Ways We Avoid the Very Thing We’re Trying to Do

Here’s a strange feature of the human heart: we can spend years pursuing spiritual growth while quietly running several well-worn escape routes that let us feel like we’re growing without ever facing what actually needs to change. I want to name three of the most common ones, because you can’t dismantle a pattern you can’t see.

Busyness Disguised as Devotion

It’s entirely possible to fill your calendar with church activities — serving, attending, volunteering, organizing — as a way of feeling spiritually productive while never actually slowing down long enough to let God near your actual heart. Activity can become a very sophisticated hiding place, especially in ministry-adjacent circles where busyness gets mistaken for devotion.

Knowledge Instead of Obedience

Some of us default to accumulating information instead of applying it — another book, another podcast, another sermon series, all while the actual obedience God’s already asked for sits untouched. James has sharp words for exactly this pattern.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

— James 1:22

Notice the word he uses: deceiving. Accumulating more knowledge feels like progress, but without obedience it’s just a more informed version of standing still.

Comparison Instead of Honesty

The third escape route is measuring your growth against other people instead of against Christ. As long as you’re doing better than someone else, you get to skip the harder work of an honest inventory. But Jesus was never grading on a curve. The standard was always him, not the person next to you in the pew.

Name Yours

Which of these three is most likely your particular escape hatch? Naming it honestly, even just to yourself, is the first real step back toward the thing you actually set out to do.