I was recently cleaning out some old make-up and found several old tubes of lipstick. As I was gathering them together to throw away, my mind went back to several years earlier. One day I had gone to the store and thinking about how I’d like to get a new shade of lipstick. Ladies, you know how sometimes you feel like you have gotten into a rut and even a new shade of lipstick can make things better? That’s what I was feeling. I searched eagerly through all of the shades and happened to spot a shade I really liked. I picked it up and felt a little excited about purchasing it. (I know what some are thinking – it doesn’t take much to get me excited when my life seems boring!)

When I got home and started putting away my purchases, I took my new lipstick into my bathroom. When I opened up my make-up drawer and got my old tube out to compare it to my newly purchased tube, I was dumbfounded. The new tube I had eagerly purchased and was excited about wearing for the first time, was exactly the same shade I had been wearing. After being surprised for a moment, I had to laugh at myself. I obviously really liked that shade and felt it suited me, even though I thought I needed something new.

After re-living that memory today when I was cleaning up, I realized something. Sometimes in my spiritual life, I let things become a little boring. I get in a routine of reading my Bible and praying. It’s like I’m doing it out of habit and not getting a lot out of it. But when I approach my quiet time with a sense of anticipation and excitement, the joy I have in my relationship with my Lord is refreshed.

Life is like that. Or maybe I should say, humans are like that. We get stuck in routines. We get bored. And we come to the place where we feel like we need something new. Something more exciting. That longing inside of us can sometimes lead to things we are better off without. Especially if that longing is for something God’s Word says is forbidden.

Let me explain it this way. We very seldom go off on vacation. Sometimes, though, I just really want to get away. Go someplace new, see something new. But after being gone for just a short while, there’s just nothing like being back home. Home is my haven. My safe place. It’s where my heart is. It can be like that with our relationship with Christ.

When we allow things to become routine, when we don’t anticipate spending time with our Lord, we can start feeling like there has to be something more. When we start longing for more, we look for something new to fill that longing within us. We think that some new possession, or some new relationship, some new job, or some new whatever, will give us new meaning in life. But for those who have a real relationship with Christ, that searching for fulfillment should lead us into a deeper relationship with Christ. It should make us just want to go back home to Him. We will understand that our relationship with Christ was what we really wanted and needed all along, but we were the ones that allowed it to become stale.

It is good to be in a routine of reading God’s Word. But when we do read it, we need to remember it is God’s way of communicating with us. We need to read with an open heart and open ears, ready to receive the message and hear the Holy Spirit teaching us from it. When we pray, remember to not let it be a one-way conversation. Take time to listen and allow the Spirit to do the interceding for us.

We need to remember that longing we feel is often the Spirit nudging us to spend a little more time with the Lord and not pushing us to find something else to fill the space. We don’t need to look for something new and fresh and exciting – we need to rekindle the love we have for the One we already have within us. I didn’t need a new tube of lipstick. I needed to remember why I wore the one I had.