Jesus said He would rather you be cold than lukewarm.
Read that slower.
He would rather you be openly opposed to Him than indifferent to Him.
And if we are being completely honest, lukewarm is a temperature we have all embodied at some point.
We do the Christian things. We say the Christian words.
We know the right verses and have our worship playlists.
We show up on Sundays with our trendy church fit.
But somewhere underneath all the performance, there is a woman who hasn’t heard from God in a while — and is seriously unhappy about it.
That woman is not bad. She has fallen prey to religiosity.
And religion without presence is missing the mark.
Being godlier is not about doing more Christian things.
It is about encounters.
Actual obedience.
Actual hunger — the kind that makes you different from the inside out.
Not just Sunday morning but every day, when nobody is watching.
Here are eleven ways to return to the heart of God.
1. Read Your Bible Like It’ll Talk Back
You must approach your bible time genuinely believing there is something in there for you today — specifically, personally, right now, that God wants to show you.
We don’t read the same book everyday to become familiar with it. We read the same anointed, Spirit-breathed love letter to be transformed at a heart level.
Slow down.
Before you open it, ask: “God, what do you want to show me?”
Cherish the answer when it finds you. Sit with it as long as you can. Write it down.
The Word of God is alive. It is active. “Sharper than any double-edged sword.” Hebrews 4:12.
But only if you approach it with faith, which comes by hearing. Read your bible to HEAR something TODAY.
Read it like your life depends on what it says — because in every way that actually matters, it does.
2. Pray Specifically and Write It Down
Vague prayers produce vague faith.
Specific prayers require specific faith — which is exactly why most of us avoid them.
If you ask for something specific, you have to reckon with the answer. (And we don’t always get the answer we want.)
Write down what you asked for. Date it.
Then watch. Because God answers, and half the time we miss it entirely because we weren’t paying close enough attention. Or we forget what we even asked for, like we see happen time and time again to the Israelites in the torah.
A prayer journal is not a diary. It is evidence. It is a running record of a real relationship with a real God who moves in real time. When you flip back through the old pages and see the prayers that were answered — and they will be there — your faith becomes something you can hold in your hands.
Pray specifically. Write it down. Pay close attention.
“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”
Revelation 12:11
3. Write Down Your Dreams and Ask for the Interpretation
God has been speaking through dreams since Genesis and He has not stopped.
“Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”
Joel 2:28.
This is not a past-tense promise tucked away in the Old Testament. This is a present-tense inheritance available to every believer.
Keep a notebook beside your bed. The moment you wake up — write it down. The details. The feelings. The images that stayed. Then ask God what He is saying.
You don’t have to be suspicious about it. You just have to believe that the God who spoke to Joseph in a prison and Daniel in a palace is still speaking — and that maybe He has been saying things to you at night that daytime noise has drowned out.
Dreams require discernment. Not every dream is prophetic and wisdom is always needed. But dismissing them entirely is leaving one of God’s languages completely unread.
Write them down. Ask for the interpretation. Start paying attention to what He says while you sleep.
4. Have a Prophetic Horizon
A lukewarm woman is only managing her days.
A woman on fire is building toward something.
A prophetic horizon means you are living with a sense of divine direction — a word God has spoken over you, a calling you are actively moving toward, a Scripture that has become a personal promise you return to regularly.
It means your daily life is oriented toward something beyond the ordinary.
What has God said about you? What prophecies have been spoken over your life that you filed away and forgot? What did you once feel deeply called to before routine absorbed you?
Write those things down. Put them somewhere visible. Pray into them. Let them direct how you make decisions.
A woman with a prophetic horizon
- Cannot be distracted
- Holds a godly standard for herself without needing to be reminded
- Has a long term vision that even extends into eternity
- Sees the signs God puts on her path
- Is convinced that nothing can separate her from the love of God
- Avoids all red flags that would distract from her prize of faith
5. Fast Something Intentionally
Fasting is a discipline the modern church has dismissed. And it shows.
Fasting is not a diet with spiritual branding. It is the deliberate denial of the flesh as an act of worship and desperation toward God.
And desperation, it turns out, is one of the most powerful spiritual postures available to us.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit….Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…”
Matthew 5:3-12
There is something about genuine hunger — physical or otherwise — that cuts through the noise and brings us back to what is real.
It doesn’t have to be food. Fast your phone for a day. Fast social media for a week. Fast television. Fast whatever it is you are currently choosing over God’s presence without even realizing it.
What you deny the flesh, you offer to God. And what you offer to God, He redeems.
Matthew 6:17 — Jesus said “when you fast,” not “if you fast.”
6. Worship Out Loud in Your House
Not background music. Active participation.
“God inhabits the praises of His people.” Psalm 22:3.
He inhabits them. He moves into the space where genuine praise is happening.
That means your living room is as valid a dwelling place for His presence as any cathedral ever built — if you will actually open your mouth and invite Him in.
A woman who worships regularly at home carries a different atmosphere. Her children feel it. Her husband feels it. The walls of that house feel it.
We all want a more peaceful home. This is how we get it.
7. Keep the Sabbath
God rested on the seventh day not because He was tired. He rested to establish a pattern.
A pattern of going out and coming in, all centered around His timing.
Our work is holy if our reliance is upon God. Sabbath tells our flesh, “You are not the one doing all this. God is.”
The Sabbath is a commandment, not a suggestion.
It is also one of the most radical, countercultural things we can practice in a world that benefits from slave labor.
Let God restore you and increase what you’re capable of producing through honoring the sabbath.
8. Memorize Scripture
I don’t just want to know where a verse lives in my Bible. I want that verse living inside of me.
When the enemy is at the door, Im ready to rule over him.
Jesus smacked down each misuse of scripture with the Spirit-truth behind the written word. He didn’t get into a memory match with Satan, He possessed the mind of God in his knowledge of torah. Matthew 4:1-11
Pick one verse this week.
Repeat it in the shower.
Speak it over yourself.
“I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
Psalm 119:11
Hidden. In the heart. That is where memorized Scripture lives — deeper than the mind, planted where the storms of life hit first.
You will find, after months of intention, that the Word speaks to you in moments you weren’t expecting.
In the middle of a hard conversation. In the lull before sleep. In the moments you’ll need it most.
That is the Spirit working with the seed you planted.
Plant the seed.
9. Clean House — Ask the Holy Spirit What Needs to Go
Literally and spiritually.
Take a slow walk through your home and ask the Holy Spirit if anything in it needs to leave.
This sounds unusual until you do it once and He actually points at something — and you know immediately, in that part of you that cannot be argued with, that He is right.
It could be something with a spiritual history you never questioned. Media you permitted that slowly shifted the atmosphere. An object carrying an association you never examined. Something you held onto for sentimental reasons that God has been nudging you to release.
Your home is a spiritual environment.
What you permit inside its walls participates in its atmosphere — for better or for worse.
The woman who tends her home with spiritual intentionality creates a space where the presence of God un-offended in every corner.
Ask. Then obey what He shows you.
Even if it’s the thing you were hoping He wouldn’t mention. (He knows.)
10. Serve Someone Outside Your Family
Real service — the kind Jesus modeled — tends to be inconvenient, invisible, and exactly what religious performance would never choose for itself on its own.
Religion serves when it looks good. Genuine faith serves when it costs something.
Who in your life needs something you have? Time. A meal. Presence. A phone call that requires you to actually listen. A practical act of help that isn’t impressive.
Go do that thing this week. Don’t announce it. Don’t document it.
Just do it and let it work on your heart — because you will find that serving others has a way of exposing the self-centeredness you didn’t know was still there.
There is no faster road out of spiritual complacency than getting your eyes off yourself.
11. Tithe and Give
Nothing reveals the true temperature of your faith faster than your actual financial choices.
Not your church attendance. Not your quiet times. Where your money goes tells the real story of what you trust.
Tithing is an act of trust. It is telling God with real, tangible currency that you believe He is your provider — not your income, not your husband’s salary, not your careful budgeting. It is the financial opposite of control.
Malachi 3:10 is one of the only places in all of Scripture where God invites you to test Him. “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse…and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”
He said test Me on this one specifically.
Give generously. Give first. Give in faith before it makes complete logical sense. Then watch what He does with the portion you trusted Him with.
Lukewarm faith protects its money. On-fire faith gives freely and waits expectantly for God to be exactly who He said He was.
A religious woman can fake most of this list. She can show up, say the right things, carry the right Bible, and look the part from the outside entirely.
But she cannot manufacture the atmosphere that follows a woman who has actually been in the presence of God.
She cannot fake the peace that surpasses understanding.
She cannot pretend to have joy, strength, and passion that come from a real and living relationship with Jesus.
That is what we are after.
Not performance.
The presence.
Stop being lukewarm. Stop being religious. Go get godlier.
As always,
Stay happy, Mamas.
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