A junior member of the church was very concerned that her experience of the Christian faith was not as vibrant as it had been when she first embarked on the journey.  She wondered whether she may have reached the point of no return, because the kind of excitement she used to feel was simply not there anymore and she wasn’t sure that she could ever re-capture it.

My first response was to assure her that what she was going through was nothing unusual.  Many who begin the journey of faith with great gusto often begin a slow moonwalk that sees them go from being frontliners to becoming backsliders.  Most of them would be reluctant to fess up for fear of being condemned by “seniors” in the faith who seemed to have it all together. So, I commended her for recognizing what was happening and seeking a way to reverse it before it got any worse.

Then I asked her to think back to the time when her faith was vibrant and exciting. What did she do then that she was not doing anymore?

She admitted that she was not devouring the Bible as she did back then, she had not been praying as regularly, she had not been spending quiet time in God’s presence and journaling what she heard, she had not been associating with other believers quite as much, just to name a few. I suggested she “go retro” for a few weeks and see what happened.

Sure enough, within a very short time, she began to notice some changes. The feelings she used to experience came back and she was falling in love with Jesus all over again. The journey back to the frontlines had now begun.

Isn’t this what the angel of Ephesus was told in Revelation 2: 4-5? “The love you had at first is gone. Remember how far you have fallen. Return to me and change the way you think and act, and do what you did at first.”

Lost your gusto? Go retro!