FWIW, my (long) answer is going to be out of left field since it reflects what has now been a twice in a lifetime experience for me.
Pushing about ten years ago, over a period of about 6 months, I went from being highly active in a number of ministries of various types to nothing. At that point, I'd been a serious Christian for over 30 years. It was weird because it was like everything I had been active in just vanished away and it was like everything I wanted to volunteer for was either already full or went inactive. Even my job turned into a giant dead end where I couldn't do anything. I ran through the gamut of things trying to figure out the reason why, spiritual attack, unconfessed sin, waiting for open doors for something new, and kept coming up blank. The only thing I was spiritually convinced of was that I was not supposed to just be active for the sake of being active but that I would somehow know what was right. As it turned out, I ended up waiting for a few years, and it was for the right thing.
In a nutshell, God had put me out in a figurative desert away from everything. I had spent my entire life creating my identity around stuff I was doing. I was a teacher, a campus minister, a worship leader, a Christian musician, etc. God took me away from all of it for my own good. Over a period of a year or two, He kept putting me in front of the mirror until I finally realized I had no clue who I really was. I could only see things I was doing and rating my value as a Christian on how much fruit I was bearing. I had in essence long ago succumbed to the idea that there was no good thing in me and that it must always be Christ that liveth in me. I had become an eclectic amalgam of masks that I put on in every different situations according to what a good Christian was "supposed" to be. I was a good son, a good husband, a good father, a good teacher, a good employee, etc. etc. I had been doing this so long, I could no longer see my true face in a mirror. God took me away from all of this and forced me to quit putting on the masks every day.
What God started doing over a period of a year or so was working on me to see that He had made me a unique person meant to reflect His glory in a way unique to me. One of the most shocking things to me doctrinally occurred when I saw a serious word study on the word "heart" in scripture. (I wrote this up in more detail in my CF blog.) I found that the only two verses I had locked in my memory were "the heart is deceitful and beyond cure" and "the thoughts of the heart were only evil all the time". Much to my surprise, I found that I had confused "heart" with sin-nature and assumed that they were the same. I found that word studies on heart mean that it basically meant our personality, our inward thoughts and volition, and was an entirely different concept than sin-nature. Verses such as "But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop." (Luke 8:15 NIV) surprised me and then I found that there were literally dozens of verses in scripture where the heart is considered a good thing. I had spent my Christian life suppressing who God intended me to be in a misguided attempt to starve my sin-nature. Every time the real me who God intended me to be started waking up, I took it to be selfishness and sin and did my best to make sure it stayed in its place so that I'd be more Christ-like. It took the better part of a few years to break this way of thinking and to indeed let God slowly awaken and revive the person He meant me to be.
After this, I emerged much stronger spiritually and started feeling like ministry was naturally flowing from me even when I was not trying to do anything. Much of the stress and worry and pressure was gone, and I was simply enjoying doing things. It was like I was just sitting back, being myself, and watching God do stuff. I also started seeing people so differently. Instead of worrying about sin, whether they were bearing enough fruit, and how help them become more active and fruitful for God, I started seeing people as unique treasures and works of art of the Almighty. I started wondering what special person was hiding inside under the exterior and what it would take to start pulling the masks off and see who they really were. Instead of seeing them (and myself) through the filter of what they should be doing for God to accomplish something useful for the Kingdom, I started seeing them as being valuable simply because of who God made them to be and that it is God's concern about what is "accomplished".
I guess that's a very long answer that sometimes stagnant periods are God putting us into the desert to be away from everything so we can be changed in some way we are not expecting. For me, such an extended period resulted in what is probably the most profound change I've seen in my spiritual walk.
