Because of laziness the building decays, and through idleness of hands the house leaks. ECCLESIASTES 10:18 NKJV 

The greatest dangers are often the ones that take us the longest to see. Think about it like this: if you stopped watering your plants, they’d show signs of distress reasonably quickly. But say you stopped fertilizing your plants. It would be less obvious immediately that something was wrong. Over time, the plant’s stunted growth would reveal its lack of nutrients, but it may take a while for even the most attentive plant parent to notice the deficiency. 

Likewise, one of the greatest dangers to our spiritual growth isn’t evil—it’s stagnancy. Evil is easier to spot. Stagnancy is less visible. It’s a lurker, hiding under the surface, chipping away and affecting its damage slowly but surely. We become spiritually stagnant when we stop seeking God. We neglect to spend time in His Word; we don’t pray; we stop listening for His voice. 

To be fair, we usually don’t mean for this to happen. We don’t wake up one day and decide to become stagnant. Life gets busy. There’s so much clamoring for our attention that we lose sight of what matters. Without realizing it, we cut off our supply of spiritual “fertilizer.” It doesn’t affect us at first. We go about our lives without realizing our hearts are undergoing decay—at least, not until a storm comes along. 

When it does storm, a stagnant heart will realize how far it has wandered away from God. God will suddenly feel distant and unreachable. We’ll wonder why He’s left us when we need Him most. We’ll feel swept away by a deluge that we didn’t see coming. 

The cure for a stagnant heart is to become a seeking heart. God is good and faithful to revive us when we seek Him with all our hearts. 

God, I’m sorry for when I wander away from You. I want to have a heart that seeks You, not one content with stagnancy. Kindle afresh a cure for my stagnant heart. Draw me near to You. 

This is an excerpt from Playing in the Dirt: 90 Devotions for Crazy Plant Ladies – a new devotional journal now available for pre-order on DaySpring.com. Shop all books, journals, and devotions from DaySpring here.