Spiritual Appetite Waning?

It is the tough that keeps going when the going gets tough. It's a struggle to keep going when many are not so interested in spiritual things. After several lockdowns and many more regulations and SOPS, I find that spiritual appetite is on the wane. I have started this Adult Bible Study more than two months ago and it is now the 7th edition where we will be looking at Genesis chs. 8 and 9. If you think that there are 200 church members, at least those who watched the online Sunday services regularly, yet for the Bible Study we are getting between 20 to 40 people, at the highest. If we speak of 20 adults, it means only 10% of the church members are interested in more in-depth study of the Bible. As for me, it has been a wonderful journey of teaching the congregation, but spiritual appetite is not great and sometimes it is tough to keep going.

This partly explains why I am taking almost 30 days of my 35 days' annual leave, just to have a breather from preaching and teaching. Like Paul who says, "I can't feed you with solid food as you are not ready, but only with milk as many are still in the flesh or fleshly/worldly Christians". "Therapeutic" or "how to" messages seem to be the popular menu for church services online. Easy to listen to, no call to repentance or correction needed - just how to achieve this or achieve that - as if God can be measured and attained by 3 or 4 easy steps of losing weight or taking some form of prescribed pills or medicine. If you want true healing or spiritual health, it is based on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, living according to His will for it is by faith one is made righteous, and that his soul is not lifted up for it is the poor in spirit who are blessed (Matt 5). Whether it is the soothing or prosperity or health and wealth type messages, they tend to tickle the ears of the hearers who are none the wiser except they are deluded into thinking that God is on their side just because they pay tithe or listen to their esteemed pastor. Yet as the Laodicean church shows, Jesus Christ could be outside his own church with the members feeling rich, and have need for nothing but they are in fact poor, naked and blind spiritually. So this morning after 2 hours of "fellowship with the Lord" having a meal before Him (Ezek 44:1-3), I spent another 2 hours preparing for my notes tonight, but I had spent countless hours before hand reading, meditating on the text and waiting on the Lord, listening to His still small voice, so that whatever I hear from Him, thus I could speak forth with authority and will be of spiritual use to my hearers and the followers of Jesus Christ.