When I was younger, I remember the experience of going to an awesome retreat where we totally encountered the presence of God only to be in a complete spiritual rut a few weeks later.
It’s an unfortunate experience that many people have. And if you are one of those people who have this experience, allow me to share some thoughts.
I have seen that some leaders would want to solve the problem by just cutting out the spiritual high aspect out so that people won’t crash. After all, if there’s no high, there’s no chance to crash. So they want to keep the conference low key, low emotion, low encounter, etc..
However, I will say that that is hardly a solution, or even a right diagnosis of the problem.
The problem is not that people are experiencing spiritual highs. The problem is that people do not have a lifestyle outside of the conference context which is able to sustain that type of high. Their time choices, entertainment choices, attitudes, times spent with God form too shallow of a well to host the Spirit of God in a sustained way.
Spiritual highs are great. Revival is great.
But we need to teach people to foster a lifestyle which constantly hosts high spirituality. Can we teach them to pray and to read God’s Word consistently? Can we teach them to turn their eyes away from mind-melting activities that the world so constantly wants them to indulge in?
This, I propose, is what we need to learn to do when we have spiritual highs.
