life. They are some of God’s means of showering his life-transforming grace on us. If we neglect these, is it any wonder we are growing dull to God? Remember, it is those who meditate on God’s word day and night — that is, those who make this a disciplined practice — that are like vibrant trees planted by streams of water (Psalm 1:2–3). The less time we spend with a beloved friend, the less likely we are to have him on our minds and in our hearts.

3. What fills my mind daily?

If God is not filling our thoughts and occupying our attention daily, then what is? The reality is that we are always being formed. We are being shaped by everything that holds our gaze, whether we realize it or not. The problem for us is that we are regularly beckoned to fix our eyes on objects that really don’t matter much. We are in a culture where the peripheral and irrelevant are presented as meaningful and worthy of our attention. This is a problem for those wanting to maintain spiritual zeal.

In the foreword to his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, cultural critic Neil Postman contrasts the dystopian visions of George Orwell (1984) and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) — and through them paints an insightful picture of the dangers we face today.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. (xix)

Our world is Orwellian and Huxleyan, but Huxley’s concern is relevant here. We have become a trivial culture and, unfortunately, triviality numbs us to the meaningful. In a world where everything is seemingly significant, what are we really supposed to care about?

Paul exhorts the Colossians, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2). In doing so, he calls them to continually carry with them the distinction between the trivial and the meaningful, and to set their minds on the latter. The problem with making everything important is that everything might become equally important. It becomes increasingly difficult to feel the grandeur of something that really is a big deal. As Postman writes, “The public has . . . been amused into indifference” (110–11). At a time when everything is posted, liked, commented on, and retweeted, we are slowly being conditioned to treat worthy things unworthily or, worse, to stop caring about anything. Does this describe you?

Again, I could have highlighted other factors that contribute to apathy (like fatigue, grief, doubt, and more), but I’ve highlighted these three, as they are among the most common in my experience. It may also be the case that apathy is a mere symptom of a greater issue. Even still, view these questions as a launching point for further reflection.

Overcoming Apathy

As I said earlier, we do have a role to play. What is it? How can we “lift our drooping hands” (Hebrews 12:14) and take steps to overcome indifference?

If the issue is unconfessed sin, own the sin before your Lord and before someone else. Confess. Repent. Receive God’s forgiveness for you in Christ (1 John 1:9).

If the issue is a lack of spiritual disciplines, start small, but start somewhere. If Bible reading has become stale, shift gears and try listening to an audio version. If prayers have become repetitive or you don’t know what to say, pray the Psalms or grab a hymnbook and pray those songs as if they are your own heart’s desire. Shake things up. But start somewhere, anywhere. These are just small ways to fight the good fight of the faith (1 Timothy 6:12).

If the issue is filling your mind with too much triviality, consider fasting from Twitter, other social-media platforms, or even your phone (for a short season). Seek to cultivate a sense of meaning by only reading long-form material — that is, edited articles or books that require you to slow down, reflect, and respond thoughtfully. We are in a crisis of meaninglessness, and we exacerbate it by being less reflective and more reactive. Give yourself the time and space to be “renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians 4:23).

As with most parts of the Christian life, the solutions may be straightforward but not easy. This is especially the case for the apathetic, for whom motivation is the main issue. So, it’s worth repeating: start small, and then pray that God will enable you to take more steps forward and sustain you in continuing those steps. He is at work in you to will and to act for his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).