How to Guard Your Heart When Faith Starts to Feel Routine

From the sermon preached on November 8, 2026

To guard your heart when faith starts to feel routine, start by noticing what has slipped without your permission: the joy that turned into obligation, the hurt you keep replaying, the quiet you stopped making room for. It is less about trying harder and more about paying attention to what you assumed would take care of itself. That goes for serving God, for the people around you, and for your relationship with God itself.

It rarely announces itself. It shows up on the Greenway at 7:15, when you realize you have not thought about God since Sunday, or since Easter, or since college. The volunteer shift you once signed up for gladly now sits on the calendar between an HOA email and the 7:45 carpool line.

There is an old joke about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson on a camping trip. Holmes wakes his friend in the middle of the night and asks what he sees; Watson lectures on galaxies, planets, and the vastness of God until Holmes points out that someone has stolen their tent. Watson was not wrong about the stars; he just missed the obvious thing that was gone.

Most of us do not think to guard what we are already living inside. What follows looks at three places worth watching (the way you serve, the condition of your heart, and your relationship with God) and what it might look like to guard your heart before the tent is gone.

Anyone who has volunteered for something they believed in knows the arc, and serving God with passion is no exception. You start with a kind of wonder: I get to do this. Then, slowly, it becomes I have to do this.

Dennis Pisani, a longtime pastor and Terraforma Church overseer, came to faith in 1975, fresh home from Vietnam and playing in a rock band, with no church vocabulary at all. Within three months he was helping with the teenagers, long hair and bell bottoms included, and watching their lives change. What stayed with him was the discovery that there is no greater privilege than being part of someone else's life being changed.

That is the heart of serving God with passion, and it is also why it fades. When service becomes mechanical, the motions stay but the meaning drains out. Serving God is meant to be an honor, not a bother; the drift happens when we forget why we started.

In Mark 10:45, Jesus says he did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life to set many people free. Service was not a task on Jesus' list; it was the shape of his love. God seems more interested in what happens inside us while we serve than in the tally of what we do.

One small step for today: write down the name of one person whose story is different because someone showed up for them. Keeping that name close is a simple way to keep serving God with passion rather than out of guilt.

Offense almost never feels like a choice. Someone says something careless, a person walks past without saying hello, and you replay it on the drive home. By the third replay it has a shape, and by the tenth it has a home.

The New Testament word for offense is the Greek skandalon, the root of our word scandal. It described the stick that props open a trap: a box tilted up, a little bait underneath, a string pulled from behind a tree. The unsettling part is who ends up caught; it is not the person who offended us, it is us.

Offense in the church works the way it works anywhere, only it can hurt more. One hurt person finds another, the stories get fed, and before long a group is held together by what they resent rather than what they love. The Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth in 2 Corinthians 2:10-11, urges forgiveness so that no one gets outwitted by a scheme that works best when it stays hidden.

What gets named loses its grip, a little like Toto pulling back the curtain in The Wizard of Oz to reveal an ordinary man at the controls. Holding on to offense in the church, or anywhere, does not punish the other person; it slowly cools your own heart.

Try this today: name one offense you have been carrying and ask whether you want to keep feeding it. You do not have to feel forgiving yet to decide you are done rehearsing it, whether the hurt came from offense in the church or from the group chat.

The evangelist D. L. Moody was asked why he kept talking about needing to be filled with God's Spirit again and again. His answer: because I leak. Most of us leak too, not through dramatic failure but through familiarity, the slow way anything sacred starts to feel ordinary.

That is the danger with protecting your walk with God; the threat is rarely rebellion, it is routine. None of this means something is wrong with you; it means something needs tending, and the way to guard your heart here is attention, not effort.

Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling captures it. God strains forward with everything he has, while Adam reclines, almost casual. The gap is small, and it is not God who is holding back.

Psalm 22:3 describes God as enthroned on the praises of his people; God wants to be with us even more than we strive to be with him. Dennis's practice for protecting your walk with God is the 15-minute chair: one spot, ideally in the morning, instrumental music, and no agenda. It starts with thanks, moves into simple worship, and then goes quiet to listen, because prayer needs room for God to speak.

For today, pick your chair and give it fifteen minutes before the inbox opens. Admit where you are, refuse to stay stuck in shame about it, and let protecting your walk with God start from there.

The clearest instruction to guard your heart comes from Proverbs 4:23, which says to keep watch over it above everything else, because everything we do flows from it. The Hebrew word for guard, natsar, is the language of a watchman keeping a post.
1. Guard Your Serve
The drift: Gratitude slowly becomes obligation, and service turns mechanical.
The guard: Remember the people whose stories are changing because you showed up.

2. Guard Your Heart
The drift: A small offense gets replayed, shared, and fed until it hardens.
The guard: Name it early and decide to stop rehearsing it.

3. Guard Your Relationship With God
The drift: Familiarity makes something sacred feel ordinary.
The guard: Protect a daily time to give thanks, worship, and listen.

A few quiet signs that your heart may need attention:

• Slowly pulling away from people and places that used to give you life
• Emotional ups and downs that leave you worn out
• A lingering sense of hopelessness that is hard to shake
• Going through the motions more often than not
• Less desire for prayer, Scripture, serving, or generosity

If your faith has thinned out under full calendars and quietly hurts, you are far from the only one, and you do not need it sorted first. Terraforma Church gathers Sundays at 10:00 AM at Brambleton Middle School in Ashburn, whether you are coming from Sterling or Herndon, from Leesburg or Stone Ridge, or from anywhere across Loudoun County and the Aldie and Dulles corridor. Come as you are; no one here is pretending to have it all figured out.

Learning to guard your heart is a daily habit of noticing what is slipping in how you serve, what you hold against others, and how close you stay to God. Underneath it all, God is the one straining to close the gap. Nothing in creation brings God more pleasure than you, and he longs to be with you.

Take one step toward a relaxed Sunday morning in Ashburn, with service times, location, and what to expect for your kids, when you plan your visit here.

When you are ready to say hello without walking in yet, the Connect Card lets you share where you are; reach out here.