We are so easily disillusioned about life.  We lack enthusiasm for anything because we are passive.  If you love a person who is passive about life, you often feel like you don’t know them anymore.  There is no drive to work or to love in them.  Is it because this person is unable to act?  Is it because they are unwilling to act?  Such a person would almost certainly maintain that they are unable.  Often, they are in a battle but refuse to engage.  When offered biblical advice they counter, “It doesn’t work!”

Life doesn’t need to be this way.  Do you want to change?  Perhaps you need to stop finding your identity in martyrdom.  I can almost hear the next three-word sentence you might have for me:  “You don’t understand!”  But I do understand.  I understand that we often use a hopeless passivity in life to avoid sin issues like financial irresponsibility, life-dominating sin, or poor parenting philosophies.

Don’t allow yourself to say, “It doesn’t work!”  Don’t give up on God like that.  Don’t allow your world to become so small that it’s only filled with you.  Christians are here to build God’s kingdom and not their own kingdom.  It really is time for you to engage and be a part of something that will fill you with peace, hope, and love.  How will you build a spiritually active lifestyle?  Here are some practical ways to do so:

1. Read through some of the narrative stories of the Bible.  Write down five applications from each story.
2. Find good things in people close to you, write them down, and then send a text each day thanking the person for the good they bring in your life.
3. Write out your purpose for living.  Allow spiritual friends to read it and help you revise it.
4. Find out what it means to suffer in such a way that you are better for it.
5. Take notes when listening to the sermon on Sunday morning.  Write down personal application from those notes later.
6. Speak or write something for the purpose of encouraging people each day.
7. Meditate on God’s creative beauty and count it as a blessing.
8. Listen to spiritual music.
9. Listen to God’s Word in the car.
10. Don’t allow yourself to complain about people or circumstances.
11. Forgive! Forgive! Forgive!
12. Get someone to help you make changes for the better.