There’s a particular kind of frustration that only believers know.
You’re saved. You believe. You go to church, maybe you even lead a small group or serve on the worship team. But somewhere between Sunday and Saturday, you feel it — a distance. A flatness. The sense that your faith is static when it should be moving.
The writer of Hebrews captured this tension in one sharp instruction: “Let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us” (Hebrews 12:1, NLT).
Notice what that verse admits — there are things that slow us down. Weights. Hindrances. Not all of them are dramatic or obvious. Some are subtle. Some even look acceptable from the outside.
This article names seven of them. If something in your faith life feels stuck, chances are one of these is the reason — and Scripture has something to say about all of them.
What Does It Mean to Hinder Spiritual Growth?
Before we name the hindrances, it’s worth understanding what the writer of Hebrews was actually saying.
He draws a distinction between sin and weight. Sin is straightforward — it’s the moral failure, the act of disobedience that puts distance between you and God.
But a weight? A weight can be something entirely neutral. A habit, a relationship, a schedule, a mindset. Not necessarily sinful in itself, but heavy enough to slow your stride when your race demands endurance.
This matters because it means the things hindering your spiritual growth aren’t always the things you’d expect. Sometimes it’s a secret sin. Sometimes it’s a packed calendar. The effect is the same — you’re not moving the way God designed you to move.
Let’s look at seven of the most common culprits.
The 7 Things That Hinder Spiritual Growth
1. Neglecting Personal Prayer
Prayer is not a religious ritual. It’s a relationship.
Think about what happens to any relationship when communication stops — it grows cold, distant, and eventually hollow. Your relationship with God is no different.
When you stop praying, you’re not just skipping a spiritual discipline. You’re cutting off the line through which intimacy with God flows.
The apostle Paul’s instruction in Philippians 4:6–7 isn’t a suggestion: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
The peace that follows — the kind that “transcends all understanding” — doesn’t come from reading about prayer. It comes from doing it.
Here’s the thing about prayer — consistency matters more than duration. A believer who prays for five minutes every morning is in better spiritual shape than one who prays for an hour once a month.
God is always ready and willing to meet with you. The question is whether you’re showing up.
2. Ignoring God’s Word
The Bible is not a self-help book with a Christian cover. It is the living word of God — the primary means by which He speaks, corrects, guides, and nourishes you.
Peter says it plainly: “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation” (1 Peter 2:2, NIV).
The analogy is striking. A newborn who refuses milk doesn’t gradually feel a little weak. They stop growing entirely. The same is true of a Christian who stops feeding on Scripture.
The data reflects just how common this problem is. According to Barna Group’s State of the Church 2025 research, weekly Bible reading among US adults hit a 15-year low of just 30% in 2024 — meaning seven in ten Americans who may identify as Christians weren’t opening their Bibles most weeks. The numbers have since improved, but the underlying challenge remains real.
You cannot grow in what you do not know. Psalm 119:105 calls God’s word “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” If you’ve switched that lamp off, it’s no wonder the road feels dark.
3. Unconfessed Sin
This one is straightforward, and that’s exactly why it’s so easy to sidestep.
David wrote in Psalm 66:18, “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” That word cherished is doing heavy work. It doesn’t mean sinning — every believer does that. It means holding onto sin. Protecting it. Refusing to bring it into the light.
Unconfessed sin doesn’t just damage your relationship with God — it actively blocks the growth He wants to produce in you. Isaiah 59:2 describes it as a wall: “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you.”
The good news is that 1 John 1:9 is one of the clearest promises in the entire New Testament: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Confession isn’t the end of the story. It’s the beginning of the next chapter.
This is not about achieving sinless perfection. It’s about honesty — bringing what you’ve done before a God who already knows and who has already provided the solution.
4. Unforgiveness and Bitterness
Unforgiveness is one of the most spiritually destructive forces in a believer’s life, and one of the most underestimated.
The writer of Hebrews identifies it with surgical precision: “See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many” (Hebrews 12:15, NIV).
A root is underground. You can’t always see it. But it defiles — it spreads poison to everything growing nearby, including your relationship with God.
Jesus himself connected forgiveness to spiritual health: “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:15, NIV).
That’s a sobering statement. Not because forgiveness earns you anything, but because a heart that refuses to release others is a heart that is closing itself off to grace.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean what happened to you wasn’t wrong. It doesn’t require reconciliation with someone who is unsafe. What it does is free you from the weight of carrying something God never asked you to carry forever.
5. Wrong Relationships and Influences
The people closest to you have more power over your spiritual trajectory than most believers want to admit.
Paul made it plain: “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character'” (1 Corinthians 15:33, NIV). Proverbs 13:20 echoes it: “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.”
This is not a call to isolation or spiritual snobbery. Jesus himself sat with tax collectors and sinners. But there’s a difference between being a light in darkness and being slowly absorbed by it.
If the people you spend most of your time with have no interest in your faith, no respect for your convictions, and consistently pull you away from what grows you — that will show up in your spiritual life eventually.
The question isn’t whether you love the people around you. It’s whether the relationships you invest in most are strengthening or weakening your walk.
6. Busyness and Distraction
Jesus warned about this one directly — and it’s one that modern Christians are especially vulnerable to.
In Mark 4:18–19, he described people who hear the word but are choked by “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things.” The seed is good. The soil might even be willing. But the thorns — the busyness, the noise, the constant demands — crowd out what God is trying to grow.
Busyness is often the acceptable sin of Christian life because it hides behind productivity. Nobody confesses to being too busy to pray. But the result is the same as neglect.
When your schedule is so full that there’s no room for silence, Scripture, worship, or spiritual community, your soul begins to starve on a full stomach.
The fix here is not usually a dramatic restructuring of your life. It’s a decision about what you’ll protect. Engaging with worship music and faith resources that help you refocus and reconnect is one practical way to keep your spirit fed even in demanding seasons.
7. Pride and Self-Reliance
Of all the things that hinder spiritual growth, this one may be the most invisible — because it often masquerades as strength.
Jesus said it in John 15:5, and it’s one of those statements that leaves no room for negotiation: “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Not very little. Not less than you’d like. Nothing.
James 4:6 tells us that “God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.” The word opposes there is active — it’s not just that God withholds blessing from the proud. He pushes back. Because a heart that believes it can manage its own spiritual development without dependence on God has quietly removed God from the equation.
Pride shows up in many ways — the believer who never asks for prayer because they have it handled, the one who stopped reading Scripture because they feel they know enough, the one who skipped community because they can do their faith alone. All of it is self-reliance wearing a spiritual costume.
Growth requires receiving. Receiving requires humility. Humility begins with admitting that apart from Him, you genuinely can’t.
What Hinders Spiritual Growth Most for Christians Today?
If you had to name the biggest barrier facing everyday believers right now, it would probably come down to this combination: a life too full to be nourishing.
Busyness leads to neglecting prayer. Neglecting prayer leads to emotional distance from God. That distance makes the Bible feel dry and unhelpful, so it gets skipped. Without spiritual input, discernment weakens, wrong influences creep in, and small compromises go unaddressed until they become unconfessed patterns.
Each of these seven hindrances can feed the next. That’s why naming them honestly — without shame, without excuses — is the first real step toward breaking the cycle.
How to Get Back on Track When Your Spiritual Growth Feels Blocked
Identifying a hindrance is one thing. Moving past it is another. Here’s what Scripture consistently points to when a believer needs to restart:
Start with confession. Whether it’s sin, pride, bitterness, or neglect — bring it honestly to God. 1 John 1:9 is your anchor here. He is faithful.
Return to the basics. Not something new and inspiring — the basics. Prayer, Scripture, Christian community. Hebrews 12:2 tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, not on a new method or a more sophisticated approach. The fundamentals work.
Seek accountability. Proverbs 27:17 says “as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” Spiritual growth is rarely sustained in isolation. Find someone who will ask you the honest questions.
Be patient with the process. Growth is not always visible. Farmers don’t dig up seeds to check whether they’re growing. You water, you tend, you trust. Philippians 1:6 promises that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” God is not done with you.
You’re Not Too Far Gone
Spiritual stagnation can feel permanent, especially when it’s been a long time since your faith felt alive. But there is no distance between you and God that a sincere return cannot close.
Every one of the seven things named in this article has a solution — and every solution points back to the same place: back to Him. He is not waiting for you to have it all together before He meets you. He is waiting, full stop.
Read Also
- 10 Benefits Of Humility In The Bible (And Why God Rewards The Humble)
- How Worship Music Strengthens Your Faith (And What’s Really Happening When It Does)
- 50 Bible Verse For Depression And Hope
- 50 Prayer Points For Mercy With Bible Verses
- Jack Hibbs Biography: Age, Wife, Church, Religion, Books & Ministry
