Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul

A modern-English rewrite of Octavius Winslow's Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul (1841), based on his original text

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Before We Begin

A note from the editor. Octavius Winslow was in his early thirties when he published this book in 1841. He was an English minister who had spent some years in America, and he wrote it in the middle of a great age of Christian activity: missionary societies, Bible societies, new churches, busy committees. His worry was that all this busyness could hide a quiet drying up of the heart. A believer could be active everywhere and growing cold inside, and no one would notice, least of all the believer.

The book has stayed in print and in people's lives for nearly two hundred years because it does something few books do. It does not stop at telling you how to be strong. It tells you what it looks like when you are weak, how you got there, and how you come back. Winslow's answer to the last question is the heart of the book, and it is a gentle one: the way back is always open, and Christ is the one who opens it.

Winslow wrote in long, rolling Victorian sentences. Here the sentences are shorter and he speaks to you more directly, as he does in his best moments anyway. His order and his argument are kept, and so are his nine chapters. Where he repeats himself, the repeats are trimmed. Where he quotes the Bible from the King James Version, we print the English Standard Version and label it. He quotes the Song of Solomon often, and he reads it as the church speaking with Christ, so wherever a verse in that book is quoted for him, it is quoted to the same end. At the close of each chapter you will find a short box called "In plain words" which gathers up what the chapter has said. Anything the editor has added, such as these boxes and the notes in square brackets, is marked as the editor's.

One last thing. Winslow's words are meant to search you, not to flatter you. Read slowly, and read with a prayer in your heart. If you find yourself in these pages, do not close the book. The whole of it was written to bring you home.

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Chapter 1: Secret Decline

"The backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways." (Proverbs 14:14, ESV)

Here is something that should humble every believer who has walked with God for any length of time. Look at what God has done for you. He has shown you his grace again and again. He has taught you patiently and tenderly. He has disciplined you as one of his own and loved you through it. You have learned lessons that cost you dearly. And after all of it, there is still something in your heart that pulls away from him, quietly and constantly. If that does not humble you, nothing will.

Why it happens. I think the reason this pull grows as strong as it does is that we forget something. There is nothing in grace itself that keeps it safe. Faith, love, and the other gifts of the Spirit are divine in their source, spiritual in their nature, and holy in their effects, but they do not stand up on their own strength. They live only by a steady supply of life from Jesus. Cut them off from him for a moment, and the moment you do, they begin to wither. We are tempted to treat these graces as if they were all-powerful. They are not. Surrounded by enemies, attacked from every side, and weak in their own resistance, they can begin to decay at any hour, however grand their past victories, and you may not know that it has begun.

What cannot die. I must be careful to say what I am not saying. True grace cannot die. A flower may droop and still live. A plant may be sickly and still not die. Even at your lowest, there is a life in you that does not end. You are among those "who by God's power are being guarded through faith" (1 Peter 1:5, ESV). God's unchanging nature keeps you. The covenant keeps you. The finished work of Jesus keeps you. The Spirit living in you keeps you, and he keeps you all the way to glory. Grace is indestructible. But it can decline, and that is what this book is about.

My aim is to show you what personal decline looks like in its main forms, and then to point you to the ways God has appointed, and has blessed, to bring you back. I am persuaded that no child of God slips into open backsliding all at once. It happens by slow steps. And through the long middle of the process, nothing may seem wrong at all. No alarm sounds. For that reason I want to begin with the hidden stage, the one where the decline has started and no one knows. May the Spirit fill both of us with light, bring our hearts low, and fix our eyes on Jesus alone.

The Life of God in Your Soul

Before we talk about decline, we need to know what is declining. It is the life of God in the soul of a believer.

You have become one of the "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4, ESV). You have been born of the Spirit, and Christ lives in you by faith. Paul puts it in a few words: "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27, ESV). It is less that you live than that Christ lives in you. He says so himself:

"It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." (Galatians 2:20, ESV)

If you want to know the secret of Paul's life, here it is. He was wise, bold, tireless, patient in suffering and fruitful in labour, and the whole spring of it was that Christ lived in him. The same is true of every believer. Christ, as the head of his people, was given life in himself so that he might give eternal life to all whom the Father gave him. He has it (John 5:26). He gives it (John 5:25). He sustains it (John 6:57). And he will crown it with glory (John 17:24).

It is hidden. This life is out of sight. Paul says, "your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3, ESV). Its source, its nature, its workings and its supports are all veiled from the world. The world did not know Jesus when he lived among us; if it had, it would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Is it any wonder that it does not know him now that he lives, even more hidden, in the hearts of his people? Believers are unknown and yet well known, dying and yet alive, sorrowful and yet always rejoicing, poor and yet making many rich. To a worldly mind that is a riddle. Sometimes it is a riddle to you. How does this life survive when so much around it is trying to kill it? How does a spark stay lit under the waves? How does a soul rise higher the heavier it is loaded, and sing the loudest when the thorn goes in the deepest? You may well say, "I am a wonder to others, but a greater wonder to myself."

Yet while the roots of this life are hidden, its fruit is not. The world has a sharp eye on you. It notices every step. It weighs your motives. It expects your life to match what you say, and it has a right to expect that. When it sees an honest, upright walk, it may hate it, but it cannot help being struck by it.

It is safe. There is one more thing to say about this life: it is secure. "Your life is hidden with Christ in God." It is hidden with Christ, the Father's beloved Son, the treasure of heaven. And it is hidden with Christ in God: in his hand, in his heart, in his sufficiency, in his eternity. Nothing can touch it there. Satan can storm it, your own corruption can attack it, people can scorn it, and in the hour of deep trial even you can doubt that you have it. But there it lies, lodged in the eternity of God. Charnock said that Satan could as soon pull God out of heaven and tear Christ from the Father's side as take a believer's spiritual life from him. A greater voice than Charnock has said it:

"I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand." (John 10:28, ESV)

Let the little flock rejoice. The Shepherd lives, and because he lives, they will live also.

What Secret Decline Is

Now we turn to the decline of this life. By incipient declension I mean the decay of spiritual life in the believer at its earliest and most hidden stage. Because it is hidden, it is the least suspected and the most dangerous.

The process can run so quietly that you lose a great deal of ground, give up many graces and much strength, and slide into real spiritual barrenness, all before you suspect anything. You may be like Samson. He woke from his sleep and said, "I will go out as at other times and shake myself free." But "he did not know that the LORD had left him" (Judges 16:20, ESV). Or you may be like Ephraim:

"Strangers devour his strength, and he knows it not; gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knows it not." (Hosea 7:9, ESV)

This is a condition that concerns not the eyes of other people, but the eyes of a holy and heart-searching God. To see what it is, let me first say what it does not have to involve.

First, the nature of grace has not changed. The decay is in its health and vigour, not in what it is. A heart that is sick still beats; the beat is faint, but it is a beat. A seed may not be fruitful, yet it "lives and abides forever." Divine nature may be weak, but it cannot mix with anything else, and it stays divine. And still, without changing what it is, grace can decline to an alarming degree. It can grow so weak that it puts up no resistance when strong corruption comes in. The enemy rides over it. Laziness, worldliness, pride and carnality walk in without a fight.

Second, your judgment may be unchanged. You may still see clearly and love the truth as truth. The doctrines of grace may still stand as high in your mind as ever. What goes is not your understanding but your enjoyment. The mind loses none of its light, but the heart loses much of its warmth. You assent to God's Word, and yet you hardly know it as something that humbles you, feeds you or makes you holy. And while the decline goes on, you cannot know it so.

Third, the standard you hold yourself to may not have dropped. Your mind agrees that the law of God, as Christ lived it, is your rule. But there is no reaching toward it, no hunger for holiness, no striving against sin to the point of blood (Hebrews 12:4). What an alarming condition when the heart contradicts the mind and the life contradicts the profession. Think of it: more knowledge than power, more light in the head than grace in the affections, more show than holiness. Yet a Christian can be brought to this. Let it make anyone who rests in empty notions, bare creeds or cold orthodoxy stop and look at his heart.

Fourth, it can live comfortably beside every outward religious duty. This may be the greatest lullaby of all. Rocked to sleep by a formal religion, you are deluded into thinking your heart is right and your soul is doing well. Worse, you may be so sunk in form that the public and outward means of grace replace a close, private walk with God. You settle in the outer courts. You live on the porch of the sanctuary. The hours you once spent in quiet meditation, in reading God's Word and in secret prayer give way to a busy, bustling show of godliness. Meetings, committees, societies, business and professional duties, all of which have a religious look and some of which are good in their place, can push God out of your soul and Christ out of your heart. And to be content with this, to live at "this poor dying rate," among the noise of the outworks, is one of the clearest signs that the life of God in you is ebbing.

The Signs

So how can you tell? Let me set out the more positive marks of hidden decline.

You do your religious duties and enjoy nothing in them. You carry on regularly, strictly, even faithfully. But there is no nearness to God in it, no tenderness, no sense of a sweet answer coming back. You are feeding on a dead form, if that can be called feeding. What stronger sign do you need? A healthy believer pants for God and hungers for righteousness. That soul cannot live on a lifeless routine. Duties are only husks to a heart that is well. A well heart wants more, and it finds it only in living on Christ, the bread and water of life.

"I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." (John 6:35, ESV)

"For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink." (John 6:55, ESV)

A professing man who goes all his days without this food, starving his soul, may well cry out with the prophet, "My leanness, my leanness!" [the King James wording of Isaiah 24:16, which the ESV renders "I waste away, I waste away"; Winslow uses the older phrase throughout, and it is kept here as his refrain]. And how serious are the Lord's words: "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (John 6:53, ESV).

You can read your Bible with no taste for it. Or you read it only out of curiosity, or with a literary interest, and not to find the mind of the Spirit so that you might walk in obedience. If this is you, you are going backward. Hardly anything shows the state of a believer's soul more clearly than the way he handles Scripture. Do you read it as you would any other book? Or do you read it knowing that

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work"? (2 Timothy 3:16–17, ESV)

It can be read without any relish. It can be read without being turned into prayer, without its precepts being stored up and acted on, without its promises, comforts, warnings and rebukes sinking into the heart. And if you read it that way, how can you expect the profit it was given to bring?

You can pray and have no nearness. You call God "Father," but have no sense of being his child. You confess your sins in general, without looking to God through the cross. You have no feeling that he hears you. If so, your religion is in decline. The same is true if you find nothing sweet in a spiritual ministry, if you grow restless when truth is unfolded searchingly and practically, if you prefer the doctrines to the commands, the promises to the duties, and the comforts to the warnings of the gospel.

You have little to do with Christ. His blood is seldom visited. His fullness is little lived on. His love and glory are hardly mentioned. I know of no better test of a soul. I would be glad to judge a man's religion, both its nature and its growth, by his answer to the question Jesus asked: "What do you think about the Christ?" (Matthew 22:42, ESV). Let me put it to you directly. Does his blood moisten the root of your faith every day? Is his righteousness what lifts you above yourself and brings you freely to God? Is his love sweet in your heart and his name fragrant on your lips? Do you bring your corruptions to his grace, your guilt to his blood and your trials to his heart? Is Jesus the substance of your life, the source of your growth in holiness, the one glorious sight your eye rests on and the goal you are pressing toward?

Do not be offended when I say that a man can talk well of Christ, give honour to his name, build up his cause and promote his kingdom, and still not have Christ in his heart, "the hope of glory." Talking about religion, ministers and churches, and being zealous for their success, does not make a spiritual man. Yet how much of that passes for the life of God in the soul in our day! I wish there were less talk among God's dear people of ministers and more of Jesus, less of sermons and more of the power of truth in the soul. I wish there were less of "I follow Paul" and "I follow Apollos," and more of "I follow Christ" (1 Corinthians 1:12, ESV).

You walk without love toward other Christians. This marks a low state of grace. The more fully your heart is taken up with the love of Christ, the less room there is in it for hardness toward his people. We have so little love for his followers because we have so little love for him. As the mind grows more spiritual, it rises above party names and badges, lets go of narrow views and old prejudices, and takes in all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. I am not asking you to sell the truth or give up a principle or lay your conscience on the altar of a faithless liberalism. I am asking for more Christian love: the kindness and tenderness that grants others the right to their own judgment, honours a conscientious hold on the truth, and gives to others the same freedom it claims for itself.

Believers will differ. Must they then be estranged in heart? I think not. There is common ground for all who hold the Head. There are truths that can unite all our minds and blend all our hearts. Why should we stand off from the one body and cry, "the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD" (Jeremiah 7:4, ESV)? Why refuse to see the Father's likeness in his children's faces, and treat them as strangers because they do not see eye to eye with us on every reading of God's Word? Why not obey this?

"Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." (Ephesians 4:31–32, ESV)

The church is one, the family is one, and true believers are one in Christ Jesus. Where spirituality is deepening, this will be so. Where it is missing, the life of God in the soul is waning.

Is this you? I have tried to set out some of the main signs of a secret decline. Notice that these are only the signs of a hidden departure: so concealed, and wearing such a fair outside, that all suspicion is lulled, and the soul is soothed into thinking all is well. Dear reader, is this your state? Has this book already found something in you? Has the Spirit of God used it to show you that your soul is unwell and the life within you is drooping? Do not turn away from what you find, painful as it is. Look at it fully and honestly. It is no step toward recovery to hide the worst signs of the sickness from yourself. The mark of a wise and skilful physician is to find out the worst, to probe the wound to the bottom. It may hurt the patient, but it is needed for a full cure.

If you have prayed, as you have often prayed, "Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me" (Psalm 139:23–24, ESV), you will thank God for any gentle, faithful word that sets you to the work of self-examination.

John Owen put it well. In his day he saw many professing Christians in plain decline, with no real effort to recover, who still comforted themselves that the root of the matter was in them. Owen answered that it is so only if love of the world, conformity to it, carelessness in holy duties and coldness in spiritual love count as proof of the root. They are in fact proof of decay. Let no one deceive his own soul. Where there is saving grace, it will thrive and grow to the end. If it falls under obstruction and declines for a time, it gives the soul no rest, but works constantly to recover. Peace in a decaying condition is a soul-ruining security. It is better to be in terror over some sin that has surprised you than to be at peace under plain signs of declining spiritual life.

A Picture From the Song of Solomon

The Holy Spirit gives us a striking picture of many of these marks in the church in Song of Solomon chapter 5. I want you to look at it with me, for it has a good deal to teach us.

She knows, and she does not care. In verse 2 she admits that she is drowsy, but not wholly unaware:

"I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound! My beloved is knocking. 'Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.'" (Song of Solomon 5:2, ESV)

[Winslow's King James text reads "I sleep, but my heart wakes," in the present tense, and he builds on that: she is describing a state she is in now.]

The life of God is there. But it is declining. She knew she had fallen into a slumber and that the work of grace in her soul was slipping, and the awful thing is that she was content to have it so. She heard her Beloved knock, and she was so in love with her drowsiness that she did not stir. She did not open to him. Her duty was to rouse herself at once and let her Lord in. A believer can fall into this kind of sleep: not so deep that he cannot hear the voice of his Beloved through conscience, through the Word and through providence, but with grace so decayed and love so cold that he is content to stay as he is. What an alarming sign, when lying in bed is preferred to a visit from Jesus!

When she gets up, he is gone. She did rise eventually, but Christ had withdrawn:

"I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer." (Song of Solomon 5:6, ESV)

He had waited a long time. He was grieved at what he found in her, and hurt by her cold refusal, so he withdrew the sweet and felt sense of his presence and left her to feel what she had done. Now notice this. The Lord never leaves his people willingly. He is never moved by a whim. He delights in them so much, loves them so deeply, and finds such joy in their company that he would walk with them all day long in the full light of his face. When he hides himself for a little while, it is because their lukewarm hearts and unkind refusal of his love have driven him from their arms. He has a tender heart. The slightest coldness in his child wounds it. He is an ocean of love himself, and the least lukewarmness in the love of his people makes him draw back. But this withdrawal is not a judgment. It is a father's loving correction, meant to bring them to see and own their state:

"I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me." (Hosea 5:15, ESV)

It came right after a blessing. Look at when this decline set in. It came immediately after a special showing of Christ's love to her. Just before, she had called on him: "Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow. Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits" (Song of Solomon 4:16, ESV). And he had answered graciously: "I came to my garden, my sister, my bride, I gathered my myrrh with my spice, I ate my honeycomb with my honey, I drank my wine with my milk" (Song of Solomon 5:1, ESV). So her decline followed close, near communion with her Lord. How many of God's people can say the same! Some of their saddest departures have followed straight after their sweetest times with God. It is after such seasons that we are most open to self-congratulation. If we are not watchful, self takes the credit for the visit, and starts looking within for some secret reason why we were blessed. When God gives a blessing, we need special grace to keep from falling through that very blessing.

The disciples show us this. The occasion was the most solemn imaginable: the night before the cross. Luke records it:

"And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, 'This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, 'This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.'" (Luke 22:19–20, ESV)

Could any moment be holier? They were having fellowship with their Lord in the great mystery of his sufferings. And what comes next?

"A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest." (Luke 22:24, ESV)

Passion, envy, hatred, rising in their hearts while the signs of his dying love were still on their lips! What a lesson. Do not trust in frames and feelings. Pray without ceasing. And above all, watch and pray right after the times when you have been closest to God, or when he has given you some special mercy. The old Puritan Robert Traill said that special spiritual enjoyments are dangerous and make a person very needy of God's helping grace. They expose us to special temptations and can breed special corruptions, such as spiritual pride, contentment with how things are, and a dulled desire for something better. If the Lord gives singular nearness to himself, know that it is a time of special need of grace to guide it well. The greater the blessing, the harder it is to handle it well, and the harder the work, the more we need to ask for his help.

It gets worse each time. One more thing about her. Decline hardens. In chapter 3 she shows some desire for Christ, but notice her posture: "On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not" (Song of Solomon 3:1, ESV). He knocks soon after, and she is so far gone in sleep that she does not rise. Look at the steps. She puts herself in a posture of laziness, and soon she is heard to say, "I slept." Why do so many who seem to be seeking Christ stop short of finding him? The reason is not hard to see. They seek him in a slumbering posture, lying in bed. Their desires are so languid, their spirits so dead and their hearts so cold that even their way of seeking seems insincere, as though asking to be refused. Is it not the confession of many? I sought him, but I found him not. And the reason she did not find him was her sleepy posture and her drowsy spirit in seeking.

So guard against a lazy seeking of Jesus. It will end in disappointment. Seek him with all your heart, all your desire, and the whole bent of your soul. Seek him as your chief and only good, as the one who can make up for the loss of every other good and without whom nothing is good. Seek him as the one who turns every bitter cup to sweetness, every dark cloud to brightness and every cross to a mercy. What a portion that soul has who has Jesus for its portion! "'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in him'" (Lamentations 3:24, ESV). But he must be sought with the whole strength of the soul, with deep desire and with settled purpose. And he is worth the labour. He is the pearl that repays diligent searching. Not a want but he will supply, not a wound but he will heal, not a sorrow but he will soothe, not a sin but he will pardon, not a corruption but he will subdue. Seek him with full purpose of heart, and he will be found.

"You have said, 'Seek my face.' My heart says to you, 'Your face, LORD, do I seek.'" (Psalm 27:8, ESV)

"The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied." (Proverbs 13:4, ESV)

She still knows she is his. There is one more thing in this picture too good to pass over. Even in her low state, she was persuaded that Christ was hers and she was his. "I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound! My beloved is knocking." In the worst frame that can come over a true child of God, there is always some sign that the divine life is not quite out. In the darkest hour, true grace sends out a spark of its glory. A king driven from his throne into exile cannot shake off his royal dignity. In the same way, real grace, though it is tried and assaulted and sometimes beaten for a moment, cannot give up its character or its rule. Look at Paul: "So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me" (Romans 7:17, ESV). In his lowest moment he could still say who he really was. And so the church says, "my heart was awake." Even in her sleepiest hour, she could not forget that she was her Beloved's and he was hers. What a glorious nature this life has, and what a victory it wins in the soul!

The Way Back

Now we turn to revival. What I have said so far should make clear that I do not think this a hopeless condition. To settle down under the belief that it cannot be recovered, that because you have taken the first step away from God you must take the second, is itself an alarming sign of decline. But I say plainly and with all my heart: whatever your departure has been, it can be recovered. There is no step you have lost that cannot be retraced, no grace that has decayed that cannot be restored, no joy that has fled that cannot be won back. How terrible it would be if the day came when every road home was closed: when the Father no longer welcomed the prodigal, when the blood of Jesus no longer healed a wounded spirit, when the Holy Spirit no longer restored the lost joy of salvation! That day will never come. For every poor, self-condemned, broken-hearted soul that is returning, there is a lingering love in the Father's heart, a welcome in the blood of Jesus, and every reason to get up and come to God.

First, find out the true state of your soul before God. The first step in your conversion was to know yourself a lost, helpless, condemned sinner. In the same way, in your return to God, you must know exactly where you stand. Be honest. Let there be a thorough, faithful look at your spiritual condition. Take away all disguise. Look away from what people think and shut yourself in with God to see your worst state. Your minister, your church and your friend may know nothing of this. Your surface may look fair and fruitful to them. But the question is between you and God, who does not judge as man does, by outward appearance, but looks at the heart. The backslider in heart may deceive himself and others, but he cannot deceive God.

So search and see which graces have declined and which fruits have withered. This is a solemn work, but your recovery needs it. I am bringing you into the court of your own heart. Many witnesses are called. Conscience is a witness: how often you have silenced it. The Word is a witness: how sadly you have neglected it. The throne of grace is a witness: how often you have slighted it. Christ is a witness: how little you have valued him. The Holy Spirit is a witness: how deeply you have grieved him. God is a witness: how much you have robbed him. All of them testify against the backslider in heart. And every one of them pleads for his return.

Second, find the cause. "Is there not a cause?" Look for the blight that has fallen on your soul, the thing that feeds at the root. Paul, who was quick to see and faithful to correct a decline, found one in Galatia. The people had left the purity of the truth and grown careless in their walk. Grieved, he wrote to them, astonished and hurt, and asked a searching question: "You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?" (Galatians 5:7, ESV). And again: "now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world?" (Galatians 4:9, ESV). And again: "What then has become of the blessing you felt?" (Galatians 4:15, ESV).

I put the same question to you, if you are aware, as you read, of a secret decline. You were running well. Who hindered you? What has stood in your way? What has weakened your faith, chilled your love, drawn your heart from Jesus and lured you back to the beggarly things of a poor world? You set out well. For a time you ran well. Your zeal, love and humility promised a useful life and a good race. But something has hindered you. What is it? Is it the world? Love of a person or a thing? Greed? Ambition? A sin you have presumed on? Some corruption not put to death? Old leaven not cleaned out? Search it out. Do not rest until it is found. Your decline is secret, so the cause may be secret too: some duty quietly neglected, or some known sin quietly kept. Bring it into the light. The cause must be great enough to explain results this serious.

You are not what you were. Your soul has lost ground. The fruit of the Spirit has withered. The heart has lost its softness, the conscience its tenderness, the mind its quiet, the throne of grace its sweetness, the cross of Jesus its pull. How sad the change! Do you not feel it in your soul? Where is the blessing you felt? Where is the sunlit face of a reconciled Father? Where are the rich hours before the cross, the holy times alone with God in the closet? Where is the voice of the turtledove, the singing of the birds, the green pastures where you fed, the still waters where you rested? Is it all gone? Is it winter in your soul? Yes, and you are made to feel that it is an evil and bitter thing to forsake the living God (Jeremiah 2:19). But there is hope.

Third, take the cause straight to the throne of grace. Bring it to the Lord and lay it before him. Do not argue with it. Do not compromise. Do not hide anything. Make a full, open disclosure with no excuses and no disguise. Confess the sin in all its guilt, its aggravations and its consequences. This is what God loves: an honest, open confession of sin. He already knows every heart, and still he delights in the plain, detailed acknowledgment of sin from his wandering child. You cannot be too humble in your words or too thorough in your detail.

Notice how much weight he puts on this and what blessing he attaches to it. To Israel, wandering and rebellious, he said:

"But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land." (Leviticus 26:40–42, ESV)

Well may we say, "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love" (Micah 7:18, ESV). It was David's experience too, God's dear and often straying child:

"I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,' and you forgave the iniquity of my sin." (Psalm 32:5, ESV)

And how God's heart melted when he heard Ephraim lament!

"I have heard Ephraim grieving, 'You have disciplined me, and I was disciplined, like an untrained calf; bring me back that I may be restored, for you are the LORD my God.'" (Jeremiah 31:18, ESV)

What was God's answer?

"Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, declares the LORD." (Jeremiah 31:20, ESV)

The New Testament is just as clear about the promise attached to confession:

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9, ESV)

How full the blessing, how rich the comfort! And how simple the way back:

"Only acknowledge your guilt." (Jeremiah 3:13, ESV)

It is only confessing sin over the head of Jesus, the great sacrifice for sin. Think about what God is saying: Only acknowledge. Is that all he asks of his poor wandering child? That is all. So let the soul say, "Lord, I come to you. I am a backslider, a wanderer, a prodigal. I have strayed from you like a lost sheep. My love has grown cold. My steps in the path of obedience have slowed. My mind has given way to the deadening pull of the world, and my affections have wandered after earthly things. But look, I come to you. Do you invite me? Do you hold out your hand? Do you tell me, Only acknowledge your guilt? Then, Lord, I come. In the name of your dear Son, I come." And then let him add the prayer David prayed: "Restore to me the joy of your salvation" (Psalm 51:12, ESV).

Keep confessing over the head of Jesus until there is nothing left to confess but the sin of your confessing. Our very confessions need to be confessed, our very tears need to be prayed over, so stained with sin is everything we do. A soul emptied and unburdened in this way is ready to receive again the seal of a Father's forgiving love.

You can see the right posture of a returning soul in Hosea:

"Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take with you words and return to the LORD; say to him, 'Take away all iniquity; accept what is good, and we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips.'" (Hosea 14:1–2, ESV)

Here are conviction, godly sorrow, humbling and confession, the essential elements of a true return. Conviction of the real state of the declining soul. Godly sorrow at the discovery. Deep and sincere humbling over it. And full, open confession before God. What a lovely posture for a restored soul!

Fourth, put the cause to death. Joined to the discovery and the confession there must be a full putting to death, an abandonment, of whatever has caused the decline. Without this there is no true revival of grace. Mortifying indwelling sin and forsaking the known cause, whatever it is, are the true marks of a believer's restoration to the joy of God's salvation.

But let me be careful, for this work is easily misunderstood. There can be all the outward signs of putting sin to death while the heart remains a stranger to the real thing. An awakening sermon, an alarming providence, or a startling truth can arrest and shake a backsliding soul for a moment. The eyelid lifts. The sleeper twitches. To a casual eye it looks like waking up. But it is only the fitful stirring of a sick and drowsy spirit. The means of grace may be taken up again. The secret decline may be felt, mourned and acknowledged. But if the hidden cause is left alive, the appearance of recovery soon fades. It was a passing shock, and all went still. The heavy eyelid opened a little and closed again. The goodness that promised so much was like the morning cloud and the early dew (Hosea 6:4). And the reason was that there was no real putting of sin to death.

Think of a plant in my garden, withering. I loosen the soil, water it, set it in the sun. But I have never found out that a worm is feeding at its root. I go on with my surface work. The morning sun, the evening dew and the loosened earth may give it a moment of freshness. But it dies all the same. So it is with a declining believer. All the outward means of revival may be used, even multiplied, but to no lasting effect, while the worm feeds at the root. Until the hidden cause is put to death, removed and pulled up, the surface revival only ends in a deeper sleep and a more terrible deception. Let me say it again: there can be no true, spiritual and lasting revival of grace in a believer while secret sin stays undiscovered and unmortified in the heart.

Real mortification is not surface work. It is not trimming a few dead tendrils from the branch. It is not cutting off outward sins and keeping up outward duties. It is laying the axe to the root of sin in the believer. It aims at nothing less than the full defeat of the principle of sin. Until that is done, there is no true return of the heart to God.

So I ask you again: what is the cause of your soul's secret decline? What is feeding on the precious plant of grace right now, destroying its strength, its beauty and its fruit? Is it a too-strong attachment to a person or a thing? Put it to death. Love of self? Put it to death. Love of the world? Put it to death. Some sinful habit quietly kept? Put it to death. It must die, root and branch, if you are to know a full return to God. It may be as dear as a right hand or a right eye. But if it comes between your soul and God, if it crucifies Christ in you, weakens faith, enfeebles grace and makes the soul barren, do not rest until it is dead.

Do not try this in your own strength. This work is the Holy Spirit working in and blessing the believer's own efforts:

"For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." (Romans 8:13, ESV)

Here the believer's own effort is recognised alongside the Spirit's power. If you, believers, saints of God, by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body. The work is yours, but the power is the Spirit's. So take your discovered sin to the Spirit. He will bring the cross of Jesus into your soul with killing, crucifying power. He will show you a Savior suffering for sin as perhaps you have never seen him. And in a moment your enemy will lie dead at your feet.

Do not give in to despair, troubled soul. Do you long for a gracious revival of God's work in you? Are you mourning in secret over your declined heart? Have you searched and found the hidden cause? Do you truly want it put to death? Then look up and hear your Lord: "I am the LORD, your healer" (Exodus 15:26, ESV). The Lord is your healer. His love can restore you. His blood can heal you. His grace can master your sin. "Take with you words and return to the LORD; say to him, 'Take away all iniquity,'" and the Lord will answer:

"I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them." (Hosea 14:4, ESV)

Fifth, fill your mind with Christ. Seek richer, more spiritual views of his personal glory, his love and his fullness. All decline comes from letting something into the mind that is against the nature of grace within. The world, with its pleasures, vanities, cares and temptations, comes in, often dressed as lawful work and duty, and draws the mind from God and the affections from Christ. These weaken and deaden faith, love and every grace of the Spirit. They are "the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom" (Song of Solomon 2:15, ESV). The world is a deadly snare to the child of God. You cannot keep a close and holy walk with God, live as a pilgrim and stranger, fight a steady and winning battle against your many spiritual enemies, and at the same time open your heart to the greatest enemy of grace, the love of the world. But when your mind is taken up with Christ, filled with thoughts of his glory, grace and love, there is no room left for outward allurements. The world is shut out. The creature is shut out. The charms of sin are shut out. And the soul keeps a steady, undisturbed fellowship with God, and can resist every outward attack of the enemy with more strength.

And what a blessing is the communion of a soul shut in with Jesus!

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." (Revelation 3:20, ESV)

That is true fellowship. And how sweet when his own Spirit in the heart gives the answer: "Your face, LORD, do I seek" (Psalm 27:8, ESV). Come in, precious Jesus. I want none but you. I desire no other company and would hear no other voice. Let me eat with you. Give me your own flesh to eat and your own blood to drink. Dear reader, it is because we have so little to do with Jesus, let him in so seldom and so unwillingly, travel so rarely to his blood and righteousness and live so little on his fullness, that we are forced so often to cry, "My leanness, my leanness!" So, "if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God" (Colossians 3:1, ESV). Let us know Christ more, grasp his glory more fully, drink deeper into his love, take in more of his Spirit and become more like him.

Sixth, and this is the great secret of all revival: ask for a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit. A declining soul needs this more than anything else. If you have it in large measure, you have every spiritual blessing, since it holds all the others and is the pledge of them. Our Lord pressed this on his drooping disciples as his last comforting teaching. His bodily presence among them, he told them, could not compare with the Spirit living among them for good. The Spirit would bring to their minds all he had taught them. He would complete their knowledge of his person and work, of the nature of his kingdom and of its sure triumph. He would mature them in holiness and fit them for their great labour by deepening their spiritual life, giving them more grace and enlarging their love. And on the day of Pentecost it was done. The apostles came out of that baptism like men who had been reconverted.

And that is what you must pass through, dear reader, if you want revival in your soul. You must be reconverted, and that through a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit. Nothing less will quicken your dying graces and melt your frozen love. Nothing else will stop your secret decline and bring back your wandering heart. You must be filled afresh with that Spirit whom you have so often wounded, grieved, slighted and quenched. He must enter you again, seal you, sanctify you and reconvert you. Get up, pray, and agonise for the Spirit to be poured out on your soul. Give up your lifeless religion, your form without power, your prayer without communion, your confession without brokenness, your zeal without love.

And what numbers of precious promises are gathered in God's Word, all inviting you to seek this blessing!

"May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth!" (Psalm 72:6, ESV)

"I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily; he shall take root like the trees of Lebanon;" (Hosea 14:5, ESV)

"They shall return and dwell beneath my shadow; they shall flourish like the grain; they shall blossom like the vine; their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon." (Hosea 14:7, ESV)

"Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth." (Hosea 6:1–3, ESV)

So seek this blessing above all others. "Be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18, ESV). Seek it earnestly, seek it knowing how badly you need it, seek it with perseverance, seek it with faith. God has promised to pour out his Spirit. Ask in the name of Jesus, and you will receive.

Seventh, expect discipline. One word more. Do not be surprised if the Lord puts you through deep trial to bring you back. He often fits the discipline to the case. Is your decline a secret one? He may send a secret rebuke, a hidden cross, a private chastening. No one has seen your concealed decline, and no one sees your concealed correction. The decline was between God and your soul, and so, it may be, is the rebuke. The backsliding was in the heart, and so is the chastening. But if the trial, made holy by the Lord, brings your soul back, restores your wavering heart to Christ and revives all his work within you, you will thank him for the discipline. You will say with the psalmist, praising the ways of a covenant God and Father:

"Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word." (Psalm 119:67, ESV)

"It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes." (Psalm 119:71, ESV)

Lastly, begin again. Set out afresh for God and heaven as though you had never started on the way. Go back to the beginning. Go as a sinner to Jesus. Seek the quickening, healing and sanctifying work of the Spirit. And make this your prayer, offered and pressed until it is answered, at the footstool of mercy: O Lord, revive your work! Quicken me, O Lord! Restore to me the joy of your salvation! In answer to your prayer, he will come down like rain on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth. And your song will be the church's song:

"My beloved speaks and says to me: 'Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.'" (Song of Solomon 2:10–13, ESV)

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In plain words. Your grace is real and cannot die, but it can quietly weaken, and you may be the last to notice. The signs are not dramatic. Your duties go on but you enjoy nothing in them. You read the Bible without hunger. You pray without feeling near. You talk about religion without talking to Christ. You grow hard toward other believers. The Song of Solomon shows the pattern: a sleepy heart, a Lord who knocks, and a withdrawal that is a father's correction and not a judgment. The way back has steps. Look honestly at your soul. Find the cause. Confess it all. Put the root of it to death by the Spirit. Fill your mind with Christ. Ask for a fresh filling of the Spirit. Accept the Lord's discipline. And begin again. At every step he is already reaching for you.

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Chapter 2: When Love Grows Cold

"And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." (Matthew 24:12, ESV)

In the last chapter we looked at decline in its hidden form, the stage where the soul is sick and nobody knows. From here on we follow that sickness as it grows more obvious, tracing it through the graces of the Spirit one at a time. The symptoms are plainer now. Concealment is no longer possible. A doctor can tell from a faint pulse that something is wrong with the heart even before he finds the disease. A believer who has a quick eye and a skilled touch can do the same with a soul. The person himself may not feel it. He may tell himself that all is well, shut his eyes on purpose, and keep crying "peace, peace." But those who watch can see.

We begin with love, because love is the spring from which every other grace flows. The strength of your obedience will match the warmth of your affection for God. If that grows cold, every other part of your Christian life feels it. Every grace feels it, every call to duty feels it, and every beat of the spiritual pulse gives away the secret. Just imagine what a soul looks like when the very heart of its godliness is sending out only thin, sluggish streams of life. Before we go on, let me remind you briefly what love to God is, why it is so central, and what it does.

Why Love Comes First

It is the first commandment. God's Word makes love to him the great demand of his law: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment" (Matthew 22:37–38, ESV). Think about why God put himself forward as the proper object of our love. It was wise, because if he had set our highest love on anything lower than himself, he would have lifted something smaller above himself, and whatever we love with our whole heart becomes our god. And it was good, because nothing less than God can satisfy a soul made to last forever. He gave us a capacity for happiness and boundless desires for it, and only the infinite can fill them. He never meant a creature with an undying mind to sip its joy from a lower fountain. All life flows out from him. It is only right that all love should flow back to him and rest in him.

This command binds every creature that has breath. No plea of weakness, no rival interest, no competing claim can release anyone from it. It rests on who God is and on what he is to us as Creator, Ruler and Keeper. It does not even depend on what we get out of it. God has joined the deepest happiness to supreme love, and he has warned of deep misery where it is withheld. But even apart from all that, his excellence alone makes it right to love him with the whole heart.

It is the heart of the gospel. Christianity is a religion of motive. It does not drive people with force. It sets great motives before the mind and wins the understanding, the will and the affections to serve Christ. The law of the gospel is love: "the love of Christ controls us" (2 Corinthians 5:14, ESV). That was Paul's own account of what moved him, and it is meant to move every believer. A sense of duty and a fear of consequences may push a soul forward for a while. Only love produces the obedience the gospel is asking for. Your place under the new covenant is not that of a slave to a master but of a child to a father:

"And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'" (Galatians 4:6, ESV)

"So you are no longer a slave, but a son." (Galatians 4:7, ESV)

So we look for a new motive to match the new relationship, and we find it in one word: love. Our Lord said it himself:

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15, ESV)

"If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." (John 14:23, ESV)

Moved by this, the believer works not for life but from life, not for acceptance but from acceptance. A holy, self-denying, cross-bearing life is not the drudgery of a slave. It is the glad obedience of a child, springing from love for a person and thankfulness for what that person has done.

It is also the strongest motive there is. When love flows from the heart of Jesus into the heart of a poor believing sinner, it drives out selfishness, melts coldness, conquers sin and draws the heart into a simple, whole surrender. Under its pull every cross for Jesus becomes easy. Every burden is light. Every yoke is pleasant. Duties turn into privileges, difficulties vanish, fears are quieted and delay is rebuked. And the pardoned, adopted child cries out, "Here, Lord, I am, a living sacrifice. Yours for today, and yours for eternity!"

It drives out fear.

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." (1 John 4:18, ESV)

Anyone who has felt it knows that fear is a torment. The fear of death, of judgment, of condemnation, the fear that comes from a slavish idea of God's commands or a poor idea of your place in his family, the fear that comes from half understanding what Christ finished, from shaky confidence about your acceptance, from giving way to unbelief, from guilt left on the conscience or from some hidden sin, can fill a heart with torment. Some of God's best people have suffered it. Job said, "I become afraid of all my suffering" (Job 9:28, ESV), and, "I am in dread of him" (Job 23:15, ESV). David said, "When I am afraid, I put my trust in you" (Psalm 56:3, ESV), and also, "My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments" (Psalm 119:120, ESV).

But perfect love casts out fear. The love of Jesus shed abroad in the heart is meant to lift you out of every bondage, including the fear of death and what lies beyond it, and to let you rest on this:

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1, ESV)

Notice where this victory over fear comes from. It does not come from how you feel about the truth, or from evidence that you are accepted, or even from the Spirit's work in you, blessed as that is. It comes from outside you, from Jesus. His blood and righteousness, resting on the glory of his person and worked into your experience by the Holy Spirit, drive out the fear of death and judgment and fill you with peace.

So if you have a fearful heart, I ask you gently: why these anxious doubts? Why these tormenting fears? Why this shrinking from the thought of death? Why such cold and hard thoughts of God? Why this prison and this chain? You have not yet been made perfect in the love of Jesus. You have not yet fully grasped that he is mighty to save, that he died for sinners, that his death fully satisfied divine justice, and that just as you are, poor, empty, vile and unworthy, without one good work of your own, you are welcome to the rich provision of grace. To believe that simply is to be made perfect in love, and then every fear falls away. So seek to be made perfect in his love. It is a fathomless ocean. Why not go down into it? It is free, so come. It is deep, so drink. It is wide, so launch out. "May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God" (2 Thessalonians 3:5, ESV).

It sets faith to work. Love is the grace that puts faith into action: "faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6, ESV). Faith in action brings every spiritual blessing into the soul. You stand by faith (Romans 11:20), walk by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7), overcome by faith (1 John 5:4) and live by faith (Galatians 2:20). So love is a hard-working grace. "God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake" (Hebrews 6:10, ESV). Nothing about true love is lazy. When it is healthy in the heart, it makes you live not for yourself but for the one who loved you and gave himself for you. It wakes you up to watchfulness, sets you to examine yourself, moves you to pray, and sends you out into kindness and charity, all springing from love to God and flowing in a channel of love to people.

It is armour. The Spirit counts love part of the Christian's armour: "let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love" (1 Thessalonians 5:8, ESV). Without growing love to God, you are poorly armed against enemies that never stop attacking. But what a breastplate it is in the day of battle! Who can overcome a child of God whose heart overflows with divine love? There is something about it that turns back the spirit of darkness and enmity, and something that sin cannot bear. A person may be nothing but weakness in himself, surrounded on every side by spiritual Philistines. But if his heart is rising to God in love, longing for him, panting after his commands and wanting above all else to be like him, he is fully armed. "No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed" (Isaiah 54:17, ESV). Every flaming dart will be put out (Ephesians 6:16). He will be "more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Romans 8:37, ESV).

It never dies. Not all the graces are like this. A day is coming when faith will be turned into sight and hope will be swallowed up in having. But love goes on. "Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away" (1 Corinthians 13:8, ESV). It is an eternal spring, welling up in the heart of God. Heaven is its home, God its source, the glorified spirit its subject and eternity its length.

Remembering Your First Love

Stop for a moment and think back to the time when you first gave yourself to Jesus. If there was ever a happy period in your life, a green spot in your memory where the sun always shines, was it not the time and place when your heart first opened with love for him? You may have walked many a thorny path since. You have gone through storms and deep afflictions and fought hard battles, and most of it has almost faded from memory. But the hour of your first love you have never forgotten, and you never can. The day your chains fell off. The day you sprang into the liberty of the children of God. The day light broke on your darkness. The day the Spirit wounded you and then healed the wound with the balm of Gilead. The day he gave you sorrow and then soothed it with a sight of the crucified Lamb. The day faith took hold of Jesus and you knew, "My beloved is mine, and I am his" (Song of Solomon 2:16, ESV). And he whispered, how tenderly, "Your sins are forgiven" (Luke 7:48, ESV), and then, "go in peace" (Luke 7:50, ESV).

How fresh it all still is. The sanctuary where you worshipped. The minister you heard. The spot where you laid down your burden and light and love and joy broke in. The saints who rejoiced over you and the happy new believers who gathered round and mingled their songs with yours. The man of God who brought you into the church and its privileges. It all stands before you as bright as if it happened yesterday.

How sad, then, if the Lord should have to bring this charge: "I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first" (Revelation 2:4, ESV). But that is where we must turn now. May the Spirit of truth and love be our guide.

How Love Declines

The truth before us is humbling and painful: the love of a child of God can decline, greatly and sadly. Notice what I am and am not saying. I am talking about its power, not its existence. Faith, love, hope and zeal can drop low in vigour and warmth and growth, but the Word of God assures us they can never be wholly lost, even in their weakest state or hardest trial. To believe otherwise is to deny where they came from and to accuse God of failing in wisdom, power and faithfulness. Not one grain of wheat falls through the sieve. Not one speck of the pure gold is lost in the fire. In this chapter I am looking at how love declines in its living power in the soul and in its effect on the daily walk.

God brought this very charge against his ancient people:

"I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown." (Jeremiah 2:2, ESV)

Then came the charge of decline:

"What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?" (Jeremiah 2:5, ESV)

Our Lord foretold a day when "the love of many will grow cold" (Matthew 24:12, ESV), a sign of approaching desolations. And he told the church at Ephesus, "You have abandoned the love you had at first" (Revelation 2:4, ESV). What are the marks of this decline?

God is less in your thoughts and less your delight. How you see God and how you enjoy him depend heavily on the state of your love. If your affections cool, if your mind turns earthly, selfish and carnal, dark shadows gather round God's character and glory. He ceases to be your chief attachment, your pure joy, your adoring thought and your trusted Father.

The moment Adam's love for God dropped, the moment it moved off its proper centre, he ran from God's presence and tried to hide in the garden (Genesis 3:8). He knew his heart was divided and that God was no longer the source of his joy. The voice that was once so sweet now frightened him. And what had changed? Not God. God does not change; it is the glory of a perfect being that he never acts against his own nature. The change was in the creature. Adam had left his first love. Aware that he had stopped loving God, he would gladly have covered himself and shut himself out of his company.

It is the same with a believer who is conscious of cooling love. There is a hiding from God's presence. His character looks misty, his dealings are misread, and desire for him grows faint. But where the heart is right, warm and fixed, God is glorious in all his perfections and being with him is the highest happiness on earth. This was David's experience:

"My soul thirsts for you." (Psalm 63:1, ESV)

"Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you." (Psalm 63:3, ESV)

You come to him less like a child. As love declines, the sweet confidence of a child is lost. The soul no longer runs into the Father's arms but lingers at a distance, or if it comes near, does so with the shaking and stiffness of a slave. The tender, trusting spirit of your early days has gone, when no one was so glorious to you as God, no one so loved as your Father in heaven, no place so sacred as the throne of communion, no theme so sweet as free adoption. Distrust, legal fears and bondage of spirit have taken its place.

You think hard thoughts of God's dealings. When love is strong, a soul vindicates God in everything he does. It does not rebel or complain or sulk. It quietly accepts the dispensation, however hard. In the hour of trial it says, "My God has struck me, but he is my God still, faithful and loving. My Father has disciplined me hard, but he is my Father still, tender and kind. This trial began in love. It speaks in the voice of love. It carries a message of love, and it was sent to draw me closer to the God of love who sent it." Dear reader, if you are one of the Lord's afflicted ones, you are happy if this is how it turns out for you, if you have heard the voice of love in the rod and been won back to the God who held it. But when love has declined, it is the other way round.

You have little desire for his company. If you pray out of duty and not because you want to, and if little nearness is the result, you could hardly ask for clearer evidence of cooling love. The more we love someone, the more we want that person near, and the more restless we are when he is away. We want the friend we love always at our side. His presence sweetens every other joy, his absence sours it. So it is with God. If you have seen something of his glory by faith and felt something of his love by the Spirit, you will know the difference between his felt presence and his absence.

Some professing Christians walk so long without communion, are so sunk in the cares and fogs of the world, have had the edge of their affection so dulled and their love so frozen by worldly work and by cold, formal Christians, that the Sun of righteousness could stop shining on their souls and they would not know it. God could stop visiting them and they would not miss him. He could stop speaking and the silence would raise no alarm. It would actually be stranger to them if the Lord suddenly broke in with a visit of love than if he left them for weeks and months without a sign of his presence. Reader, are you a professing child of God? Do not be content with that. It is a poor and lifeless way to live, unworthy of your profession, unworthy of the name you bear, unworthy of the glory you are heading for. A man whose love is deepening finds God an ever greater delight and fellowship with him the most precious privilege on earth. He cannot live without regular, close, private time with his best and most faithful Friend.

Your walk is less tender. What do I mean by a tender walk? I mean that a believer walks carefully, with integrity, with watchfulness and prayer. In Hezekiah's words, "I walk slowly all my years" (Isaiah 38:15, ESV). He trembles to offend his Father. He takes increasing delight in God's commands. He would rather pull out his right eye and cut off his right hand than knowingly offend God or grieve his Spirit. What makes a person walk like that? Nothing but God's love poured into the heart. So think what dangers crowd the path, and what temptations press on the soul, of someone whose love is declining.

Christ is less glorious to you. Our view of Jesus depends on our love for him. Where there is little dealing with his atoning blood, little leaning on his righteousness, little drawing on his fullness and little daily taking up of his cross, love grows cold. I would judge the depth of anyone's faith by his answer to the question, "What do you think about the Christ?" Is he lived to? Is he lived on? Is his name your delight, his cross your boast, his work your resting place? These will be your experience if the pulse of love for Christ beats strong in your breast.

You love his people less. A decay of love for the saints is a strong sign of decay of love for God himself. If you love God sincerely, you must love his image wherever you find it. The picture may be a poor copy. The outline may be faint. There may be shades you cannot approve. But if you see the Spirit's hand in the work, and in the outline some likeness to the One your soul admires, you feel your best affections go out toward it. You do not stop to ask what part of the church he belongs to, what name he bears or what colour his uniform is. You see a man of God, a meek and lowly follower of Jesus, and you give him your heart and your hand. What a passport to our hearts the image of Jesus is in one of God's children!

So it marks a decay of love to God when the heart beats faintly and the eye looks coldly at some dear saint because he is not in our party and does not wear our badge, when narrow-minded selfishness warps the mind, freezes the flow of love and nearly unchristens a believer. Scripture is solemn and clear on this:

"If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother." (1 John 4:20–21, ESV)

"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:35, ESV)

If we do not love the visible likeness, how can we love the invisible original?

You care less for his cause. When love to God declines, so does interest in the growth of his kingdom, in the spread of his truth, in holiness in the church and in the conversion of sinners. Outward zeal may carry on for a long time after secret duties have been dropped, and that is the sad state of many. But a living, spiritual interest in these things always falls with love to God. When we see a church member keeping up his outward membership and yet hanging like a dead branch on the vine, doing nothing for God's cause, holding back his money, his prayers and his presence, and discouraging those who are active, we are ready to ask, "How does God's love abide in him?" (1 John 3:17, ESV).

What Causes It

Love can fade for many reasons. Let me name a few, and ask you to ponder them seriously.

The world creeps in. No two affections are more opposite than love to God and love to the world. They cannot both be supreme in one heart. They cannot share one throne. If divine love rules, the world is shut out. If love for the world rules, God is shut out. "No one can serve two masters... You cannot serve God and money" (Matthew 6:24, ESV). Guard against this as you would against your worst enemy. It has swallowed millions. Many professing Christians have been pulled into its whirlpool and gone down. It creeps in quietly. It wears many disguises: a proper care for business, diligence in a lawful trade, a sensible yielding to family claims. It will even quote Scripture and take the form of an angel of light. Be suspicious. Remember the apostle's sad note about a fellow-worker: "Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me" (2 Timothy 4:10, ESV). Do not be a modern Demas:

"Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." (1 John 2:15, ESV)

Nobody can keep his spirituality undamaged, his love uninjured, his robes unspotted and his walk blameless who secretly lets the world into his heart. How can such a person live as a pilgrim? How can his heart burn with love for God? What attraction can the throne of grace have for him, or spiritual duties, or the company of the saints, while his heart runs after money and ambition and position and applause? An unsurrendered attachment to the world must be given up, if love for God is to take the throne.

Something you love too much. An idolatrous love for a created thing has again and again crucified love for Christ. Just as no one can love the world and God supremely at once, no one can give Christ and a creature the same intensity of regard. And how often has a creature stolen a heart from its rightful King! The heart that once was so simply the Lord's, the affections that clung to him so purely, have been moved to something lesser. The piece of clay that God gave to deepen your love for himself has been shaped into an idol and you burn your daily incense before it. The flower he made to spring up so that his own beauty would be dearer to you has pushed the Rose of Sharon out of your heart. Is this how we treat our mercies? Do we turn blessings into poison, and let the very things sent to bring us closer to God draw our affections off from their holy centre? Fools that we are, to love the creature more than the Creator!

Dear reader, why has God been dealing with you as he has? Why has he taken away your idols, crumbled your clay to dust, and blown on your beautiful flower? Because he hates idolatry, and it is the same whether it is offered to a lifeless block of wood or to a living person of intellect and beauty. And what does his voice say in every stream he dries up and every plant he blows on and every disappointment he writes over a created thing? It says:

"My son, give me your heart." (Proverbs 23:26, ESV)

I want your love, your pure and highest love. I want to be the one object of your delight. I gave my Son for you. I sent my Spirit to quicken you, renew you, seal you, and claim you for myself. I did all this so that I could have your heart. To win it, I have struck your gourds, removed your idols, and broken your earthly props, so that your affections might rise free and undivided and wrap themselves around the one who loves you with a love that never dies.

Misreading God's discipline. If you interpret God's covenant dealings as judgments and not as the fruits of love, it deadens your love for him. Hard, harsh thoughts of God are the result of wrong readings of what he does. If for one moment you take your eye off God's heart in the depths of a trial, you are ready to listen to every dark suggestion of the enemy. You start to see the chastisement as the sign of displeasure and the God who sent it as unkind and severe. But let the eagle eye of faith pierce the clouds and darkness around the throne, and see that God's heart is still love, all love and nothing but love, to his afflicted and grieving child. In a moment every murmur is hushed and every rebellious feeling is still. All that is left to say is what the crowd said of Jesus: "He has done all things well" (Mark 7:37, ESV).

So if you want your heart always fixed on God, with your affections flowing one unbroken current toward him, interpret every dispensation in the light of his love. Never let yourself believe that any other feeling prompts his discipline. Banish the thought from the door of your mind the moment it knocks. And let this be the thought that quiets you to rest like an infant on its mother's breast: My God is love. My Father is unchanging tenderness and truth. He has done it, and it is well done.

The Way Back

Now to the revival of this fading grace. Before you try any particular means, find out exactly where your love stands. Self-knowledge is the first step in every soul's return to God. In conversion it was knowing ourselves as utterly lost that led us to Jesus. The Spirit taught us that and brought us to the finished work of the Son. So before you reach for any remedy, find out how far your love has declined and what has caused it. Do not shrink from the examination or hide from the discovery. And if the humbling truth presses in (I am not what I was. My soul has lost ground. My spirituality has decayed. I have lost the warmth of my first love. I have slowed in the heavenly race. Jesus is not what he was, the joy of my day and the song of my night. My walk with God is no longer so tender, loving and childlike as it was), then confess it honestly and humbly before God. To be humbled as we should be, we must know ourselves. No disguise, either before ourselves or before God. The wound must be probed and the disease known, and its worst symptoms brought out.

Second, find the cause, and put it to death. Where love declines there is a cause, and once you have found it, it must be removed at once. Love to God is a tender flower, a sensitive plant, easily crushed. It needs constant care. The world's heat will wither it. The coldness of formal religion will nip it. A thousand influences, all foreign to its nature, are lined up against it. The soil it grows in is not friendly. nothing good dwells in us by nature, as Paul says (Romans 7:18), and whatever holiness is in you, whatever longing to be like God, whatever lifting of the affections toward him, is from God himself, the result of sovereign grace. What sleepless watchfulness and constant tending are needed to keep this heavenly plant in bloom! So search out and remove the cause. Do not rest till you find it. If it is the world, come out from it. If it is the power of sin within, take it to the cross of Jesus to be crucified. If it is a creature stealing your heart from Christ, give it up at God's bidding. He asks you to surrender your heart, and he has promised to be better to you than all creature love. All the tenderness, warmth, sympathy and faithfulness you ever found in a creature is in God, your covenant God and Father, in an infinite degree. He made the creature all it is to you. That fond smile from a fellow believer was a ray from his face. That kind word was a drop from his heart. If he asks you to give up the creature, give it up gladly, and let God be all in all.

Third, drink from the fountain of his love. All love in you for God is the result of his love for you. It was planted in your heart by his Spirit: "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19, ESV). He took the first step. Who can tell the love of God for us when we were still sinners? Before we existed, and when we were enemies, he sent his Son to die for us. When we were far off in our wickedness, he sent his Spirit to bring us to himself in a cloudy and dark day. Everything since, his patience, his restoring mercy, his tender and faithful care, even the strokes of his rod, has only unfolded how deep his love goes. This is the love I want you filled with. Draw deeply from this river. Why should you deny yourself? There is enough love in God to overflow the hearts of all his saints through all eternity, so why not be filled? Do not stand on the brink of the fountain or linger at the edge of the river. Go in. Plunge in. It is for you, poor, worthless, unworthy and vile as you feel yourself to be. This river of love is for you. Seek to be filled with it, "to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19, ESV), and your heart will go up in return in a flame of love to God.

Fourth, spend time at the cross. This is the great secret of an affection that keeps rising to God. If it is hard for you to grasp the love of God toward you, read it in the cross of his dear Son.

"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:9–10, ESV)

Dwell on that astonishing fact. Drink in the truth. Think about it, ponder it, search into it, pray over it, until your heart is melted and broken and overwhelmed by God's love to you in the gift of Jesus. How it will rekindle the flame that is dying in your breast! How it will draw you into a holy and whole surrender of body, soul and spirit! So whenever you notice your love waning, whenever you feel reluctant to take up the daily cross or shrink from a command, go at once to Calvary. Go simply and directly to Jesus. Warm your heart by looking at him on the cross, and soon the frost around it will melt, the frozen stream will begin to flow, and, in the words of the Song, the chariots of Amminadab (Song of Solomon 6:12) will carry your soul away to fellowship with God.

Fifth, honour the Holy Spirit. The work is all his, so be careful not to take it out of his hands. Everything I have suggested will be effective only as the Spirit works in you and with you. Pray much for his anointing. Go to him as the glorifier of Christ, the Comforter, the Sealer, the Witness and the guarantee of his people. He is the one who will apply the atoning blood, who will revive your drooping graces, who will fan your fading love into flame by opening up the cross to you and directing your heart into the love of God. Do not take your eye off the love of the Spirit; it is equal to the Father's and the Son's. Honour him in his love, and let it encourage you to draw freely on his influences and "be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18, ESV).

Lastly, remember that his love has not cooled. Though yours has grown cold, the love of your God and Father for you has not lessened. Not the shadow of a change has touched it. He has hated your decline and rebuked your wandering, but he has not withdrawn his love. What an encouragement to come back! Not for one moment has God turned his back on you, though you have turned your back on him countless times. His face has been toward you the whole time. It would have shone on you with all its melting power, but for the clouds your own waywardness and sin have thrown over it. Retrace your steps and return to God. You may be a poor wanderer who has left his first love. Your affections may have strayed and your heart gone after other lovers. Still God is gracious and ready to pardon. He will welcome you back for the sake of Jesus, his beloved Son in whom he is well pleased. This is his own declaration:

"If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules, if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes, but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness." (Psalm 89:30–33, ESV)

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In plain words. Love is the root of all the other graces, so when love cools, everything cools with it. It was always the first commandment and the true motive of the gospel. It makes a child obey from joy, drives out fear, sets faith to work, and never dies. You can see it fading when God becomes less your delight, when you come to him less like a child, when you grumble at his dealings, when you want his company less, when your walk grows careless, when Christ seems less glorious, and when you grow cold toward his people and his work. The usual causes are the world creeping in, an idol in the heart, and a wrong reading of God's discipline. The way back is to see the truth about yourself, to put the cause to death, to drink from the fountain of his love, to sit at the cross, and to ask the Spirit to light the fire again. And remember that your cooling love has not cooled his.

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Chapter 3: When Faith Grows Weak

"Increase our faith!" (Luke 17:5, ESV)

[Editor's note: Winslow's heading cites this prayer as Luke 15:5. It is in Luke 17:5.]

Every grace of the Spirit is a costly and precious part of what makes you a Christian. You may not know which graces you have until God's dealings call them out. We only learn the strength of our body or our mind when something tests it, and it is the same with the graces. That is one reason the Father deals with his children as he does. He never strikes without a reason. Every stroke of the rod is the muffled voice of love, every wave carries some rich blessing from the better country, and every storm brings one in on its wing. How foolish it is, then, ever to murmur at his dealings, or to mistake their holy and wise purpose.

If every grace is precious, then the decay of any grace must matter to God. Letting any part of his work in the soul wither is a kind of insult to him, far more than we realise. Think about what is most precious in his sight, next to his own Son. It is not the world; he sees no glory in that. It is not the heavens; they are not clean in his sight. It is his kingdom in his saints: his renewing, adopting and sanctifying grace in his people. His deepest thoughts rest on it, his fondest love is spent on it, and all his arrangements in nature, providence and grace serve to begin it, carry it on and finish it. So imagine what God thinks when he sees that grace decaying in you, and consider what pains he takes to bring it back.

We have looked at decline in two stages already. Now we come to the decline of faith. As with love, we start by looking at what faith is.

What Faith Is

Few subjects have been argued about more and understood less. That is not surprising. People come to it without taking God's Word simply as it stands and without leaning on the Spirit's light. And Satan is not asleep. Faith is the grace he attacks most directly and most constantly, because he knows its spiritual nature and how much glory its exercise brings to God. So he does everything he can to cloud its simplicity and weaken its effect.

Yet getting faith right is the foundation of the whole Christian life. It is the starting point, and a mistake there ruins every step after it. It does not matter how beautiful the building is, how perfect its symmetry, how grand its arches or how high its towers, if it stands on a bad foundation. Any religion of mere intellect, imagination or taste, which is the only kind the world admires, that rests on a false or flawed faith is a splendid fantasy. It will let you down in sorrow, fool you in the hour of death, and leave you in endless woe afterwards.

A merchant who starts his accounts with an error carries that error through every page. A traveller who takes the wrong road at the fork should not be surprised if he never reaches home. We have a long and serious account to settle with God. We owe him perfect obedience and have nothing to pay. We are also travellers to eternity, and each step brings us toward the end of a short but weighty time of testing. If you start your religion with a false view of any essential point of salvation, the error runs through the whole of it. Unless you retrace your steps and correct it, the end will be fatal. So I want this chapter to give you a clear view of the nature and effects of faith. May the Spirit be our teacher and God's Word our textbook.

One faith. Writers of theology have divided the subject into speculative faith, historical faith, practical faith, saving faith and realising faith. I set all of that aside. These distinctions mostly confuse the mind. The Bible speaks of "one faith" (Ephesians 4:5, ESV), and it calls it the "faith of God's elect" (Titus 1:1). What is it?

What it is. Briefly: faith is an act of the mind and heart by which a repenting sinner, one the Holy Spirit has convicted of sin and brought to true sorrow, takes hold of God's free offer of pardon through a crucified Saviour. He believes it. He receives it. He welcomes the promise of eternal life through the Lord Jesus. And so he "sets his seal to this, that God is true" (John 3:33, ESV).

I say the mind is part of this because evangelical teachers have been accused of making thinking worthless and religion a matter of mere feeling. That charge is false. Every faculty of the human mind is called into full play in heart religion. The Holy Spirit does more to develop the mind than all human teaching put together. We have seen people of very ordinary ability before conversion become strong and commanding in thought after the Spirit lit up the Word for them. Powers of reasoning that had been hidden were released, and springs of thought that had been sealed were opened. Old things passed away and all things became new. No mind is so strong as a renewed one.

So faith touches the mind and the heart. A man must know his lost and ruined state before he will take Christ, and he cannot know it without a mind the Spirit has lit up. A great change comes over him. One beam of light, one touch of the Spirit, and he sees himself differently. All his thoughts, affections and desires turn into a new channel. His pride in his own goodness vanishes like a dream. His lofty looks come down. He takes his place in the dust, a broken-hearted sinner. What a wonderful change, to see the Pharisee take the tax collector's place and hear him pray the tax collector's prayer: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13, ESV).

Then the work of faith begins. The same Spirit who convinced him of sin shows him a Saviour crucified for the lost. He opens up a salvation full and free for the most worthless. He reveals a fountain that cleanses from all sin and a righteousness that justifies from all things. And what does he set the poor, convicted sinner to do in order to take hold of all this? Only to believe. To the great question, "What must I do to be saved?" there is one answer: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:30–31, ESV).

The anxious soul cries, "Is that all? Have I no great work to do? No price to bring, no worthiness to plead? May I come just as I am, with nothing to commend me, no money, no preparation, all my vileness and nothingness?" And the answer is still: "Only believe." So the soul says in a rush of joy, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24, ESV).

That, dear reader, is faith. It is that wonderful grace you have heard so much about, the subject of so many books and sermons. It is a wounded, bleeding heart rolling itself onto a wounded, bleeding Saviour. It is the simple receiving of the astonishing truth that Jesus died for the ungodly, for sinners, for the poor and vile and bankrupt, and that he welcomes to his heart every convinced, heavy-laden sinner. The heart that believes this, goes out of every other dependence and rests on this alone, receives it, welcomes it and rejoices in it, and in a moment all is peace. Do not forget the simple definition: to believe with the whole heart that Jesus died for sinners. The full belief of that one fact brings peace to the most anxious and sin-troubled soul.

The Life of Faith

You began in faith, and you are to go on in faith. "Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:3, ESV). The whole spiritual life of a child of God is a life of faith. God has ordained it so, and bringing you into the full experience of it is the aim of all his dealings with you. The moment a poor sinner touches the hem of Christ's garment, however feebly, that high and holy life has begun. From then on the believing soul has finished with a life of sight and second causes and has entered a life of faith on Christ. Paul's words fit every believer: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20, ESV).

Let me point to a few blessings in this life.

Security. "You stand fast through faith" (Romans 11:20, ESV). Why have you been kept to this moment? You have seen many tall cedars bowed to the ground. You have seen people who seemed to run well, and then power and wealth and honour came, and they shipwrecked a faith that was never as real as it looked, and drowned in lusts and snares. Why have you been kept, your boat still afloat after the storm, your feet still on the rock? Because you stand by faith. The faith of God's elect has held you. You may know you have strayed often. You may carry sins that would earn a laugh of scorn from an ignorant world if they were known. But you have never been left to cut your soul loose from Jesus. You found out your sins, mourned and confessed them, sought pardon through a fresh application of the blood, and still you stand by faith. If faith had not kept you, where would you be now? Where would that temptation have taken you? But your brokenness and contrition, your going back to the open fountain, show there was something in you that would not let you go. The cedar bowed to the ground, but it rose again. The boat was tossed and battered, but it reached harbour. Do not be proud, but fear. Your own watchfulness, strength and wisdom would have been poor guards without the faith that never dies.

The walk. "For we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7, ESV). This takes in every small circumstance of every day. It is a looking above trials, above needs, above puzzles, above what seems unlikely or impossible, above all second causes, and going forward in the face of difficulty and discouragement, leaning on God. If the Lord rolled the Red Sea in front of us and marched the Egyptians up behind us, and then told us to go forward, faith's duty and privilege would be to obey at once. It would believe that before our feet touched the water, God would divide the sea and take us over dry shod. This is the only holy and happy life for a believer. The moment he steps off that path and tries to walk by sight, difficulties crowd around him, troubles multiply, the smallest trials become heavy crosses, temptations grow in number and power, the heart sickens at disappointment, the Spirit is grieved and God is dishonoured.

Armour. Faith is part of the believer's armour: "In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one" (Ephesians 6:16, ESV). It is also his breastplate: "having put on the breastplate of faith and love" (1 Thessalonians 5:8, ESV). Not one moment, even the holiest, passes when we are not exposed to the fiery darts. The attack often comes when we least expect it, and often at times of special nearness to God and holy enjoyment. But in this armour no weapon formed against us will succeed. The fiery dart is put out and the enemy runs. Faith in a crucified, living Head, faith that sees the crown shining and the palm waving ahead, is the faith that overcomes. Faith that deals constantly and simply with Jesus, runs to his blood, draws on his fullness and always looks to him, will bring a struggling soul off more than conqueror: "And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" (1 John 5:4–5, ESV).

Purity. Faith is a purifying grace. God "made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:9, ESV). The person with the most faith is the holiest, and the person with the least is the most exposed to the pull of the sin inside. If you want to be more like Christ, more weaned from the world and more dead to yourself, make this your constant prayer: Lord, increase my faith. Faith checks the power of sin, kills the hidden corruption, and lets you endure "as seeing him who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:27, ESV). It smooths the rough way, lightens the daily load, and glorifies God in the fire. It is "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1, ESV). It rests on God's word because he has said it. And it keeps the soul through all its struggles safe for eternal glory, among those who "by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:5, ESV).

How Faith Declines

Now to our subject. As we have said, no single grace has any power in itself. Every one of them was put there by the Spirit and is spiritual and lasting in nature, but each can become so weak and faint that it is among the things that, in the words of Revelation 3:2, "remain and are about to die" (ESV). This is especially true of faith. Perhaps no part of the Spirit's work is attacked more constantly or more fiercely, and so none is more exposed to decline.

Look at the examples in Scripture. Think of Abraham, the father of the faithful, binding his son on the altar and raising the knife. We say at once, "Surely there was never faith like this! Giant faith, whose sinews no trial can slacken, whose lustre no temptation can dim." And yet if we follow his story further, we find that same faith trembling and giving way under a far smaller trial. The man who could hand over his promised son, the son through whom Jesus would come, into God's hands could not trust that same God with his own life.

Think of Job. At the start of his deep trial he justified God. Messenger followed messenger with news of worse, and not a murmur came out of him. As the cup was lifted, brimming, to his lips, how sweet is the sound of his resignation: "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (Job 1:21, ESV). "In all this Job did not sin with his lips" (Job 2:10, ESV). And yet that very faith declined until he cursed the day he was born.

Think of David, whose faith took him out against Goliath, and who later fled from a shadow, saying, "Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul" (1 Samuel 27:1, ESV). And think of Peter, who once walked boldly on a stormy sea and later denied his Lord, frightened by a servant girl. Who can say the faith of the holiest of God's people cannot greatly and sadly decline?

Your own faith. We do not need to go outside ourselves for evidence. Turn inward. What is the real state of your faith? Is it as lively and active as when you first believed? Has it declined? Is the One it looks to as glorious in your eyes as he was then? Are you now looking at second causes in God's dealings with you, instead of lifting your eyes to him alone? What is your faith in prayer? Do you come boldly to the throne of grace and ask without doubting? Do you take every trial, need and weakness to God? What of your hold on eternal things? Are you living as a pilgrim, "choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin" (Hebrews 11:25, ESV), or floating along on the summer sea of this world's pleasures? What is the crucifying power of your faith? Does it deaden you to sin, loosen your hold on the world, and make you walk humbly with God and near to Jesus? And when the Lord brings a cross and says, "Carry this for me," does your faith answer promptly and gladly, "Any cross, any suffering, any sacrifice for you, dear Lord"? Hold your faith up against God's truth and see what it is and how far it has fallen.

What Weakens Faith

Less time in your closet. When your visits to your private place of prayer grow fewer and shallower, faith will certainly decline. Prayer is the channel that feeds faith. You might as well shut off all the streams that run down a mountainside and expect the valley to stay green. Faith and prayer feed one another. Steady, earnest prayer strengthens faith, and faith at work drives you to prayer. A praying man will be a believing man, and a man of faith will be a man of prayer. Mary, Queen of Scots, is said to have feared the prayers of John Knox more than all the armies lined up against her. What made Knox's prayers so powerful? His great faith. And his great faith made him great in prayer.

So here is one fruitful cause of the weak and powerless faith of so many professing Christians. They live at a distance from God, and faith gets no food. There is little going to Jesus, little dealing with his blood, little drawing on his fullness. They forget that as he is the author of faith, he is its sustainer too, and that the soul lives only as it lives "by faith in the Son of God." Reader, is your faith feeble, sick and failing? Look at your closet. Look for the cause there. What is your habit of prayer? How much of your twelve waking hours do you spend with God? Do your work, your family and your worldly concerns eat up all your time? Not a few stolen moments for God? Not one hour taken back from the day for fellowship with your Father in secret? Almost all of it used on yourself, in care, confusion and excitement? Do not wonder that your faith is feeble and ready to die. The wonder is that it is not dead already, that the flickering spark is not out. Wake up from this dangerous sleep. You are sleeping on enchanted ground, with your shield and breastplate lying unbuckled beside you and your enemies gathering in numbers around you. Go back to prayer. It is your only safety.

Living by sight. If we want to see our way every step of the road home, we must give up the harder but happier climb of faith. It is impossible to walk by sight and by faith at once. The two roads run in opposite directions. If the Lord told us the why and the how of everything he does, if we moved forward only when we saw where our foot would land and went out only when we knew where we were going, it would no longer be a life of faith but of sight. We would have swapped a life that glorifies God for one that dishonours him.

When God was about to free Israel from Pharaoh, he told them to advance before he showed how he would rescue them. The Red Sea rolled its deep, frowning waves at their feet. They could not see one patch of dry ground. And the command to Moses was: "Tell the people of Israel to go forward" (Exodus 14:15, ESV). If they had waited until the waters split and a dry road lay open, that would have been no exercise of faith in God, no confidence in his promise and no resting in his faithfulness. Like Abraham, "no distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God" (Romans 4:20, ESV). Have little to do with sight if you want much to do with faith. Do not expect always to see the way. God may call you to go to a place without telling you where. Your duty, like Abraham's, is to obey. All you need to do is go forward and leave the results to God. It is enough that the Lord, by this providence, says, "Go forward." That is all you may hear, and it is your duty to answer at once: "Lord, I go at your bidding," like Peter: "command me to come to you on the water" (Matthew 14:28, ESV).

Faith left unused in dark times. Exercise strengthens faith and neglect weakens it. It is the steady use of the arm that builds its muscle. If you let it hang still at your side, how quickly the sinews tighten and the strength wastes away. Faith is the believer's right arm, and the more it is used, the stronger it gets. Leave it idle and it withers. When gloomy providences and sharp trials and temptations thicken around a believing soul, that is the time for faith to put on its strength and come out to the battle. God never puts his child in a difficulty or lays a cross on him that is not a call to exercise faith. If the opportunity slips by without being used, the principle is weakened, and faith comes out feebly in the next trial. The more faith is brought into play, the more it grows. The reverse is often the cause of its sad decline.

Entertaining doubts about your standing in Christ. Nothing is more certain to weaken faith. If exercising faith develops its strength, it is equally true that constantly giving in to doubts about your pardon and acceptance eats like a worm at its root. Every misgiving felt, every doubt cherished, every fear given in to, every dark providence brooded over, loosens the soul from God and dims its close and loving view of Jesus. To doubt God's love, wisdom and faithfulness, to doubt the completeness of Christ's work, to doubt the Spirit's work in your heart: what could do more to weaken this precious grace? Every time the soul sinks under a doubt about its place in Christ, its view of the glory and sufficiency of Christ's work is weakened.

A doubting Christian may hardly realise what dishonour is done to Jesus, and what a slur is cast on his great work, by every unbelieving fear he cherishes. It is a secret wounding of Jesus, however much the soul recoils from the idea. It lowers and undervalues Christ's obedience and death, the work with which the Father has said he is well pleased, the work with which divine justice is satisfied, the work on which every convinced sinner is saved and for the sake of which millions of redeemed spirits now bow around the throne. That work is slighted by every doubt and fear secretly harboured or openly spoken by a child of God. The moment a believer looks at his unworthiness more than at Christ's righteousness, and supposes that there is not enough merit in Jesus to cover the lack of any in himself, what is he doing but setting up his sin and unworthiness above the infinite worth and sufficiency of Christ's atonement?

There is a lot of false humility among God's dear people. Some think that always doubting your pardon and acceptance is the mark of a lowly spirit. Allow me to say that it is the mark of the very opposite. True humility believes God's testimony. It believes because he has spoken. It rests in the blood, the righteousness and the sufficiency of Jesus because he has said that "whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16, ESV). That is real lowliness, the work of the Eternal Spirit: to go to Jesus just as I am, a poor, lost, helpless sinner, without preparation, glorying in my weakness and poverty, so that the free grace and infinite merit of Christ may be seen in my full pardon and eternal glory. There is more hidden pride, more self-righteousness, more of that spirit that would make God a debtor to the creature, in refusing to accept Jesus fully than we suspect. There is more real, deep humility in a simple venture on Christ as a ruined sinner, taking him as all your righteousness, all your pardon and all your glory, than any mind can measure. Doubt is the child of pride. Humility is the handmaid of faith.

Unconquered sin. Faith is a holy principle that grows in a renewed heart, and its fruitfulness depends on the soil. If the weeds of the old soil are allowed to grow and take over, this heavenly plant must droop and die. Imagine a believer living in the practice of sin he has not dealt with. What is the real power of his faith? Where is its strength? Where are its victories and the trophies it has won on the battlefield? We look for the fruit of faith: a lowly and contrite spirit, a tender conscience, daily trips to the atoning blood, living on the grace in Christ Jesus, Christian principle carried out, a crucifixion to the world, patient submission in suffering, meek acceptance of a Father's discipline, living as seeing the invisible One, a constant sense of eternal things. We look for these, and we do not find them. Why? Because the worm of unmortified sin is feeding at the root. Until it is killed, faith will be sickly, unfruitful and ready to die. "So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8:12–13, ESV).

Looking away from Christ. They say the eagle's eye grows strong through its parent's early training. Set in a place where it must fix its gaze on the sun, its sight grows so strong that in time it can look at the noonday blaze without discomfort and see the farthest object easily. The same discipline strengthens the eye of faith. It grows strong by looking much at the Sun of righteousness. The more steadily it gazes at Jesus, the stronger it gets, and the stronger it gets, the more glory it finds in him, the more beauty in his person and the more perfection in his work. Strengthened like this, it can see things that are far off: the promises of a covenant-keeping God, the hope of eternal life, the crown of glory. It can look at them and almost touch them. Of the saints of old the Spirit says: "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth" (Hebrews 11:13, ESV). O precious, costly grace of the Eternal Spirit! Who would not want you? Who would not put to death everything that would wound you and make you decay?

How the Spirit Revives Faith

It remains to show how the Holy Spirit revives, strengthens and increases a declining faith.

He shows you the cause, and helps you remove it. He leads the declining believer into self-examination. The great difficulty with a backsliding soul is bringing it to that duty. It is so humbling, so against the natural inclinations of the heart, and so opposed to the very state of decline, that it takes no small effort of the Spirit's grace to bring a believer honestly into it. A merchant who knows his affairs are in a mess shrinks from a thorough look at his books. A backslider turns from an honest look at his wandering heart. But the cure of any disease depends on knowing the cause. So does the revival of a declining believer.

Declining believer, what is the cause of your weak faith? Why is this lovely flower drooping? What has dimmed its eye, paralysed its hand and slowed its walk?

Perhaps you have neglected prayer. You may have lived for days, weeks, even months without communion with God. There have been no steady and precious visits to your closet, no wrestling with God, no fellowship with your Father. Do not marvel that your faith languishes and fades. The greater marvel is that you have any faith at all, that it has not been pulled up by the roots. Without God's mighty power and Jesus' constant intercession at his right hand, it would have ceased long ago. What will revive it? An immediate return to prayer. Go back to your closet. Rebuild the broken altar. Rekindle the dying flame. Seek the God you have forsaken. How can faith revive or grow while daily, secret, wrestling prayer is neglected? When the Spirit lays this on your heart, shows you your neglect and breathes into you afresh the spirit of grace and supplication, faith gets a new and blessed push.

Perhaps you have misread God's providence. You may have been indulging unbelieving, unkind, unchildlike thoughts about your trials, bereavements and disappointments. You have said, "Can I be a child and be afflicted like this? Can he love me and deal with me like this?" If you could have looked into God's heart when he sent that trial, caused that loss, blew on that flower and blasted that bright plan, you would never murmur again. You would have seen so much love, tenderness, faithfulness and wisdom that you would have laid your mouth in the dust before him. Do not wonder that your faith has been wounded. Nothing more quickly unhinges the soul from God and breeds distrust, hard thoughts and rebellion than doubting his kindness and faithfulness in the discipline he sends. But faith that looks through the dark cloud, rides the mountain wave and anchors itself on God's truth and unchanging love grows stronger with every storm that beats on it.

Perhaps the world has bewitched you. Has it crept up on you, beguiled you with its glitter, charmed you with its siren song, overwhelmed you with its crushing cares? Come out from it and be separate. Give up its empty friendship, its time-serving compromises, its fleshly pleasures, its worldly wisdom, its sinful conformity. All of these cloud the sight and weaken the grip of faith. The world and the love of it may please and feed the life of sight, but they are opposed to the life of faith and will slow it down. Flesh and Spirit, darkness and light, sin and holiness are not more opposed than a vigorous life of faith and a sinful love of the world. Professing Christian, guard against the world. It is your great poison. Watch against conforming to it in your dress, your way of living, the education of your children, and the principles, motives and policies that govern you. Be a non-conformist here. Separate yourself from the world that crucified your Lord and would crucify the faith that is in you. For you are

"a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." (1 Peter 2:9, ESV)

Do you want to be "strong in his faith as he gave glory to God"? Then obey the voice that cries to every child of God:

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:2, ESV)

Perhaps it is sin you have not dealt with. Bring it to the cross of Christ. Condemn it there, nail it there, and do not leave it until you can say, "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession" (2 Corinthians 2:14, ESV).

Perhaps it is the doubts and fears you have fed about your place in Christ. Give them up and let the wind scatter them. A child of God has no ground for doubt and unbelief. There may be much in himself to cast him down, but there is nothing in the truth he believes. There is nothing in the subject of faith, nothing in Christ, nothing in his work, nothing in God's Word that could produce a doubt or fear in a poor sinner's heart. Everything there is meant to give confidence, strengthen faith and encourage hope. Does his sin plead loudly for his condemnation? The voice of Immanuel's blood pleads louder for his pardon. Does his own righteousness condemn him? The righteousness of Christ acquits him. He may doubt himself. He may doubt his ability to save himself, to improve his condition or to make himself more worthy. But let him never doubt that Christ is everything a lost and convinced sinner needs. Let him never doubt that Jesus is the friend of sinners and the Saviour of sinners, and that he has never been known to turn away anyone who came to him in lowliness and brokenness of heart. So seek simpler views of Jesus, clearer views of his finished work. Take every doubt as it comes, and every fear as it rises, to him. And remember that whatever vileness you find in yourself that tends to bring you low, there is everything in Jesus to lift you from the ash heap and set you among princes.

When the Spirit shows the backsliding believer which of these is the cause, he has taken the first step in the great work of revival.

He leads you to rest on the faithfulness of God. What a medicine for drooping faith are the words that show God as unchanging and faithful!

"For I the LORD do not change." (Malachi 3:6, ESV)

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." (James 1:17, ESV)

"I will betroth you to me in faithfulness." (Hosea 2:20, ESV)

"Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins." (Isaiah 11:5, ESV)

"Great is your faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:23, ESV)

And to remember that your unbelief never alters his faithfulness:

"If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself." (2 Timothy 2:13, ESV)

This is the only sure anchorage for a poor soul tossed on the waves of doubt and confusion: to know that God cannot change his word, that it is impossible for him to lie, that if he were to turn from his perfection he would cease to be perfect, and so cease to be God. He is faithful in the midst of his child's unfaithfulness and endless wandering. He is faithful in the deepest affliction. He is faithful when earthly hopes wither and human wells run dry. What a spring this is for tried and drooping faith! It is a real triumph of faith to walk with God when everything is dark and there is no light, to feel in the roar of the waves that he is still faithful, that though he slay me, I can trust him, and that though he took everything else away, he would never take himself away from his people. As Isaiah says:

"Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God." (Isaiah 50:10, ESV)

He teaches you that faith's trials are labour pains. When the Lord is about to give some special mercy, there is always a travail of faith for it. Some of the choicest mercies of the covenant come by that road. It may be a long and painful process. Faith may be tested long and hard. But the blessing it brings forth will more than repay all the weeping and crying. So do not be surprised at a severe trial of faith. When faith is tried like this, God is about to bring your soul into some great and perhaps new mercy. It may be a travail for spiritual blessing, and the result may be a deeper work in your heart, more spirituality, more weaning from trust in creatures and a more childlike leaning on the Lord. Or it may be a travail for some earthly mercy: for a need to be supplied, an embarrassment to be lifted, a strange and trying difficulty to be got through. Whatever the trial, the outcome is always sure and glorious. The Lord may bring his child into narrow paths, and hedge him in with thorns so that he cannot get out. But it is only to draw the soul to rest more simply in himself. When no creature could or would help, when refuge failed and no one cared for his soul, then faith goes out and rests in him who never disowns his own work, always honours the feeblest exercise and bends his ear to the faintest cry. As the psalmists found:

"Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!" (Psalm 130:1–2, ESV)

"I sought the LORD, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears." (Psalm 34:4, ESV)

"This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him and saved him out of all his troubles." (Psalm 34:6, ESV)

Here was the severe travail of faith, and here is the blessed result. So true is God's Word: "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning" (Psalm 30:5, ESV).

He shows you that trials test faith. The trial of faith shows its degree. We do not know how much faith we have until the Lord calls it into use. We may be greatly deceived about its nature and its measure. Walking on stormy water may seem easy to us, and witnessing for Christ no great matter. Then the Lord brings our faith to the test. He tells us to come to him on the water, and we begin to sink. He lets our enemies attack us, and we flinch at the cross. He puts our faith to the trial, and we learn how little we have.

The trial also shows faith's kind. It is the furnace that tests the ore. It may be brass, iron, clay or true gold, but the crucible will show which. A lot passes for real faith that is not. There is a lot of counterfeit metal, and the trial brings out what it really is. Judas was not known for what he was until his greed was tempted. Simon the sorcerer was not found out until he thought he could buy God's gift with money. Demas did not leave the apostle until the world pulled him away. Our Lord says it plainly:

"As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful." (Matthew 13:20–22, ESV)

But true faith stands the trial. Where there is a real work of grace, no tribulation or persecution or worldly power will ever drive it out. If it is all chaff, the wind will scatter it. If it is all tinsel and dross, the fire will burn it up. So let the humble, tested believer thank God for every test that brings out the true character of his faith and shows it to be the faith of God's elect. God will try his own work. Every grace of his Spirit he will put in the crucible sometime. But he never takes his eye off it. He "will sit as a refiner and purifier" (Malachi 3:3, ESV), and he will watch so that not one grain of the precious metal is lost. He is with his child in every affliction. He will not leave him for one moment. So let thankfulness replace murmuring and joy replace sorrow at every test your loving Father brings to his own work,

"so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 1:7, ESV)

He keeps you from making a saviour of your faith. This is a danger that needs constant watching: putting the work of the Spirit in the place of the work of Christ. It is why so many of God's people look inside themselves and not outside for the proof of their calling and acceptance. They spend their whole spiritual lives in bondage and fear, never quite settling the great question and never quite sure they are sons. The work of Christ is a great and finished work. It is so glorious that nothing can be compared with it, so complete that nothing can be added to it, and so essential that nothing can be put in its place. The Holy Spirit's work in the heart is precious and essential to salvation, but whoever puts it where Christ's work belongs upsets the order of the covenant, closes off the true source of assurance, and will bring distress and uncertainty into his soul. Righteousness, peace and joy are the fruit of a full belief in the Lord Jesus. Anyone who looks for them away from the cross will be disappointed. They are found in Jesus. The one who looks away from himself, from his vileness, guilt, emptiness and poverty, and fixes his eyes fully on Jesus will know what forgiveness is and will feel God's love poured into his heart.

So if your faith is weak and tried, do not be cast down. Faith does not save you. It is the instrument of salvation, and as such it matters greatly, but it is only the instrument. Immanuel's finished work is the ground of your salvation. In fact it is your salvation. So do not make a saviour of your faith. Do not despise it if it is feeble, boast in it if it is strong, trample on it if it is small, or idolise it if it is great. Those are the extremes every believer is exposed to. If your faith is weak and sharply tried, that does not prove you are not a believer. But the proof that you are accepted in the Beloved comes from Jesus alone. So let your constant motto be "looking to Jesus" (Hebrews 12:2, ESV). Look to him just as you are. Look to him when faith is feeble. Look to him when it is tried. Look to him when it is declining. Yes, look to him when you fear you have no faith at all.

Look up, tried and tempted soul. Jesus is the founder of your faith, and he will be its finisher. Everything you need is in him. One glimpse of his cross, however dim, or one touch of his garment, however trembling, will lift you from your lowest depths, lighten your heaviest burden, light up your darkest outlook, and when you get to the banks of the Jordan, will carry you safely through its swellings and land you on the sunny, green shores of Canaan. Pray this prayer, and press it at the throne of grace until it is answered: Lord, increase my faith. Then, with Paul, you will be able to say in humble assurance:

"I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me." (2 Timothy 1:12, ESV)

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In plain words. Faith is the starting point and the walking-stick of the whole Christian life. It is not a feat. It is a hurt sinner trusting a crucified Saviour, and then going on trusting him step by step without needing to see the way. Even the great men of faith, like Abraham, Job, David and Peter, saw it fail. Faith weakens when prayer shrinks, when we walk by sight, when we leave faith unused in dark times, when we nurse doubts about Christ's work, when sin is left alone at the root, and when we take our eyes off Christ. The Spirit revives it by showing us the cause, by pointing us to God's unchanging faithfulness, by teaching us that trials are labour pains for a coming blessing and tests that prove what is real, and by keeping us from trusting our faith instead of Christ. Look to Jesus, even when you fear you have no faith.

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Chapter 4: When Prayer Dries Up

"But you are doing away with the fear of God and hindering meditation before God." (Job 15:4, ESV)

[Editor's note: Winslow's heading is the King James reading of this verse, "You restrain prayer before God." The ESV says "hindering meditation," but Winslow's whole chapter is built on the older wording, and so he is followed here. To restrain prayer is to hold back from praying.]

If I had to pick one sign of personal decline that shows more clearly than any other, I would not hesitate. It is the failing of the spirit of prayer. Prayer is the first sign of life in a soul, and its growth in warmth and power shows that the life is healthy and growing. So when prayer weakens in its spirit, its practice and its enjoyment, it is a strong sign that real grace in a child of God is decaying. I believe this applies to far more believers than most would admit at first thought, and that it has more serious consequences for the soul than any other kind of decline we have looked at so far.

What Prayer Is

Before we look at its decline, let us look at what it is. Prayer is the spiritual life in the soul speaking back to the one who gave it. It is breathing that life back into the bosom of God, where it came from. It is holy, humble conversation with God. A man who had been a pagan and became a Christian once put it beautifully: "I open my Bible, and God talks with me. I close my Bible, and then I talk with God." That is prayer. It is talking with God as a child talks with his father or a friend with his friend. "Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend" (Exodus 33:11, ESV). True prayer is the longing of a renewed soul toward God. It is the breath of the divine life, sometimes in the sounds of sorrow, sometimes in the voice of need, always in the admission of dependence. It is a weak, needy child looking up to its loving Father in full knowledge of its helplessness and with a child's sweet trust.

To whom we pray. To Jehovah, the Lord of heaven and earth, the Three in One. He alone has an ear to hear our sorrow, an arm to hold us up in need, and a heart to feel our deep necessity. He is "the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy" (Isaiah 57:15, ESV), the Creator and ruler of all worlds, who holds up the pillars of the universe, to whom every power in heaven, earth and hell is subject. He is the glorious One to whom we speak.

Through whom we pray. Just as amazing is the way in. It is not a creature as dependent as we are. It is the Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, equal with the Father in might and majesty and rule, and yet our elder brother, the slain Lamb, our Mediator and our High Priest. Prayer is accepted behind the veil only as it is offered in the name of Jesus. The voice that speaks there for the lowly petitioner is the voice of Immanuel's blood. This is the "new and living way" (Hebrews 10:20). This is the plea that wins. This is the argument that moves the Almighty himself. A person who pleads Jesus' blood may have ten thousand tongues against him, but the blood "speaks a better word" (Hebrews 12:24, ESV), and it drowns them all.

By whose power we pray. This is the most wonderful of all. Paul tells us:

"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." (Romans 8:26, ESV)

It is the Holy Spirit who puts the desire into us, shapes the request, and breathes it out in prayer through Christ to God. What a high thing prayer is! The overflowing of the divine life in the soul is its nature, Jehovah is its object, the Lord Jesus is its way, and the Holy Spirit is its author. The whole blessed Trinity is at work in a sinner's coming to God.

Duty and privilege. Do I need to argue that prayer is needed? And yet it must be admitted that believers need constant urging to do it. Is there any stronger evidence of our constant drift toward decline than that a child of God must be pushed again and again to the sweet and precious privilege of talking with his heavenly Father? That he must be moved by the strongest arguments and the most persuasive motives to take hold of the most costly privilege this side of glory? It is like pleading with a man to live, reminding him that he must breathe if he wants to stay alive. Without prayer, we tell a child of God, he cannot live. Prayer is the drawing in of the divine life and the breathing out of it again. The spiritual nature needs steady supplies of spiritual food, and the only proof of its health is that it keeps rising toward God. Stop praying and all your grace withers, all your strength fades, and all your comfort dies.

See how prayer is commanded in God's Word.

"Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me." (Psalm 50:15, ESV)

It is as though the Lord said: I am not talking about your sunny day, when your soul and your business prosper and the sky is clear and the sea is calm. Call on me in the day of trouble, of need, of adversity, of disappointment and rebuke. Call on me when friends leave you and the world frowns on you, when the wells are broken and the gourds are withered. Call on me then, and I will deliver you.

And Jesus commanded it:

"But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret." (Matthew 6:6, ESV)

And he encouraged it:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you." (John 16:23, ESV)

Paul adds:

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." (Philippians 4:6, ESV)

And again:

"Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints." (Ephesians 6:18, ESV)

James says:

"If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him." (James 1:5, ESV)

But I want to take higher ground than duty. Prayer is a privilege to be enjoyed. A believer is happy when his duties come to look like privileges. Is it no privilege to have a door to God that is always open? To throw a crushing load on One who has promised to carry it? When the corruptions of your nature are strong and temptations thicken, is prayer no privilege then? When you are puzzled about your path and long to walk in all of God's will, like a child afraid to upset a loving Father, is it no privilege to have a throne of grace and an open door of hope? When the world is slowly stealing into your heart, or when that heart is wounded by the unkindness of friends or bleeding under a bereavement, is it no privilege to go and tell Jesus? Tell me, you poor, needy, tried and tempted souls: is not prayer the most precious, healing and costly privilege this side of heaven?

And yet how much unbelief still lingers in a renewed heart about this very duty and privilege! It is a kind of unbelief when a believer in need goes first to the arm of flesh and not to God in prayer. To run to a creature first is to "go down to Egypt for help" (Isaiah 31:1, ESV), a sin God has marked with his strongest displeasure.

How Prayer Declines

Prayer is the spiritual pulse of a renewed soul. Its beat shows whether the believer is healthy or ill. A doctor judges the health of the body by the pulse, and I would judge the health of a soul by how prayer is held. If a soul is healthy and growing, prayer will be lively, spiritual and steady. If decline is under way, if the heart is wandering and love is cooling and faith is failing, the spirit and habit of prayer will give it away at once.

The spirit goes before the habit. First, the spirit of prayer can decline in you without your knowing it. The form and habit may go on for a while. The family altar is kept up and the closet is visited now and then. But the spirit has evaporated, and all is cold and dull, the stiffness and chill of death. What is the habit of prayer worth without the spirit of prayer? As much as this planet without the sun, or a body without the soul that breathes and animates it: a cold, lifeless form. A believer can be lulled into this and have no suspicion of it. He keeps his usual habit and uses his empty form and does not see that all is as cold and breathless as death.

God does not look at the rigidly kept form. Nor does he care for fluency, eloquence, rich sentiment, grand images and rounded sentences. Far from it. A man may not be able to put his deep feeling into words. His thoughts may find no way out, and his language may fail him. If he tries to say his needs aloud, there may be much that offends a refined taste and grates on a musical ear. And yet the spirit of prayer may glow in his breast, and that, the true language of prayer, reaches the ear and heart of God.

It is plain from observation, as from God's Word, that the spirit of prayer can leave a soul while the gift of prayer and its form remain. The form comes easily, words and even thoughts flow freely, and yet there is no warmth, no life, no spirituality, no power and no anointing in it, and this can go on for a long time in a professing Christian. Guard against it, reader. Look at the state of your soul. Look at your prayers. Make sure you have not swapped the glowing spirit for the cold form, the body for the soul. Real prayer is the breath of God's own Spirit in the heart. Do you have it? It is communion and fellowship with God. Do you know what that is? It is brokenness, contrition and confession, often springing from an overwhelming sense of his goodness and love poured into the heart. Is that your experience?

Test your prayers not by any natural or learned gift you may have. That counts for nothing with God. In answer to all your forms, he may say what he said to Israel:

"When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen." (Isaiah 1:15, ESV)

Test them instead by the real communion you have with God and what they bring back to your soul.

Then the habit goes. In most cases of actual backsliding, the habit declines along with the spirit. Once the spirit has gone, the habit becomes dull and tedious and is finally thrown off as a trouble. Yet even giving up the form is rarely sudden. Satan is too clever and the heart too deceitful to allow it, so there are steps in the decline. A sudden break from the old habit of prayer might wake alarm and make the soul stop: Has it come to this? Am I so far gone that I have given up even my usual prayers? That pause might lead to self-examination and a return. So the decline is gradual.

First to go is the closet. This is the first exercise to lose its sweetness and become tedious, because it is the most spiritual of all and has most to do with secret fellowship with God. Who can describe the loss? No more holy visits to the closet. No more turning aside from business and care and the world to be shut in with God. No more precious, heart-melting, humbling, reviving seasons with the Father who hears in secret. No more sweet visits from Jesus, no more pouring the heart's sorrows and needs into his private ear. The closet is abandoned, and with it every pleasant, holy and happy walk with God.

Next, short prayers through the day. The holy habit of a growing Christian, who even while at his lawful work keeps rising above it, keeps the wheels of the soul turning easily, holds it in a heavenly frame, guards it against the enemy's surprises and strengthens it in every inward and outward conflict, is the call to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17, ESV). That is given up, and there is blank silence between the soul and God.

Then family prayer. This is the border that keeps the web of daily life from unravelling. It throws a holy influence around the home, knits hearts together, wakes and gathers sympathies, strengthens minds and softens the cares and trials of every member. Now it is dropped. The family Bible that was so regularly brought out, opened, read and explained is put away. The altar where the little group gathered in reverent silence, where the morning and evening sacrifice went up, is thrown down. The one who led at it has declined in the spirit of prayer, and every member of the home, in every part of its life, feels and shows the result. The father no longer comes back to bless his household.

Perhaps next, praying with others. The meeting that was once so refreshing at the end of the day's cares, so longed for after fatigue and anxiety and disappointment, now comes and goes unnoticed and unregretted. The hour for prayer arrives. We look at the empty place and ask, "Where is he?" Away in the turmoil of the world, hot in its pursuit. Gone, perhaps, to some scene of carnal amusement and folly and sin. The one who used to cheer and encourage the praying group with his prayers and words is now one who "sows to his own flesh" (Galatians 6:8, ESV), giving to temporal things the time and energy that belong to eternal things. This is the man in whom the spirit of prayer has declined. From one step of decline he has gone to another, until his soul, so far as grace and spirituality and love go, is like a barren desert heath without a patch of green.

What Follows

There are other consequences too serious to pass over.

You think distant thoughts of God. If it is true that the closer we get to anything the better we can judge it, that is especially true of knowing God. His Word invites us: "Agree with God, and be at peace" (Job 22:21, ESV). It is this closeness that brings us to know his character as holy, loving and faithful. That knowledge breeds love and confidence. The more we know of God, the more we love him, and the more we try him, the more we trust him. Think, then, what harm comes from walking at a distance from him. The farther the soul is from him, the poorer its knowledge of him. When he comes with his corrective dealings, how will they be read by a soul walking at a distance? As the dealings of a covenant God? Of a loving Father? Far from it. They will be read harshly and unkindly, and that will cancel their effect. To get the fruit of the Lord's dealings we must see them in the light of his faithfulness and love. The moment we read them otherwise, the soul runs from God and wraps itself in dark and forbidding thoughts of his character, rule and ways. This follows from a distant walk. So guard against decline in prayer. Let no distance come between God and your soul.

Spiritual things lose their taste. They become less desired, more irksome, more flat. They are seen less as a privilege and more as a burden and a chore. Take meditation. The mind is not tuned to it. It needs a spiritual mind, richly anointed with the Spirit and used to close fellowship with God, to enjoy it and profit from it. Take the fellowship of the saints. This soon grows tiresome. The company of God's humble, broken-hearted people hungering and thirsting for righteousness and seeking to be dead to the world, with God's Word as their study, Christ's love as their theme and likeness to God as their aim, soon loses its attraction for a professing Christian walking at a distance from God. I could go through every spiritual duty that a child of God knows, and not one will have any attraction or sweetness for a soul in the grip of declining prayer.

Reader, why are meditation, the study of God's Word, fellowship with his saints and praise now dry and tasteless to you? You can turn from them with disgust. Anything else will do: business calls, worldly company, a novel. Where are you? How far you have fallen. It was not always so. How precious in the first love of your early days were the moments alone with God! How eagerly you sought and how richly you enjoyed the company of the saints! How sweet a privilege praise was, and how sacred a duty prayer! Is it all gone? Is it all winter now? No green spot, no green pasture, no still waters? Go back to prayer. Your sad distance from God is the secret of your soul's leanness. The withering of the spirit of prayer has withered your grace, and with it all your enjoyment of the means of grace.

Your outward life slips. The lowliness, self-forgetfulness, gentle walk and care for God's honour that mark a praying man are often replaced by pride of spirit and manner, self-confidence, a readiness to sit in judgment on the faults and weaknesses of others, a cold indifference to the spread of Christ's kingdom and the conversion of sinners, and a carelessness in outward behaviour. All backsliding begins with the decline of prayer. It may date its beginning at the throne of grace. Restraining prayer was the first step away, and the first step, not quickly retraced, was soon followed by others. A backslider's path is always downhill. The slope is easy and fast, and the speed of the soul's departure increases as it goes. When someone shows a leaning toward decline, there is no lack of forces ready to help him on his way. Satan, the clever and sleepless enemy of the soul, has a thousand enticements ready to smooth the downward path. The world shows up with some new attraction. Sin tastes less bitter and looks less "sinful beyond measure" (Romans 7:13, ESV). Things of the senses grow familiar, are looked at, admired, then embraced. And now the soul, but for preserving and restraining grace, has said goodbye to God forever.

Reader, do you tremble at the thought of becoming a backslider? Do you fear a fall? Do you dread wounding Jesus? Then do not restrain prayer before God. Guard carefully against the first sign of decline in this holy exercise. If that sign has already shown, hurry to the dear Physician, who alone has the power to stop its progress and heal your soul.

Crosses pile up. Steady prayer makes every burden light and smooths every rough step of the road. It is what keeps a child of God's trials down. He is never free of them. "Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22, ESV). He is a disciple of the cross, and his religion is the religion of the cross. He follows the One who died on a cross, and he never expects to be free of it until he comes into the crown. But he can pray his crosses down. Prayer lessens their number and softens their weight. For the man who walks far from God, whose frame is cold, worldly and careless, if he is a true child of the covenant and one of the Lord's family, crosses and trials increase with every step he takes.

Many tried, afflicted and constantly disappointed believers little realise how closely these very trials are tied to their restraining prayer before God. Every step brings some new cross. Every plan is blasted by some contrary wind. Every effort is thwarted. Disappointment follows disappointment, wave follows wave. Nothing they try goes well, everything they start fails, and everything seems against them. If we could go behind the scenes, what would we find? A deserted throne of grace. If we told the secret and put it as a charge against the believer, what would it say? You have restrained prayer before God. The plan was made without prayer. The enterprise was started without prayer. The effort was made without prayer. God blew on it, and it all came to nothing. No wonder. God was not consulted. The Lord was not acknowledged, his permission not asked, his wisdom not sought, his blessing not wanted, so he blew on it all. The precious command is:

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." (Proverbs 3:5–6, ESV)

Where that is honoured, there is God's blessing. Where it is neglected, there is his displeasure.

I do not need to say more. The evils that come from the decline of prayer are plain. The secret of a happy life and the spring of a holy one are in a close walk with God. When a child of God restrains prayer, he opens the door for every grace to leave and every sin to come in.

The Way Back to Prayer

First, find out what your prayers really are. Are they lively and spiritual? Are they the exercise of the heart, or only of the mind? Are they the breathing of the indwelling Spirit, or the cold keeping of a form without power? Is it communion and fellowship? Is it the approach of a child who runs with confidence and love into a Father's arms and shelters there in every hour of need? Every professing Christian should remember there is a great difference between prayer and praying, between keeping up the duty and the spiritual character of the thing. All praying is not communion, and here a man can be dreadfully deceived. He can make repeated visits to the throne of grace and come and go without breathing a single breath of spiritual prayer. There is no breathing in the soul. It is all formal, cold and lifeless.

So the first step toward a revival of prayer is to examine your prayers. Will they stand the test of God's Word? Would they compare with the holy breathing of David, Job, Solomon and the New Testament saints? Are they the outflow of the life of God within you? Are they ever accompanied by a child's brokenness, humility of spirit and humble, contrite confession of sin? Look to your prayers. Do not settle for half-hearted devotion or cold, dull, formal requests.

Take care, too, that family prayer does not slide into that. There is danger here. See that the flame burns bright and rises high on that sacred altar. Make sure that your praying is such as to convince your children, your servants and your friends that this is the most spiritual, holy and solemn of all engagements. They will form their view of prayer from how you pray at the family altar. Be careful not to give them a disgust for it. If their minds are unconverted, great wisdom and deep spirituality are needed to guard against this. Let them see that you attach great and solemn importance to it. Do not hurry. Give it first place over other engagements. Nothing should crowd it and cut short the time that belongs to it alone. If you can, hold it before breakfast and supper, so the mind is made holy with solemn thought and is readier for what follows. It has also helped to give every member of the household a Bible, so that each reads a verse in turn or follows the one leading. That stops the wandering eye and checks distraction by keeping the mind on what is read. An occasional comment, explaining a word, opening up a truth or settling an apparent contradiction, often adds interest and profit.

If there is no godly father at the head of the home, let the Christian mother not shrink from this duty. God's Word is on her side. The grace of Christ is on her side. God himself is on her side. Let her set up the family altar in the fear of God and in the strength of Jesus, gather her children and servants around it, and offer the morning and evening sacrifice. It is her solemn duty, and for every duty the Lord has promised all-sufficient grace: "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinthians 12:9, ESV).

Second, get to know your needs better. It is the knowledge of his need that gives the beggar's plea its eloquence. A sense of destitution, of real want, of actual starvation, gives his plea energy and keeps him at it. His words are: I must have bread or I die. This is what we want a child of God to feel. What is he but a pensioner on God's daily bounty? What resources does he have in himself? None. What is he without God? Poor indeed. The more he learns of his real case, his utter destitution, the more he will besiege the throne of grace and take no refusal. He must know his wants. He must know which grace he lacks, which easy besetting sin clings to him, which weaknesses surround him, which part of the Spirit's work is failing in him, where he is weakest and most exposed to the enemy's attack, and what he still needs to make him complete in all God's will. Let him examine himself honestly and know his real condition. This will make the throne of grace dear to him, stir up the sleeping spirit of prayer, give him errands to take to God, and give his suit its reasons, its energy and its perseverance.

It was Jacob's deep and pressing sense of need that gave such boldness and power to his wrestling: "I will not let you go unless you bless me" (Genesis 32:26, ESV). And God said, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed" (Genesis 32:28, ESV). Copy the patriarch. Begin the day by thinking over what you may need before it is over. Is a cross coming? A temptation? A danger? Then go and wrestle for the grace you need and God has promised. It is a great mercy to have an errand that sends us to God. And when we remember what a full heart of love he has, how ready he is to hear, how quick to answer, and how he enters into the smallest circumstance of a believer's life, how it shames the reluctance and unbelief we constantly show in using this most costly, holy and precious of all our privileges!

Third, find and remove whatever hinders prayer. Many things weaken true prayer: unconquered sin, unrepented sin, and unpardoned sin (I mean the secret sense of it on the conscience), worldly-mindedness, light and trifling conversation, useless arguments, and frequent time with unconverted people or cold and formal professors. All these together, or any one of them, if allowed to win, unfit the mind for talking with God and make the spirit of prayer decay. Call anything harmful that touches the devotional frame of your mind, cuts short your hour of prayer, or takes the fine edge off its holy enjoyment.

Fourth, and above all, ask for more of the Holy Spirit. This is what I most earnestly plead for, and it will do more than anything else to revive true prayer. Here lies the great source and secret of all true, spiritual, believing, persevering and prevailing prayer. The lack of it is the reason for the dullness, formality and reluctance that so often mark the practice. God's people do not honour the Spirit enough in this part of his work. They lose sight too much of the truth that he is the author and sustainer of all true prayer. The result is, and always will be, self-sufficiency and cold formality, and in the end neglect of the duty altogether.

So plead the promise:

"And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy." (Zechariah 12:10, ESV)

Acknowledge the Holy Spirit as the author of this holy exercise and seek him constantly as its sustainer. Let the saint of God feel that "we do not know what to pray for as we ought," that the Spirit "intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words," and that God "who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God" (Romans 8:26–27, ESV). What a push that will give prayer! What new life, what mighty energy, what anointing, what power with God!

So seek, above all your blessings, this richest of them all, the baptism of the Spirit. Do not rest short of it. You are nothing as a professing Christian without it. Your religion is lifeless, your devotion is formal and your spirit is dry. You have no moral power with God or man apart from the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Seek it, wrestle for it, agonise for it, as more precious than every other mercy. Soaked in his quickening and reviving influence, what a different Christian you will be! How differently you will pray, live and die! Is the spirit of prayer languishing? Is its practice becoming a nuisance? Has closet prayer been given up? Is the duty in any form turning into a chore? Then wake up and seek the baptism of the Spirit. This alone will stop your decline. This will revive the true spirit of prayer in you. This will give it sweetness, pleasantness and power. God has promised the blessing, and he will never disappoint the soul that seeks it.

The outpouring of the Spirit of prayer is also needed to give frequency, life and aim to our prayers for the church and the world. God's Word is plain on this:

"First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior." (1 Timothy 2:1–3, ESV)

"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! 'May they be secure who love you!'" (Psalm 122:6, ESV)

"Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." (James 5:16, ESV)

"Pray for us." (Hebrews 13:18, ESV)

These are solemn commands. Who can read them without a secret sense of having ignored them? And what will give intensity, power, steadiness and prevailing force to our prayers for Christ's church and for a world still under sin's rule, other than a large outpouring of the Spirit of prayer? Our sympathies will be narrow, our desires selfish, and our requests cold and general, if we are not baptised in the Spirit of prayer. But when the Holy Spirit comes down as on the day of Pentecost, filling us, overwhelming us and soaking us with his influence, how the pressing needs of the church and the claims of the world will rise before us in all their eloquent pleading!

A Few Practical Words

Lean hard on the blood of Jesus. In all true prayer, great weight should be put on the blood of Jesus. Perhaps nothing marks a decline in the power and spirituality of prayer more clearly than overlooking this. Where the atoning blood is kept out of view, not recognised, not pleaded, not wrestled with, not made the great plea, there is a lack of power in prayer. Words are nothing. Fluency is nothing. Fine language and brilliant thought are nothing. Even apparent fervour is nothing, where the blood of Christ, the new and living way into God's presence, the great plea that moves Omnipotence, the key to the holy of holies, is slighted or undervalued and is not the ground of every request. How much this is overlooked in our prayers! How the blood of Immanuel is slighted! How seldom we hear it spoken of in the sanctuary, in the pulpit, in the home! Yet it is this that makes prayer what it is with God.

All prayer is acceptable to God, and only so, as it goes up perfumed with the blood of Christ. All prayer is answered as it urges the blood of Christ as its plea. It is the blood of Christ that satisfies justice and meets every demand of the law against us. It is the blood of Christ that buys and brings down every blessing into the soul. It is the blood of Christ that sues for the carrying out of his last will and testament, every precious gift in which comes to us only because of his death. This is what gives us boldness at the throne of grace:

"Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus." (Hebrews 10:19, ESV)

How can a poor sinner dare to approach without this? How can he look up, ask, or present himself before a holy God, except as he brings the precious blood of Jesus in the hand of faith? Outside Christ, God can hold no communication with us. All communion is suspended, every road of approach closed, and every blessing held back. God has crowned his dearly beloved Son, and he wants us to crown him too. We never put a brighter crown on his blessed head than when we plead his finished righteousness as the ground of our acceptance and his atoning blood as our great argument for every blessing.

So, dear reader, if you feel yourself a poor, vile, unholy sinner, a backslider whose feet have wandered from the Lord, in whose soul the spirit of prayer has declined, and yet you feel some secret longing to return and dare not, because you are so vile and so backslidden, you may still return, "having confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus." Come, for the blood of Christ pleads for you. Return, for the blood of Christ gives you a welcome:

"But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." (1 John 2:1, ESV)

Remember that trouble can bring you back to prayer. The season of trial and bereavement is often the sanctified occasion of a revival of prayer in the soul. The Lord has marked your wanderings. He has had his eye on the decline of your soul. The voice that was always so pleasant to his ear has stopped calling on him, and now he would win you back. He would hear that voice again. How will he do it? He makes you "pass under the rod" (Ezekiel 20:37), sends some sore trial, lays on you some heavy cross, brings trouble and sorrow into your soul, and then you cry to him and besiege the mercy seat. How eagerly God is sought, how attractive and precious the throne of grace becomes, when the soul is led into deep waters! No longer silent, no longer dumb, the believer calls on God. He pleads "with loud cries and tears" (Hebrews 5:7, ESV), wrestles and agonises, and so the sleeping spirit of prayer is stirred up and revived. Sweet affliction, precious discipline, that brings the wandering soul back to a closer and holier walk with God!

Go to him in your worst frame. Once more I urge you: guard against the least decline in prayer. Let the first unfavourable sign alarm you. Go to the Lord in your worst frames, and do not stay away from him until you get a good one. Satan's great argument to keep a soul from prayer is: Do not go with that cold and numb frame. Do not go with that hard and sinful heart. Wait until you are fitter to come to God. Listening to this clever reasoning, many poor, distressed, burdened and longing souls have been kept from the throne of grace, and so from all comfort and consolation. But the gospel says, Go in your very worst frames. Christ says, Come just as you are. And every promise and every example encourages the soul to go to the cross whatever its frame or condition.

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In plain words. When prayer weakens, everything weakens, and prayer is usually the first thing to go. First the spirit of prayer fades while the form carries on. Then closet prayer is dropped, then short prayers through the day, then family prayer, then prayer with others. What follows is distance from God, a loss of taste for spiritual things, a slipping walk, and crosses that pile up while God is not consulted. The way back: look honestly at what your prayers really are, learn your needs and bring them as errands to God, remove what hinders prayer, and ask for the Spirit, who is the author of all true prayer. Keep your eye on the blood of Jesus as your only plea. And do not wait until you feel fit. Go in your worst frame, because Christ says, "Come just as you are."

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Chapter 5: When Truth Is Let Go

"Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth." (John 17:17, ESV)

God has made his church the keeper of his truth, and he has made his truth the main way he makes the church holy. The two belong together. You could picture the church as a golden lamp holding the sacred oil, and the oil feeding the flame of light and holiness. The church must guard the purity of the truth with a watchful eye ("a pillar and buttress of the truth," 1 Timothy 3:15, ESV), and the truth in turn makes the church beautiful and holy.

Add another thought. Every believer is himself a product of the truth and a witness to it. It was the truth that woke you, called you, made you new and began to make you holy: "Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth" (James 1:18, ESV). And so the Lord says, "You are my witnesses" (Isaiah 43:10, ESV). Take that in. The world you live in is dark, polluted and God-despising. The saints are the only lights and the only salt in the midst of its moral corruption. A light glimmers here and a patch of green shows there, in the middle of a dry and empty land, and that is you. You are the living proof of the power of God's truth. So the apostle's charge is for you:

"That you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world." (Philippians 2:15, ESV)

[Editor's note: In this chapter Winslow also surveys the churches of his own day, and the errors he saw in them. That survey, which dates from 1841, is condensed here to the conclusion he draws from it. The argument about truth and holiness is kept, though some of his lists are shortened.]

Truth Makes People Holy

The first thing to see is the link between truth and holiness. Two things are agreed in every branch of knowledge: an effect needs a cause, and a cause works through means. God has planned for his people to be made holy. He has chosen his truth as the great means of doing it. And for it to work, he says, the truth must live in the heart in the same fullness and purity with which it is given in his Word.

Truth by itself is not enough. I need to be careful here. I do not believe that truth, held up in front of a mind, can make anyone holy by its own power. That is one of the great errors of modern theology, and I reject it plainly. To put truth in front of an unrenewed mind, as a threat or a promise or a motive, will never save or sanctify anyone. By nature the soul is spiritually dead. What will the truth do to a dead mind by being held up in front of it? You might as well spread out a beautiful painting in front of the glazed eye of a corpse and expect it to breathe and weep and smile at the design, the colours and the skill. Yet there are people who hold that truth, with no outside power, can do all this! Against that view I set one sentence of Scripture: "Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3, ESV).

The power I plead for is the power that comes when the Holy Spirit works with the truth. The Bible, inspired as it is, is a dead letter without the life-giving Spirit. However solemn its truths, however moving its scenes, however persuasive its motives, left to itself it cannot produce spiritual life, love or holiness in a human soul. Its influence is passive, and it depends on a divine power outside itself to work.

Think of the three thousand converted on the day of Pentecost. They were woken by one sermon, and some will say it was the power of the truth. I agree, and I add that it was truth in the mighty hand of God that pierced them to the heart and drew from them the cry, "Brothers, what shall we do?" (Acts 2:37, ESV). The Spirit was the effective cause. The preached truth was the instrument. Without his power they would have done what crowds do today: turned their backs on Peter's sermon, though it was full of Christ crucified, mocked the truth and rejected the Saviour it spoke of. But it pleased God, in his sovereign will, to call them by his grace, and he did it through the power of the Spirit, through the preaching of the gospel.

So I plead for truth that is personally known and received before it can make anyone holy. It is not enough that it has entered the mind. If it goes no further, if it does not move the will, touch the heart and renew the whole soul, then it can never set up the rule of holiness in a person. The mind's eye may be clear while the heart's eye is shut. The mind may be all light and the heart all dark. The creed may be sound and the life may be at odds with it. That is what truth does when it is only settled in the understanding without the Holy Spirit's power in the heart. But let a person receive the truth in the heart by the power of God. Let it come in, disarm the strong man and throw him off his throne. Let Jesus enter and the Holy Spirit take possession, renewing, sealing and sanctifying the soul. Then you may look for the fruit: "the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life" (Romans 6:22, ESV).

Every part of the truth points toward holiness. Truth received into the heart tends naturally to produce holiness, and a moment's look at the Word of God will show it. The whole plan of redemption was meant to secure the highest holiness and happiness of the creature. The renewed man is a pardoned man. The pardoned man becomes a holy man. And the holy man is a happy man.

Take the doctrine of God's everlasting love, seen in his choosing his people for eternal life. How holy its effect:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him." (Ephesians 1:3–4, ESV)

Do not turn from this glorious doctrine because it does not fit with others you hold, or because prejudice has long veiled it. It is revealed, so it is to be fully received. It is holy, so it is to be warmly loved. Received in the heart by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, it lays human pride in the dust, knocks every ground for boasting from under the soul, and fills the mind with the highest thoughts of the glory, grace and love of God. A person who takes in electing love by the Spirit's power carries with him the raw material for a holy walk. Its tendency is to humble him and make him holy.

So with God's free and sovereign grace. For a man to feel that God alone made him to differ, that what he has he has received, and that by free grace he is what he is, has a deeply holy effect when it is felt in the heart. It lays the axe to the root of self. It stains the glory of human pride and hushes the whisper of boasting. It lays the renewed sinner where he belongs, in the dust, and puts the crown where it alone should shine, on the head of sovereign mercy. Lord, why me? I was far from you. I was the least in my Father's house and the most unlikely object of your love. And yet your mercy sought me and your grace picked me out and made me a miracle of its power. What can I trace this to but your mere mercy, apart from any worth you saw in me? Take, then, my body, soul and spirit, and let them be a holy temple to your glory, in time and through eternity. So "the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age" (Titus 2:11–12, ESV).

I could go through all the doctrines of grace and show that each aims at the believer's holiness. The commands are on the side of holiness too: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15, ESV). "Do not love the world or the things in the world" (1 John 2:15, ESV). "Be holy, for I am holy" (1 Peter 1:16, ESV). "For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness" (1 Thessalonians 4:7, ESV). May the Spirit write these deep on our hearts.

The promises have the same effect: "Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God" (2 Corinthians 7:1, ESV). So do the warnings. Think of the day when the heavens will pass away and the earth be burned up, and Peter's question: "what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness" (2 Peter 3:11, ESV). So it is with every part of the truth. It comes from a holy God, and when it is received in the heart as the good seed of the kingdom, it produces what matches its own nature: holiness. A tree is known by its fruit. The truth brings down the high thoughts of man by showing him who God is. It convinces him of deep guilt by showing him the law. It shows him God's hatred of sin, his justice in punishing and his mercy in pardoning, by setting the cross of Christ in front of him. And taking full possession of the soul, it plants new principles, gives new motives, sets a new goal, awakens new joys and inspires new hopes. It runs through the whole person, changes him into the same image and makes him "a dwelling place for God by the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:22, ESV).

Error Pulls the Other Way

It takes no long argument to show that error works the other way. Two things so different cannot produce the same results. If truth tends to make us holy, error tends to make us unholy. If the one humbles our pride, makes us small in our own eyes, corrects the evils of our fallen nature, breaks the power of corruption and brings us into the freedom of God's children ("So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed," John 8:36, ESV), then the other feeds our proud opinion of ourselves, breeds a high view of our own gifts and attainments, lessens our sense of how sinful sin is, lowers the motive for holiness and weakens its power, and lets the corrupt side of our nature run without a bridle.

False doctrine turns the mind it lives in into the wrong channel. It leads the soul away from God. As truth received in experience draws the heart toward God, error held in the mind leads the heart away from him. It gives twisted views of God's character and low views of his law. It clouds the finished work of Christ and weakens the force of duty. And step by step, if grace does not step in, it leads the soul wholly and forever away from God.

The link between decline in the soul and false doctrine is close and cannot be broken. Whenever a private Christian, a teacher or a whole body of people gets infected with false doctrine, leaves the Word of God, and sets up teachings and rules and rites at odds with what God has said, from that moment they start to lose spirituality and holiness. Even if they had a record of great spiritual success, they slide into formality, deadness and fruitlessness, from which little seems to recover them.

Look at an individual believer. Has he left the old landmark of truth? Has he lost his reverence for it, his sense of its worth, his taste for its sweetness? Trace the sad effects in his uneven walk, his careless spirit, his low spirituality, his hardened conscience, his numb heart, his neglect of the means of grace: in a word, the withering of all his grace. What a change has come over him! What a distant spirit marks the man whose walk with God was once so close! What displays of self in one who was once so humble and retiring, who seemed to feel himself "the very least of all the saints" (Ephesians 3:8, ESV)! What a turning of his back on the means of grace which were once so prized, so eagerly sought and so richly enjoyed, where he walked as by green pastures and still waters! What unkindness, what haughtiness, what cold distance now marks his conduct to the saints, once so dear to his heart, with whom he longed to live and die! He has left the faith, and these are some of the effects.

Take the sadder case of a minister. Has he changed his view of the Christian system? Has he given up some basic doctrine, perhaps the divinity of Christ, or that his death was a sacrifice, or the deity and personality of the Spirit, or the believer's obligation to holiness? Whatever the error he has taken in, a terrible blight has fallen on the man. How changed his spiritual frame! The zeal, tenderness and solemnity are gone. How altered his ministry! The power, earnestness and spirituality are gone. How different the results! No more conversions, no more building up and comfort and strengthening of the saints. How differently he prays! No anointing, life or power is breathed into his petitions. He has taken in error. He has turned his back on God's truth, and God has turned his back on him. The same could be shown of a church that has left the purity of the faith. The point is enough: the awful consequences of tampering with God's Word, and of letting go of a single truth he has revealed for our sanctifying and salvation.

Our Own Day

I ask how far the lack of spirituality in our day should be traced to loose views of truth among professedly orthodox Christians, and I answer without hesitating: to a defective theology, to false doctrine, to low and lax views of what God has revealed. I point to the continental churches that left the doctrines of the Reformation and were scattered or sank into unbelief, and to the signs of recovery where some had returned to them. And I warn that if the churches of England and America do not return soon to a purer and more spiritual theology, they will strike the same rocks.

Now I name what I see being held back or undervalued, or even openly denied. Some hold these truths back. Some preach them so timidly that they have no effect. Many deny them outright. Winslow's own words are that the great mass of professing Christians and preachers have, in effect, shut them out of our pulpits and exiled them from our land. The truths are these: the truths that show God's love to his people from eternity, the freedom of his grace in choosing them, the power of the Spirit in calling them, their free justification through Christ's imputed righteousness and the full putting away of their sins by his blood, the duty to "live soberly, righteously, and godly" in an evil age, and the certainty of final glory. These, I say, shine on every page of the apostles' writings and were the great themes of Christ's own preaching. Where they are denied or held back or blurred, a form of godliness may stay, but the power is gone. False teaching may build a church of "wood, hay, straw" (1 Corinthians 3:12, ESV), but only the truth can build a church of "gold, silver, precious stones." And the day is coming when "each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done" (1 Corinthians 3:13, ESV).

What really brings revival. Do you long and pray and work for a true revival? What is more likely to bring down the Holy Spirit, waking the careless, convicting the unbelieving, crushing self-righteousness and humbling the proud, than a clear, pointed and faithful setting out of God's own truth? Has the experiment not been tried? Jonathan Edwards reported in his account of the revivals in New England that no sermons had been more remarkably blessed than those insisting on God's absolute sovereignty in saving sinners, and that he had never seen so much immediate saving fruit as from a sermon preaching that every mouth must be stopped, and that it would be just for God forever to reject mere natural men (Romans 3:19).

Go back further. What was the great revival at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost but the faithful setting out of truth, pressed on the consciences of three thousand rebellious sinners by the bold Peter? The doctrines he preached were the very doctrines now despised and slighted. They were the most humbling to human pride and the most offensive to the natural heart, and in the Spirit's hand the most able to awaken deep feeling:

"This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." (Acts 2:23, ESV)

"Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?'" (Acts 2:37, ESV)

That was the result of plain preaching of the truth. Hard-hearted people who had seen Calvary without emotion now trembled, went pale, beat their breasts in the anguish of conviction. How soon their pride bent and their hearts melted, and the fortress of their prejudice gave way before the simplicity and majesty of the truth! It was the bare sword of the Spirit that Peter wielded, and with one stroke it laid three thousand hopeless, impenitent sinners on the ground. He held up a crucified Saviour, and by the Spirit's power that wrought the wonders of that day. "Is not my word like fire, declares the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?" (Jeremiah 23:29, ESV). Is it unreasonable, then, to expect that the same Spirit will honour the preaching of the same truths with similar signs of his power today?

"Thus says the LORD: 'Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.'" (Jeremiah 6:16, ESV)

Christ is kept in the background. I also ask whether there is a sad decline in the setting forth of the Lord Jesus himself. I fear the pulpits of our day are guilty here. The preaching of the apostles was Christ crucified: "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2, ESV). Is Jesus not kept in the background, his cross hidden and his glory veiled, as if we were ashamed to bring him forward? Are the glory and beauty of his person and the nature, necessity and perfection of his work set out clearly and without fear? His precious blood, imputed righteousness, mediating fullness, exaltation and intercession at God's right hand: are these prominent in the preaching? Or have human learning, splendid talents, brilliant speech and moral persuasion largely taken the place of the cross? It is no wonder there is a decline of real piety where Christ is not fully preached. The cross of Jesus is the very soul of Christianity. All is death where Jesus is not. Grace decays and piety languishes, and formality takes the place of the gospel's power, where his person and work are slighted, undervalued or denied. How we should pray that the Lamb who was slain, "worthy ... to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing" (Revelation 5:12, ESV), would be more fully and simply preached, and that the church and the pulpit would more plainly crown him Lord of all.

The Spirit is held cheap. Is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit not held lightly as well? Is he not denied in his person, dishonoured in his work, grieved in his influence? Is there not more dependence on creature power than on the power of the Spirit? Do sermons, books and reports not sadly forget to name him as the source of all blessing? Is his power in conversion clearly acknowledged and honoured? It is no wonder there are no refreshing winds of grace and no revival where the Holy Spirit is not glorified. A church becomes a stagnant pool and a ministry a powerless tool where the Spirit of God is slighted, grieved or flatly denied.

Hold On to the Truth

Finally, since we live in an age of many errors, those who believe the truth must hold to it without fear. No compromise. No bargain. "Buy truth, and do not sell it" (Proverbs 23:23, ESV). Pay any price in human opinion to have it, and sell it for no price at all. Stand up as a witness to the truth, humbly and boldly and in the Lord's strength, wherever he has put you. Think what an honour it is to be allowed to testify to the truth as it is in Jesus. You may be a lone witness. Do not be afraid. The One who is the truth says to you what he said to the church in Philadelphia:

"I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name." (Revelation 3:8, ESV)

"Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth. I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown." (Revelation 3:10–11, ESV)

And let those who hold the truth take care to hold good works with it. Let them see that no carelessness, no lack of honesty, no neglect of the means of grace, no bad temper, no worldly conformity, no inconsistency of any kind puts a slur on the holy doctrines they love and say they believe. Do not be satisfied to hold a string of doctrines without their sanctifying power. Make sure that with the truth in your head you have grace in your heart and a clean life. As Jesus said:

"If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31–32, ESV)

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In plain words. God makes his people holy by his truth, but truth alone does not do it. It must be received in the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit. When it is, every doctrine, command, promise and warning pushes toward holiness. Error does the opposite. It inflates pride, lowers the view of God and of sin, and draws the heart away. So when a believer, a minister or a church gives up a revealed truth, spiritual decline follows. Winslow urges a return to the gospel as the apostles preached it: Christ crucified, the Spirit honoured, and the doctrines of grace stated plainly. Hold the truth without compromise, and show its holiness in your life.

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Chapter 6: Grieving the Holy Spirit

"And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." (Ephesians 4:30, ESV)

This subject sits right next to personal decline, because decline in grace cannot happen without grieving the Spirit. Everything that has been done in a believer, the conviction, the repentance, the faith, the joy, the holiness, is the Holy Spirit's work alone. His work is glorious. Without it, the redemption Jesus accomplished would have saved no one. The Sun of righteousness could have risen on the world in all his beauty, and not one ray would have found its way into the dark rooms of the mind and heart until the Spirit opened the eye. The gospel feast could have been prepared, the Lamb slain and the invitation sent out, and without a power at work on the will and affections, every guest would have made light of it and gone off, one to his farm and another to his business. So Jesus said:

"It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment." (John 16:7–8, ESV)

[Editor's note: Winslow uses the older English word "Comforter." The ESV's "Helper" translates the same Greek word.]

You cannot think too highly of the Spirit's work. The danger is not in rating it too high but too low. And I cannot imagine anything that would wound him, grieve him and drive away his felt presence more than a known and permitted decline in his work. That is the point to which I want to turn your attention.

What "Grieving" Means

The Bible speaks of vexing, grieving, quenching and resisting the Spirit. These are figures of speech, but they are serious ones. Grief is not a passion in the Holy Spirit as it is in us, any more than anger or wrath are unholy feelings in God. These words are used out of kindness to our weakness, to show how much God hates sin, and how sensitive the Spirit is to any neglect, undervaluing or decline of his work in the soul. Strictly, the Spirit cannot be grieved or quenched or resisted, because he is not a creature, though he is a person. To say otherwise would be to give him the traits of a weak and sinful creature and not of the infinite God. But as a figure, to grieve the Spirit is to ignore his voice, oppose his influence and slight his kind and tender nature. The result is that he withdraws from the soul his presence, influence and blessing. In some cases that is for a time, and in others it is forever. For a believer, the Spirit's withdrawal when he is grieved is for a season only. For the finally impenitent and unbelieving, the hushing of his voice in conscience, in providence and in his Word is the giving up of them forever.

I assume I am writing to people who accept that the Holy Spirit is truly a divine person. If anyone doubts his right to our worship, that doubt is itself a grieving of him in the highest degree, and the cold, barren, sleepy results prove it. A minister who thinks low thoughts of the Spirit's dignity finds all power and anointing drain from his work. A private Christian finds that zeal and devotion go stagnant, and the curse of barrenness falls like a blight on a once fertile soul. But I mostly write now to those who confess the Spirit's deity and hope they are the subjects of his work. Even they may grieve him badly and lose much. Here are the ways.

How the Spirit Is Grieved

By letting his work in you decline. I start with the one that bears most directly on this book. What can grieve the Spirit more? It is a terrible slight to the most glorious thing he has done. Nowhere else has he built so glorious a temple or put out so mighty an energy or printed so deeply the outline of his own holy character as in the work of grace he has begun and carries on in the human heart. Now to watch that work decay. To see the strength, health and fruit fade in any one grace. To see those whose souls he made alive, whose minds he lit, whose affections he lifted off earthly things and fixed on God, who seemed to run well and promised much fruit and an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom, slow down, grow weary of the way, fold their arms again in sleep, and become earthly, sensual and low: the temple neglected, the gates unwatched, other guests let in, holy motives losing their power, love no longer constraining, spiritual things no longer drawing, delighting or satisfying. Can we imagine his loving and tender heart touched with more grief by anything than this? He might well say what God said of Israel:

"What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?" (Isaiah 5:4, ESV)

"What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away." (Hosea 6:4, ESV)

Of all spiritual states, lukewarmness is the most hateful to God and the most grieving to the Holy Spirit.

"I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 3:15–16, ESV)

And yet who looks at it in that light? Who stops to check what real progress his soul is making, what grace has weakened, what part of the Spirit's work has decayed, where his soul has gone barren, and how far he is secretly and effectively grieving the Spirit by a known, allowed and cherished decline? An architect is distressed to see his building decay. A parent, after spending so much on his child's upbringing, is distressed to see his hopes blasted. How much more is the Spirit grieved to see the temple he built at such cost falling to ruin, and the soul he taught with such care sliding into coldness and formality!

John Owen said it beautifully. The Spirit's heart toward us, he wrote, is infinitely more tender than the heart of the most loving parent toward an only child. And when with cost and care he has brought us up into some growth in spiritual affections, which is where all his concerns for us lie, for us to grow cold and dull and earthly-minded and cling to the pleasures and desires of this world, how he is grieved and how he is provoked!

So look at your spiritual state. See that it gives the Holy Spirit joy and not grief. Nothing can give his loving heart more delight than to see his own work deepen and spread in a believer: the little light he kindled shining "brighter and brighter until full day" (Proverbs 4:18, ESV), the gentle plant giving off its scent and bearing fruit, the spring in the heart rising toward heaven. If the enthroned Redeemer looks with satisfaction on the travail of his soul in calling in his people, the Spirit must be as glad to see the growth of his kingdom in the saints and the maturing of souls for the company of "the spirits of the righteous made perfect" (Hebrews 12:23, ESV). To see a growing likeness to Christ, holiness spreading its roots, each grace at work, every weight laid aside, every sin put to death and the whole person a rising temple to God fills heaven with joy. Dear reader, see to it that the Holy Spirit is not grieved by any known and cherished decline of his work in you.

By denying or undervaluing his work in your heart. Notice something in the Bible. Among all the examples of deep humility, self-abasement and confession of sin recorded of the saints, there is not one that shows a denial of the Spirit's work in their hearts. Jacob, David, Job, Isaiah, Peter and Paul had a keen sense of unworthiness. Their conviction was deep and their confessions humbling. But none of them speaks as though the Spirit had never done anything in them. They felt and mourned and wept and confessed as men called, pardoned and adopted, not as strangers who had never tasted that the Lord is good. They confessed their sin and backsliding as converted men, ready to give the Spirit the credit for his work.

What could grieve the Spirit's tender heart more than a denial of his work in your soul? And yet there is a constant pull toward it in the unbelieving doubts, legal fears and gloomy forebodings that so many saints give in to. At every discovery of the sin that lives in them, they resign themselves to the painful conviction that God gave them up to believe a lie. To such I say earnestly: do not grieve the Holy Spirit like this. Deep self-abasement and a sense of your own worthlessness do not mean you must deny grace in your heart. This blessed state fits well with the highest hope of eternal life. The person who can call himself the chief of sinners and the least of saints is the most likely to say, "I know whom I have believed" (2 Timothy 1:12, ESV), and "the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20, ESV).

Is it all fiction that you have believed? Is it all delusion that you have experienced? Have you been grasping at a shadow and fighting like one who beats the air? Are you willing to give up your hope and throw away your confidence? Have you never known the plague of your own heart, or the sweetness of godly sorrow at the foot of the cross? Have you never felt one throb of love for Jesus? Has his dear name never fallen sweetly on your ear? Are you ready to admit that all the grief you have felt, all the joy you have known and all the hope you have had were "cleverly devised myths" (2 Peter 1:16, ESV), a trick of the wicked one, a delusion of the mind? Do not grieve the Spirit like that. Do not deny or undervalue the blessed work he has done in you. If you have been led into deeper sight of your fallen nature, your unworthiness, vileness, weakness, declines and backsliding, whose work is that? It is the work of the same loving Spirit you are now wounding and grieving by denying.

I feel this strongly, because I know that many reading this page are in this very state. They write hard and bitter things against themselves, and also against the faithful Spirit of God, calling grace nature and denying his work in them. There is a lot of false humility among the saints, and this is one of its commonest forms. It is not pride to give thanks for the great things the Lord has done for you. It is pride to refuse to admit them. It is not true humility to doubt and underrate the Spirit's work in you until it becomes easy to deny it altogether. True humility confesses his work, bears witness to it and gives him all the power, praise and glory. So do not cherish a false humility, which is only another name for hidden pride. Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light, and his agents can wear the look of the loveliest graces, so that pride appears in the shape of the deepest humility.

And remember that although the Spirit's work in you may seem faint to your dim eye, with the outline scarcely visible among so much indwelling sin and the spark almost hidden among so much corruption, to the Spirit's eye it appears in all its clarity and glory. "The Lord knows those who are his" (2 Timothy 2:19, ESV). That is as true of the Spirit's knowledge of his own work as of anything. His eye is on the gentlest budding of grace, the faintest spark of love, the softest whisper of holy desire, the weakest longing of the heart toward Jesus. It is all known and loved by the Spirit. It is his own work, and he will recognise it. So let this quiet your complaints and calm your fears and cancel your doubts, which so deeply grieve him. Give yourself up to him. Humbly admit what he has done in you. Follow the little light he has given you. Put to work the small grace and faith he has given. And ask "with all prayer and supplication" (Ephesians 6:18, ESV) for more of his anointing, sanctifying and sealing influence.

By putting his work in the place of Christ's. One of the Spirit's essential roles is to glorify Christ. Jesus said, "He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you" (John 16:14, ESV). This is the Spirit's great delight, always and everywhere, to lift up Jesus. How does he most glorify Christ? By raising up his atoning work, giving it the first place and the weight and glory it deserves, and by leading the sinner he has first convicted to take Jesus as a willing and sufficient Saviour, to throw away all trust in himself and all reliance on a covenant of works, which is only a covenant of death, and, going out of himself, to rest in the blood and righteousness of Immanuel. What sweet delight it must give the Spirit when a poor sinner, in all his sense of nothingness, is led to build on Jesus, the "tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation" (Isaiah 28:16, ESV)!

So imagine how it grieves him when someone rests in the Spirit's work in the soul for acceptance, or comfort, or peace, or strength, or even for proof of being in a state of grace, and not wholly in the atoning work Jesus has done for the redemption of sinners. The work of the Spirit and the work of Christ are parts of one glorious whole, but they are distinct. Only the work of Jesus, his perfect obedience to the broken law and his sacrificial death satisfying divine justice, is the ground of a sinner's acceptance with God and the source of his pardon, justification and peace. The Spirit's work is not to atone but to reveal the atonement, not to obey but to make known the obedience, not to pardon and justify but to bring the convicted, awakened, repentant soul to receive the pardon and embrace the justification already provided in Jesus' work.

If you substitute the Spirit's work for Christ's, leaning too much on the work within instead of the work without, you dishonour Christ and grieve the Spirit. He cannot be pleased to find himself a replacement for Christ, and yet so many fall into this. If I look to my convictions of sin, to some stirring of the Spirit in me, to some part of his work as the true source of healing, comfort or evidence, I turn my back on Christ, I take my eye off the cross, and I slight his atoning work. I make a Christ of the Spirit. I make a Saviour of the Holy Spirit. I turn his work into an atoning work and draw the evidence and comfort of my pardon from what he has done and not from what Jesus has done.

Do not think I undervalue the Spirit's work. It is great and precious. He is the one who gives life (John 6:63), who lives in us (1 Corinthians 6:19), who sanctifies (2 Thessalonians 2:13), who seals (Ephesians 1:13), who bears witness (1 John 5:10), who comforts (John 14:26) and who helps us in prayer (Romans 8:26). He cannot be loved too ardently or his work prized too highly. But the love we bear him and the honour we give him must not come at the expense of the honour and love due to the Lord Jesus, whom it is his office and delight to glorify. The crown of redemption belongs on Jesus' head. He alone is worthy and has the right to wear it. "You have redeemed us by your blood" is the song in glory, and "You shall wear the crown" should be the song echoed back by the redeemed on earth.

His blood, applied by the Spirit, pardons. His righteousness, received by faith, justifies. And "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding" (Philippians 4:7, ESV), is the sure and blessed fruit of both. The constant proof that you are pardoned and justified must come from constantly dealing with Jesus and looking to him. "In your light do we see light" (Psalm 36:9, ESV). He is the Sun that shines on the work within us. The eye of the soul, drawn away from his cross and fixed in an intense stare on itself, will soon be lost in shadows and gloom. Inward joys can be fed on until the spring of joy runs dry. Evidences can be looked at until they melt into darkness. What is the poor, distressed, alarmed soul to do then, but fly again to the cross? Where is it to look, but at Jesus? What can speak a sense of pardon but the atoning blood, and what can assure it of perfect peace but the justifying righteousness of the Son of God? If only there were a more simple and direct looking away from self to the atoning Saviour! Then the commands would be sweet, obedience would be easy, the cross would be light, and peace would flow like a river.

By slighting his work. And yet there is a way the Spirit's own work can be slighted so as to grieve him deeply. Even a child of God tends to go to extremes. He may overrate a thing or underrate it. He may place unwarranted dependence on something he will later slight to his harm. In the same way, the Word tells the believer not to despise God's discipline and not to faint when he is reproved by him (Hebrews 12:5). We can think too much or too little of the Lord's chastening. How we need the Spirit's teaching every moment, to distrust ourselves and lean on Jesus! A child of God's constant prayer should be that the Lord would keep him from himself, with his mind low at the feet of Jesus, each moment learning of him and living for him.

How can believers slight the Spirit's work? In several ways.

By not realising he lives in you. To show no interest in the presence of a guest is no small insult. So the Holy Spirit is grieved when he calls, renews, sanctifies and takes possession of a soul, and makes it his temple and permanent home, and the soul has little sense of this great truth, forgets who lives with and in him, ignores his heavenly guest, and goes in and out and lives and acts as though he were not the temple of the Holy Spirit. What could be more dishonouring? That a believer should even for a moment lose sight of this: that he is the dwelling of the Most High, of the One "who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy," the home of the Holy Spirit, and yet entertain a feeling or a thought out of tune with so great a fact. This is why the apostle warns us: "do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God."

By not heeding his still small voice. The Spirit, the abiding guest of the saint, is always speaking to the soul, warning, leading, drawing and holding it. His work there is to teach, to sanctify, to shield, to check and to comfort. Every holy shrinking from sin, every firm resistance to its power, every victory won over its motions, every longing for holiness and every faint desire to walk in a child's obedience and sweet fellowship with God is the fruit of the Spirit living in your heart. How grieving it is when his loving voice and gentle pressures are overlooked, stifled and ignored by the soul he loves so tenderly and watches so faithfully! In all his dealings with you he seeks only your good. He aims to deepen his work in your heart, to make you holy and to ripen your soul for the joys and company of the saints in light. More than that, he wants your true happiness. He would draw you off carnal things, call you away from objects of sense and sin, open springs of higher and purer enjoyment, and lead you into fairer and greener pastures, by showing you what you have in Jesus, in the covenant of grace and in a covenant God. So keep your ear open to the gentle voice of the Spirit, and follow his quiet leadings promptly and fully.

By living inconsistently. It must deeply grieve the Spirit to see a gap between the principles of someone who says he is his temple and the habit of his life: to see love of the world, a hunger for its fame, a grasping for its wealth, an adoption of its ways, a conforming to its maxims, pursuits, pleasures and religion. This wounds the sacred guest. And how many professors this marks! [Editor's note: At this point Winslow lists particular amusements of his own day, such as balls, plays, novels and fashionable dress, and calls them contrary to Christian character. The details belong to 1841. What is kept here is his principle, which does not change: the same things that have always been contrary to it are all that feeds the world's spirit in a heart that belongs to Christ. He names dancing and worldly music among them, and also love of dress, which he sets against the true adornment of a meek and quiet spirit (1 Timothy 2:9-10; 1 Peter 3:3-5).]

You say you are a temple of the Holy Spirit. Will you decorate that temple with earthly splendour after the world's fashion? Will you mix with the world, take pleasure in its amusements, court its society, work on its principles and adopt its policy? Is that how to show the holy power of the truth, recommend the gospel of Christ, rebuke the sin and folly of the world and win it to the obedience of faith? Certainly not. And how can the divine life in the soul be fed and kept up from such a source? What food does it get from light and frothy reading, or from the unholy imaginations of men? What preparation do these give for prayer, for fellowship with God, for reading his Word, for serious thought, for the hour of death and the day of judgment? How terrible the inconsistency in those who can find an easy road from the sanctuary, the communion table and the closet to the party, the ballroom and the very heart of a gay and giddy world! Is this true Christianity? Is it like Christ? Judge for yourself.

The line of duty is as clear in God's Word as the midday sun:

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:2, ESV)

"Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty." (2 Corinthians 6:17–18, ESV)

"Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world." (1 John 2:15–16, ESV)

"You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." (James 4:4, ESV)

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." (James 1:27, ESV)

The Spirit has laid down the line of duty in plain words. You cannot step off it without grieving him, wounding your own soul and compromising your witness. So do not grieve the Holy Spirit by any known inconsistency, any sinful conformity to the world, any over-eager pursuit of its wealth, honours, pleasures and friendships. Pray against covetousness, the worm that feeds at the root of so many souls. Pray against love of display, which draws the mind of so many from the simplicity of Christ. Pray against a thirst for light and trifling reading, which starves the life of God in the soul and breeds a distaste for God's Word, for holy meditation and for fellowship with him. Pray against the spirit of worldly conformity in everything, so that the Spirit may not be grieved and Christ may not be dishonoured and crucified again through you.

I add a warning about compromise. I fear much of the Christianity of his day was of a compromising kind, with the spirit of the one who said, "What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?" (Matthew 26:15, ESV). There is a betraying of Christ before the world, a swapping of Christianity for its good opinion, its places of honour, influence and money. The world, the flesh and Satan are always on the lookout to strike a bargain with a professing Christian over his religion. If you profess to be a Christian, guard against the least compromise of your principles, the least betrayal of Jesus, the first step in an inconsistent walk. Above all, pray and watch against a worldly Christianity, a Christianity that looks fine on the outside, made up of attending services and sacraments and religious institutions, but that leaves out the cross of the meek and lowly Lamb of God. It loves the world and the things of the world, makes a fair show in the flesh, speaks well of Christ and yet betrays him with a kiss.

Do not let that be the model of your faith. You are not of the world, even as Christ was not of the world. If the world hates you, it hated him first. If you were of the world, the world would love you. Do not be surprised. Do not expect more from the world than your Master received. The world that crowned your Lord with thorns will not crown you with garlands if you live a godly life in Christ. The world that crucified him will not enthrone you if you are his faithful disciple. The world is the sworn enemy of your Saviour, so do not let it be your friend. Come out of it and be separate. Let your whole life be a quiet rebuke to it. Let your honesty rebuke its lack of principle, your sobriety its frivolity, your sincerity its heartlessness and your death to it its emptiness and folly. Let your dress, your spirit and your whole conversation show what a splendid nothing all its pomp and pretence is. Then you will resemble your Lord, who loved you to death, whose glory was in his humiliation and whose path was humble and obscure and ended in the shameful death of the cross. And you will resemble the apostle who took his place by the cross, looked down on the world from that holy height, and said:

"But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." (Galatians 6:14, ESV)

By slighting the means of grace. These are the channels through which the Spirit carries his covenant blessings into the soul. He does not now work by miracles but by means: through the Word, the ministry, the mercy seat and other channels he has provided for the nourishing of the divine life. Do not slight them. Do not undervalue them. Do not neglect them. Do not look for his blessing or expect to hear his voice except as you walk in his own appointed way. You will grieve him and cause him to withdraw his felt presence if you deliberately neglect any of the means of grace. These are the green pastures where the Shepherd makes his flock lie down at noon. These are the still waters where he leads their souls. If you turn your back on them, leanness, barrenness, coldness and death must follow. But:

"But they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint." (Isaiah 40:31, ESV)

In a word: the Spirit is grieved by any departure from the strict and holy walk of a child of God. He is grieved by any guilt left on the conscience, any sin unconfessed, unrepented and unforsaken, any known defilement of the temple where he lives, any slight put on Jesus, any neglect of the atoning blood, any light and trifling behaviour, any lack of charity toward other Christians, and any taking of the judge's seat against them. All of these grieve the Holy Spirit of God.

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In plain words. The Holy Spirit is a person who loves you, and he can be grieved. He is grieved when his work in you is allowed to decline, especially by lukewarmness. He is grieved when you deny or belittle what he has done in you, and calling it humility does not make it so. He is grieved when you lean on his work in you instead of on Christ's work for you, because he came to point away from himself to Jesus. He is grieved when you forget he lives in you, ignore his quiet promptings, live as the world lives, or neglect the means of grace. In all of it he wants only your good. Listen to his voice, look to Christ, and he will gladly keep leading you home.

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Chapter 7: The Fruitless Branch and the Fruitful One

"Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit." (John 15:2, ESV)

One thing stands out in our Lord's teaching: it told people the truth about themselves. No one could hear him and walk away without a deep feeling that he had been the man Jesus was describing. There was no harshness, no unneeded sharpness, no overdrawn colours. He dealt with the conscience so simply and so faithfully that his hearers either bowed to his authority and joined his followers, or went away silenced and self-condemned. After one of his parables, "when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them" (Matthew 21:45, ESV). On another occasion, "when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones" (John 8:9, ESV).

The parable of the vine and the branches is one of the finest examples. The One who made the human heart knew how deeply it was tainted and how far a person could go in outward profession and still live and die without new life. So in this parable he sorts the true from the false, lays bare the danger of fooling yourself, and describes the end of both. Here is his description of the fruitless branch, and then the pruning of the fruitful one, with the reason for it: "that it may bear more fruit."

The Fruitless Branch

That a person can be a fruitless professor of the gospel is one of the clearest signs of how deceitful the human heart is. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9, ESV). Someone can come so near to looking like a child of God, can seem so much like a believer and so joined to Christ, and still remain among the dead. Of all conditions this side of eternity this is the most awful. And if we judge the tree by its fruit and not by its leaves, I fear it is the condition of thousands now.

A word to ministers. How important that they model their preaching on their Lord's: discerning without being harsh, pointed without being personal, searching without being cutting, so that no hearer leaves without a faithful picture of himself and a voice in his conscience saying, "You are the man."

What "in me" means here. Jesus speaks of the fruitless branch as being "in me." We should not take this to mean a living union, a real grafting into Christ. God's Word always holds that living faith produces the fruit of holiness and that union with Christ always results in living for God. To think that a dead, fruitless branch could be vitally in Christ would be to make God's Word contradict itself. Jesus means an outward union, an outward profession. A person can be outwardly in Christ by saying he loves the cross, bearing his name, standing with his cause and showing zeal for his glory. All this can exist, and in thousands does exist, without a single particle of real, life-giving union with him.

You can go to a nursery, cut a branch from a dead tree and tie it to a living tree. It will look like a true graft. A casual observer may be fooled. But time shows the fake. You come to look for fruit, the natural result of a true graft, and find only a lifeless, sapless, barren branch tied to a living tree.

Look at such a professor. Where is the fruit? Where is the real cutting loose from the wild olive tree? Where is the clean break between him and his own righteousness? Where is the breaking up of the hard, stony fallow ground of his heart? Where is the humble, contrite spirit? Where is the self-loathing and self-condemnation? Do we hear the cry, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"? Do we see the low posture, the beating of the breast, the standing far off, the eyes not even raised toward the dwelling of a holy God? Where is a living faith in Christ, living on Christ, living for Christ? Where is the likeness to the divine image? Where is the growing fruit of holiness? What do we see of the spirit, meekness, lowliness, gentleness and purity of Jesus? What self-denial, cross-bearing, death to sin and to the world, and living for eternity? Alas, we have mistaken an outward profession for a living union with Christ. Is it any wonder we looked for fruit on such a branch and found none?

If to put on the Lord Jesus by an outward confession, to call yourself a Christian, to bow the knee at his name, to take the outward signs of his body and blood, to speak well of Jesus, to agree with his teaching, to follow his ministers, to crowd his temple and to give freely to his cause are all that real union with Christ requires, then we might say the millennium has come at noon. I speak of no single group. I speak of all, for the lifeless, fruitless professor is found in every one.

It was the same in our Lord's day and in the apostles'. Preaching was searching and oversight was careful, and false professors still abounded and even rose to high places. There was Simon the sorcerer, who was told, "You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God" (Acts 8:21, ESV), and he is "in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity" (Acts 8:23, ESV). There was Demas: "Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me" (2 Timothy 4:10, ESV). And there was the awful case of an outward union with no fruit: Judas Iscariot, of whom Jesus prayed to his Father, "not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction" (John 17:12, ESV).

For those whose union with him is only outward and whose lives are fruitless, our Lord has solemn words:

"Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, open to us,' then he will answer you, 'I do not know where you come from.' Then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.' But he will say, 'I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!' In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out." (Luke 13:24–28, ESV)

And John the Baptist spoke of the same final end:

"Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." (Matthew 3:10, ESV)

"His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." (Matthew 3:12, ESV)

They often drop the mask. The fruitless professor does not always hold on to even his outward form until judgment arrives. Many throw off the outward garb long before and show their true character. Our Lord explains this in the parable of the sower:

"The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature." (Luke 8:12–14, ESV)

These are the ones the Husbandman "takes away." Times of temptation, persecution, piling up cares, and the glitter of wealth put a person's religion in the crucible. The bare professor cannot stand it. The wind sweeps through the tree, and all its leaves are scattered. The fire is lit around the ore and shows it to be base metal.

But do not misunderstand me. I do not say every empty profession soon shows what it is. There are thousands who make money their trust, "their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things" (Philippians 3:19, ESV), and whose end, unless they truly repent, is destruction. Yet they keep the form of godliness strictly and would take it as a deep insult if their Christianity were doubted. The heart is deep and treacherous as the sea, and those who trust it will be ruined. A man can love pleasure and the world and sin, with a heart set on money and a mind sunk in worldly cares, and be at the same time a strict formalist, a proud Pharisee and a noisy arguer, and even suffer for conscience' sake rather than yield on some minor point of the law.

The Fruitful Branch

Now to the pruning of the fruitful branch. "Every branch that does bear fruit he prunes." Here is life. Here is true union. It is a fruitful branch, getting its fruit from its living union with the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice it is in Christ, grafted onto him and living in him, as a branch is one with the vine. The Spirit puts great weight on the believer's union with Jesus and his fruitfulness. It is called being in Christ: "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17, ESV); "so we, though many, are one body in Christ" (Romans 12:5, ESV).

What does it mean to be truly in Christ? We have seen how a fruitless professor can be outwardly joined to Christ, with no divine life in the soul and no true faith, so that he is "dead even while he lives" (compare 1 Timothy 5:6, ESV, which says this of a self-indulgent widow). To be in Christ truly, spiritually and vitally is more. It is to be in that eternal covenant of grace made with Christ as surety and mediator, one of those called the Lord's "own possession":

"For the LORD has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel as his own possession." (Psalm 135:4, ESV)

It is to be among those chosen in him:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him." (Ephesians 1:3–4, ESV)

To be in Christ truly is to stand accepted in his righteousness and be freely justified from all things. It is to be brought to see your own vileness, insufficiency and guilt, to give up all self-dependence and every work of human merit, and to come as the thief on the cross came, with no trust in anything of yourself, a poor, helpless, ruined, condemned sinner whose only hope of pardon is the free mercy of God in Christ Jesus. It is to have a living, holy principle of faith. It is to be able to say what Paul said:

"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:19–20, ESV)

It is to be one with him, a member of the body of which he is the head. It is to have Christ in your heart, "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27, ESV), and to be in his heart, resting in the very tent of his love, sheltered there from all evil and soothed there in all sorrow. What a blessed state! Who would not want to experience it? "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1, ESV).

These are the living branches. They bear fruit because of their union with the living Vine: "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me" (John 15:4, ESV). And what fruit such a branch bears! A broken heart. A contrite spirit. Mourning over sin. Low, humbling views of self. A venture of faith on a full, mighty and willing Saviour. A going out of self and a resting on his atoning work and his all-satisfying righteousness. Then comes steady growth in holiness and godliness, the fruits of faith through Jesus Christ filling the life and proving the change is real: a close walk with God, the will given up to his in everything, a life shaped like Jesus', and Paul's wish fulfilled, "that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death" (Philippians 3:10, ESV). The Spirit lists the fruit in full:

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." (Galatians 5:22–23, ESV)

Why only the fruitful branch is pruned. Notice it is only the fruitful branch the Husbandman prunes. Why? Because only the fruitful branch can bear it. He prunes it because it is fruitful, because it has life from the Vine. The pruning of a fruitful believer is the testing of his own work. The very discipline a covenant God uses with his child proves there is real grace in the soul. He does not prune the lifeless branch or put fake ore in the furnace. When he takes his child in hand, it is to draw out the grace he put there. The trial of faith assumes faith is there, and the trial of any grace assumes it is already in the believer. Nobody goes to a dry well for water or to a bank where he has no deposit. When God, the Husbandman of the church, walks in his garden among the trees of righteousness and marks one here and one there for pruning, he picks the trees he planted himself. Jesus said, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up" (Matthew 15:13, ESV).

Have we not often seen this carried out on graceless professors? The first blast of temptation has taken them away, root and branch. God has brought deep trial on them. The storm of adversity falls. Death takes the desire of their eyes. Riches fly away. Character is attacked. And what is their end? We look for their religion and it has gone like chaff before the wind. Their profession is gone. Their prayers have evaporated. The place that knew them knows them no more. So it will be with every plant the heavenly Father has not planted, and with all the "wood, hay, straw" (1 Corinthians 3:12, ESV) built on an outward profession of Christ. And what an end:

"For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: 'The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.'" (2 Peter 2:20–22, ESV)

[Editor's note: Winslow adds that the "knowledge" here is not a saving, experienced knowledge.]

Even the best believer needs pruning. But the true child of the covenant the Lord tries, and the living, fruitful branch the Husbandman prunes. There is something in every believer, even the most eminent for his holy and close walk, that needs pruning. We cannot always see why. We wonder why one believer is dealt with so constantly and, in a sense, so severely. We look at his godly conversation, his holy conduct, his consistent walk, his lowly spirit, his gifts and graces, his zeal. We say, "Lord, make me like him, as he is like you." Then we see the cedar of Lebanon bend before the storm. The man of God is overwhelmed with affliction. Wave follows wave and messenger follows messenger with worse news each time. This mercy is blasted and that comfort taken. Here a check and there a disappointment, and the man we looked on as one in whom the Lord had put great grace, and whom he had favoured with special nearness, is deeply afflicted. We wonder that the dear Husbandman should prune him so.

What does the Husbandman say? "I the LORD search the heart and test the mind" (Jeremiah 17:10, ESV). Here is the secret. The hidden evil of that holy man we could not see. The powerful corruptions in his heart, which he knew in part and mourned and confessed daily to the Lord, were hidden from our eyes. While we judged by outward appearance, and perhaps judged rightly, for by their fruits we know the true from the false, the Lord was probing the heart. To subdue the evil he found there, he was disciplining, pruning and purging his beloved child.

The Canaanites still live in the land. Dear reader, if you know the truth as it is in Jesus and are a living branch of the true Vine, you will not be surprised to hear that the Canaanites still live in the land. When Israel took possession of Canaan, they conquered the people and took charge of the country, yet they could not drive out all the former occupants:

"Yet the people of Manasseh could not take possession of those cities, but the Canaanites persisted in dwelling in that land." (Joshua 17:12, ESV)

What the Canaanites were to Israel, the natural corruptions of the heart are to God's called children. After all that sovereign mercy has done in the soul, though the heart has yielded to omnipotent grace and the strong man has been thrown off the throne and Jesus has taken it, the Canaanites still live in the land, and we cannot drive them out. These are the corruptions of our fallen nature: the evils of a heart only partly renewed, the pagan lusts, passions and weaknesses that once held the whole land and still live there, and that we will never fully drive out in this life.

What did Israel do with the Canaanites they could not drive out?

"Now when the people of Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not utterly drive them out." (Joshua 17:13, ESV)

This is what the children of God must do with the spiritual Canaanites in a renewed heart. They cannot be driven out, but they can be put to work. They cannot be wiped out, but they can be brought into complete subjection and even made to serve the soul's progress and God's glory. These strong corruptions that war within us can serve a child of God's good, if they teach him to put no trust in himself, to draw heavily on the fullness of grace in Jesus, to visit the throne of mercy often, to deal much with the atoning blood, to cultivate a watchful, prayerful, tender spirit and to rejoice in Christ Jesus every hour with no confidence in the flesh. All this can result when a believer has grown strong in the divine life and learned to make his indwelling corruptions work for him, though he never fully drives them out. So, as Balaam's curse was turned, "our God turned the curse into a blessing" (Nehemiah 13:2, ESV). And so a renewed soul, often crying out, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24, ESV), may through the supply of the Spirit of Christ become more skilled in the holy war, and turn the stirrings of his sin into a reason for a humbler walk with God. Happy is the believer whose indwelling weaknesses teach him his own nothingness, drive him to a soft and lowly walk, and make the blood, the mercy seat and the holy of holies dearer, where the most burdened, distressed and humble soul may enter at any time.

Pruning does not kill. Pruning does not destroy or weaken the divine life. You can go to a tree in the forest, prune off every branch, even cut it down to the ground, and as long as the principle of life remains, rain and sunshine will make it sprout and bud, blossom and bear fruit again. The divine life in the soul is indestructible. The seed that grace has planted in the heart is incorruptible. Trials, struggles, storms and tempests do not damage the principle of holiness. They deepen and strengthen it and help it grow. Look at Job. Who was ever more sharply tried or more closely pruned? And far from destroying or weakening the divine life in him, the covenant discipline he went through only deepened and spread the root and brought out the fruits of holiness in richer clusters. Do you think the divine life in his soul had changed for the worse when, as a result of God's dealings with him, he said:

"I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5–6, ESV)

What the Pruning Is For

Our Lord says plainly that the pruning is "that it may bear more fruit." God wants his people to be fruitful. "For this is the will of God, your sanctification" (1 Thessalonians 4:3, ESV), and sanctification includes all fruitfulness. He will bring out his own work in his child's heart. He will show that where grace lives it produces good fruit. And he never takes his child in hand without it ending in greater fruitfulness. When the Lord afflicts, and the Spirit makes the affliction holy, what are some of the costly fruits?

Self becomes more hateful to you. God said this would be the result of his dealings with Israel for their idolatry: "And there you shall remember your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves, and you shall loathe yourselves for all the evils that you have committed" (Ezekiel 20:43, ESV). This is no small fruit. It is one of the useless branches the Lord prunes away. To loathe self for its sinfulness, to put it to death in all its forms and to bring it fully under the Spirit of holiness is a real triumph of grace and no small result of the sanctified use of the Lord's dealings. Unmortified self is one of the deadliest enemies of a believer's soul. It shows itself in a thousand ways under a thousand disguises. It is often hard to detect, because it is often most active where suspicion of it is most asleep. There is self-confidence, as in Peter. Self-boasting, as in Hezekiah. Self-righteousness, as in Job. Self-deception, as in Balaam. How many forms this ruinous principle takes! How much "deceitfulness" is in it is known only to him who says, "I the LORD search the heart." It is in your heart and mine, and who can find it and root it out but the Lord the Spirit? "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8:13, ESV). Is your covenant God and Father dealing with you now? Pray that one blessed result will be the lowering of self in you, the showing of it to you in all its shapes and ugliness, and its complete submission to the cross of Jesus. Blessed pruning, if it lays you in the dust before the Lord, makes you loathe yourself and lets you walk softly and lowly all your days.

Jesus becomes dearer to you. Another holy purpose of pruning is to make the Lord Jesus dear in his person, work and offices. Jesus the "Branch" and the "plant of renown" grows only in the living and pruned heart. In many professors there is no room for Christ. The world and unmortified sin take up all the space and all the affections, and while his name is outwardly professed, his cross is inwardly despised. What emptying, humbling and pruning it takes to make room for the lowly Lamb of God in the heart of a poor believing sinner! And for years after we first receive Jesus, this emptying and pruning is still needed. If it were not, would our Lord discipline as he does? Would he cut off this limb and that, cut away this support and that, take us off trust in creatures, sometimes in the most painful way? No. By these means he seeks to establish himself in our affections. He wants our whole hearts. He wants to make us fruitful.

And when we are loosened from earthly trust, emptied of confidence in ourselves and pruned of earthly comforts, how unspeakably precious Jesus becomes! Then we see he is just the Jesus we want, just the Saviour we need. We find in him all we ever found in the creature and infinitely more: wisdom, strength, tenderness and sympathy beyond all that men or angels ever felt or could feel for us. Then his blood and righteousness become dear. Then we fly to his fullness of grace. And then the tender, bleeding branch takes a firmer hold on its stem and looks to it alone for its strength, its food and its fruit. If you are his child, he will make you know it and make himself dear to you, and this is seldom done except by hard pruning. Do not shrink from it. All the good the Lord takes from you he gives back ten thousand times over in giving himself. If you can say, "The LORD is my portion," what more could you want?

He prunes only what should go. Remember, too, that the Lord will prune nothing that was for your real good. He is the judge of what is best for you, not you. He cuts only the useless tendrils, the small branches that use up the sap and take the nourishment and produce no fruit. We are poor judges of what is best for us, spiritually or in earthly things. What we think is essential, the Lord in his wisdom and love may take away. What we have often begged him to remove, he may see fit to keep. Three times Paul asked for his thorn to be taken away, and three times the Lord refused. But the refusal came with a promise that soothed every feeling in the apostle: "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinthians 12:9, ESV). Keep this in mind, tried believer: supporting grace in the time of trial is a greater mercy than the removal of the trial. It was as though Jesus said to Paul, I do not see that it would be good for you to grant your prayer, but I will enable you to bear it without a murmur. I will so hold you up, and so show my strength in your weakness, that you will not want it taken away. And Paul might have answered, Lord, this is all I want. If in your wisdom and love you still see fit to prune me, I am in your hands. After that we hear no more about the thorn.

Two Words of Caution and Comfort

Do not despise what little fruit you have. Many reading this chapter may close it in deep grief over their barrenness. You may think your fruit is nothing but leaves and your religion nothing but profession. Stay a moment. It is a mercy that the Lord does not take your own estimate of your fruitfulness. If he judged us as harshly as we judge ourselves, and despised his own work as we so often do, it would go hard with us. But he does not. What we have thought too poor for his notice he has looked on with the fondest delight. When at the end of a sermon, a book or a time of prayer we have hung our heads, ashamed to lift our faces and said, "Lord, I am vile, do not look at me," he has seen the fruit of his own Spirit, costly, fragrant and precious in his sight. So do not despise what the Lord has wrought. Any desire of your heart for Christ, any secret brokenness, any godly sorrow over sin that lives in you, any feeble going out of yourself to lean on Jesus is the Holy Spirit's gracious work and must not be undervalued or left unacknowledged. A truly humble view of yourself is among the most precious fruits of the Spirit, and shows more real fruitfulness, perhaps, than any other state of mind. The ear of corn fullest of grain hangs lowest. The bough most heavy with fruit bends nearest the ground. Tender conscience, a contrite spirit, low thoughts of self and high thoughts of Jesus mark great fruitfulness in a believer. "For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice" (Zechariah 4:10, ESV).

But do not stop there. Blessed as it is to know your barrenness and mourn over it, it is more blessed to press on toward a deeper knowledge of Christ, the source of all real fruitfulness. Too many stop at deploring their barrenness. They will freely admit their state and confess it to God, and yet meet them any time and this is still their posture and confession. You see in them no progress, no striving for more, no crucifying of known weaknesses, no putting to death of easy besetting sins, no giving up of what feeds like a worm at the root of their religion. There seems just enough life and awareness to see the secret decline of the soul and not enough to stop it. Dear reader, so that this is not you, seek a growing knowledge of Christ. Here is the great secret of a growing, fruit-bearing Christian: "apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5, ESV).

We tend always to look for fruitfulness anywhere except in close, spiritual and constant dealing with the cross of Jesus. You might as well expect the earth to turn green and the tree to blossom and the blossom to ripen without the sun's warmth, as to expect fruitfulness in a regenerate soul without constant dealing with the Lord Jesus. What the sun is to nature, Jesus the Sun of righteousness is to grace, the source of all its green and fragrance and fruit. So fix all your hopes here. No real good, no healing for your spirit, no fruitfulness will come from living on convictions of sin, or legal fears, or passing joys. The divine life cannot be fed by these. Live on the atoning blood of Jesus. Here is the fatness of your soul. This heals the wound, wins the heart and stills every fear of condemnation. This lets a poor sinner look full at God, knowing that justice, holiness, truth and every divine perfection are on his side. It is the blood of Jesus, applied by the Spirit, that moistens every fibre of the root of holiness in the soul and makes it fruitful. It sends the warm current of life through every part of the new man, quickening the pulse of love and giving a healthy, strong power to every act of obedience.

And when the spiritual seasons change, for it is not always spring in the soul of a child of God, when the summer sun scorches or the autumn wind scatters the leaves and the fiercer storm of winter beats on the stricken bough, the blood and righteousness of Christ, lived on and loved and cherished, will still hold up the divine life in the soul. In due season the spring blossom and summer fruit will appear again, proving the life of a believer is "hidden with Christ in God." Then it will be said of you what the Beloved said of the church:

"For behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away." (Song of Solomon 2:11–13, ESV)

And your heart will answer:

"Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow." (Song of Solomon 4:16, ESV)

So you will be "filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God" (Philippians 1:11, ESV).

To the One Being Pruned

Afflicted believer, remember it is only the fruitful branch the Lord prunes. "For the Lord disciplines the one he loves" (Hebrews 12:6, ESV), and "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline" (Revelation 3:19, ESV). So thank him for the pruning. Bless him for the trial that weans you from earthly things, deadens your heart to every rival of Christ and gives faith, hope and love an upward spring. There is not one unkind thought in the heart of the God who is disciplining you. He may have cut off branch after branch. He may have dried up your earthly springs and led you down into the valley of humiliation. Yet he is love and nothing but love. If you could look into his heart, you would find not one pulse beating that did not speak of love for you at this very moment. All he seeks for you is your increased fruitfulness, and to make you holy is to make you truly happy. In all his dealings with his people he seeks their greatest good and highest happiness, and in nothing does he show his love more.

Remember our Lord's words: "By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples" (John 15:8, ESV). This much fruit is often found most in those he deals with most. He made his people for his glory and will have it in their abundant fruitfulness. That is why the most illustrious saints have always been the most deeply tried and severely pruned. Their great fruitfulness sprang from their great afflictions.

Yet the Lord deals with his saints in his own sovereign way, and not always by the same road. Is God smiling on you? Is the summer sun shining? Is your sea smooth? Is the south wind blowing? Then walk humbly with God. "do not become proud, but stand in awe" (Romans 11:20, ESV). If God has raised you a little in the world, you need to besiege his throne for grace to keep your spirit low in the dust. Do your friends admire your talents, praise your gifts, applaud your work and seek your company? How closely and softly and humbly you must walk with God now! The breath of flattery that landed on you will be a blight on your graces if you do not go on your knees before God. The kind word in your ear will be like the fly in the apothecary's ointment if you do not get closer to the foot of the cross. Let every circumstance take you there. Whether the north wind or south wind blows, whether the dark cloud of adversity gathers or the sun of prosperity shines, keep your posture low at the Saviour's cross. Nothing can harm you there. Make the season of outward prosperity the season of your soul's fruitfulness. Let every mercy take you to God. Turn every new blessing into a fresh reason to live not for yourself but for the One who gave it.

And if you are driven to take your worst frames to Christ, your sins as they rise, your weakness as you feel it, your corruptions as they show themselves, even so you will be a fruitful branch of the true Vine. In the very act of going to Christ just as he is, a believer bears fruit. For what marks a soul on its way to the cross but self-distrust, self-abasement, a deep sense of its own nothingness and a high view of Christ's sufficiency? Is that not precious and costly fruit? I know none more so.

The garden above. And let the fruitful believer look ahead to the time when he will be moved to richer and healthier soil. In heaven there will be nothing to blight the flower of grace: no winter frost, no burning summer heat, no crushing storms, no sweeping tempests. The former things will have passed away. Here he is a lily among thorns. There he will be a tree of righteousness on which the storm will never rise and the sun will never set. An old hymn says:

Oh what a garden will be seen,
when all the flowers of grace
appear in everlasting green
before the Planter's face!

Christ is their shade, and Christ their sun;
among them walks the King,
whose presence is eternal noon,
his smile eternal spring.

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In plain words. Jesus says there are two kinds of branches "in" him. Some are only tied on from outside. They look like believers, but there is no fruit and no life, and in time they are taken away. Others are truly joined to him, and those are the ones the Father prunes. So if you are being pruned, if you feel sharp loss and trial, that is not a sign that God has rejected you. It is a sign he is working on a living branch. The pruning removes what is useless, such as self-trust, self-love and earthly props, and it makes Jesus dearer. It never kills the life. Do not despise the small fruit you have, and do not settle for mourning over what you lack. Keep close to Christ and live on his blood, and fruit will come in its season.

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Chapter 8: The Lord Who Restores

"He restores my soul." (Psalm 23:3, ESV)

All through this book I have tried to keep three things in front of you: the divine life in your soul cannot be destroyed, the covenant of grace stands firm, and God's love for his people does not change. These are not decoration. Without them, on what shaky ground would your final salvation rest! Think how unreliable the creature is. Take the history of a child of God squeezed into a single day. Count the flaws, the fickleness, the sideways steps, the failures of principle, the errors of judgment, the wanderings of the heart. How we thank God for the stability of the covenant, which from eternity secures the calling, the keeping and the salvation of every chosen vessel of mercy! God himself says it so clearly and so sweetly:

"If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules, if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes, but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness. I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips." (Psalm 89:30–34, ESV)

Two serious truths sit side by side in that passage: a child of the covenant can backslide, and he will certainly be restored. In this chapter we are mostly concerned with the second.

Why We Need to Be Restored

The previous chapters have said a lot about the need, but it is the foundation of this chapter, so let me say it once more.

When Adam was first made, nothing in his heart worked against the life of God within him. His mind, will, affections and desires were one glorious circle of perfect light and holiness, without a shadow or a speck. Every faculty was in harmony with that life and helped it grow. Adam fell, and he passed on to his children a nature corrupt in every part. Sovereign grace has undertaken to renew that nature, and it does so, but only in part. The divine life lives in a fallen, fleshly nature. Paul says it in one phrase: "The life I now live in the flesh" (Galatians 2:20, ESV). The divine life he lived was in the flesh. It was surrounded by all the flesh's corruptions, weaknesses and attacks. There was never a moment when it was not under assault from within. There was no natural faculty or heartbeat that was friendly to its progress. Every believer should remember that the divine life he lives, he lives in the flesh, and that there is no day when he does not need the Lord to restore him.

Add the enemies outside. Just as nothing within helps grace forward, nothing without does either. Satan is always on watch. The world is always dressing itself in some new fascination to weaken it. A thousand temptations are always trying to trap it. Enemies within and without are in league against it. Is it any wonder that faith sometimes trembles, grace sometimes declines and the pulse of the divine life often beats faintly? The saints in every age have felt and said so. Hence David's prayer, which is the prayer of every true believer:

"Hold me up, that I may be safe." (Psalm 119:117, ESV)

That shows his great weakness and his constant exposure to a great fall. And again:

"Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me." (Psalm 19:13, ESV)

That shows that a believer, left to the pull of his fallen nature, could fall prey to the worst sins. The writer to the Hebrews warns the converted:

"Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God." (Hebrews 3:12, ESV)

"Fall away" means a constant tendency to leave God. And what does God say of his people?

"My people are bent on turning away from me." (Hosea 11:7, ESV)

"Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding?" (Jeremiah 8:5, ESV)

It is a standing tendency to decline. The sun rises only to set, and the clock is wound only to run down. It is no more natural for them to obey the laws that govern them than for the heart of a child of God to follow the pull of its wayward nature.

The root of every departure. This leads to the principle behind all departure from God. We look at a believer's careless practice and mourn over it, and we are right to. We look at our own and are covered with deeper shame. But we forget that the cause of our bitterest grief should be the hidden principle of evil that produces the practice. How few of the called of God confess and mourn the sin of their nature: the impure fountain that sends out the stream, the root that feeds the branch! This is what God looks at, and it is what we should look at and mourn over. True mortification of sin is knowing our sinful nature and bringing it under the power of grace. The reason so few believers "by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body" is that they forget the work is first and mainly with the root. "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad" (Matthew 12:33, ESV). Purify the fountain and the stream will run clean. If only we knew the hidden evil of our nature better, learned more thoroughly that "nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh" (Romans 7:18, ESV), were more deeply humbled by it and confessed it more often, how much higher would many believers rise in holiness!

So in every child of God there is a built-in tendency to leave. For all the wonders of grace God has worked for the soul, though he has chosen, called, renewed, washed and clothed the believer, if he did not check and rein him in, he would leave, and leave for good. The unmortified principle would carry him away. Is there not something heartbreaking in this? To be the subject of a kind government and yet always rebelling against the Sovereign. To live under a loving Father's roof and keep grieving him. To have had so many costly proofs of his love and give such ungrateful returns. It is enough to sink the soul in the deepest self-abasement.

Reader, what has the Lord been to you? Come and bear witness. Has he been a wilderness to you? Has there been anything in his dealings that gave you reason to turn your back on him? Any harshness in his rebukes, any unkind severity in his corrections, anything vindictive? No. Has he not been a fruitful garden, a pleasant land, a fountain of living water to you? Has he not mixed kindness with his rebukes, tenderness with his chastisements, love with all his dealings? Has not his gentleness made you great? Then why have you left him? What is there in God to leave him for, in Jesus to wound him for, in the Spirit to grieve him for? Is not the cause of all your departure, decline, unkindness and fruitlessness in yourself and in yourself alone? And if that has been your conduct toward God, his conduct toward you has been quite different.

How the Lord Restores

Love goes first. The first thing to see is the love of the Lord Jesus in restoring a wandering believer. Nothing but infinite, tender, unchanging love could move him to it. There is so much black ingratitude in a believer's departure from the Lord that, apart from the nature of Christ's love, there would be no hope of return. And this costly love shows itself mainly in his taking the first step. The first move is on the Lord's side. This is too important to touch lightly. A believer can no more recover himself after conversion than before it. It is entirely the Lord's work. The same state of mind that led to the first step away leads on to each next one, until, but for restraining and restoring grace, the soul would say a last goodbye to God.

Look at David's words: "He restores my soul." Who? The one he named in the first verse as his Shepherd: "The LORD is my shepherd." It is the Shepherd who takes the first step in recovering the wandering sheep. What could be more touching than that the tender, unchanging love of Jesus for his straying child should lead him to make the first move? Shall an offended, insulted king make the first move toward a rebellious people? That king is Jesus. Shall an outraged father go looking for his wandering child and bring him back to his house and his heart? That father is God. What love it is that sends Jesus after his straying child: love that will not let him quite leave, love that yearns after him and follows him through all his crooked wanderings and far-off departures, love that no unkindness has been able to cool, no forgetfulness to weaken, no distance to destroy!

Power. "He restores my soul": he, the all-powerful Shepherd. We need omnipotence to bring us back when we have wandered. Nothing less will do. We need the power that converted us to convert us again, and the power that created us to create us anew. Jesus has this power. It was needed for the full salvation of his church, so he prays to his Father: "since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him" (John 17:2, ESV). He has authority over all flesh, over all the powers lined up against the church, so that he may bring to glory all who were given to him in the covenant of grace. This power is gloriously at work in restoring a soul. Jesus works in the believer for his recovery. He breaks the hard heart, stops the soul in its onward slide, puts a powerful check on it, lays it low, humbles it, and then draws from it the blessed admission: Behold, I am vile, but he restores my soul.

Wisdom. There is infinite wisdom in the Lord's restorings too. We see it in the way he chooses. That he so often makes our very afflictions the means of restoring us shows the depth of his wisdom. This was David's prayer, "give me life according to your rules" (Psalm 119:156, ESV), and his testimony: "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word" (Psalm 119:67, ESV); "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life" (Psalm 138:7, ESV). A season of trial is often the holy season of revival. Who that has been through the furnace has not found it so? Then the decline of the soul has been discovered, then the hidden cause of it has been brought to light, then the spirit has bowed in sorrow before the Lord, then grace has been stirred up in the heart, and new sweetness has come to prayer, a new push to faith, a new radiance to hope, and from the flame has come gold and silver purified of tin and dross.

Why, then, the heavy and special afflictions that sometimes overtake a child of God? Do not think that our heavenly Father takes pleasure in chastening us. Do not think it delights him to see the twisting and anguish of a wounded spirit, or that he loves to see our tears and hear our sighs and groans under crushing trial. No. He is a tender, loving Father. He lays on us not one stroke, one cross or one trial more than is needed for our good. He puts in our bitter cup not one ingredient that is not necessary to the remedy. "He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness" (Hebrews 12:10, ESV). He often does it to wake us from spiritual sleep, to recover us from deep decline, and to give new strength, health and growth to his own life in the soul.

Gentleness. Nor must we overlook the gentleness of his restoring. We see it in the way Jesus described the recovery of the stray sheep:

"What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing." (Luke 15:4–5, ESV)

Here is the shepherd's gentleness: "he lays it on his shoulders." Too weak to walk and too worn out by its wandering to return, it is found by the gentle shepherd, who carries it home rejoicing. What a touching picture of how the Saviour restores a backsliding soul!

What but infinite gentleness do we see in the restoring of Peter? It was only a look. Not a word fell from the Saviour's lips. No unkind rebuke, no harsh complaint. But that look, which no artist has ever managed to draw, so full of love and gentleness and forgiveness, seemed to say, I am going to die for you, Peter. All this and more I suffer for you. Will you, can you deny me? That look, so touching, so melting and so forgiving, reached the heart of the backsliding apostle, broke it, and sent him out from the courtyard to weep bitterly (Luke 22:61–62). There was nothing in that look but love. Fix this in the heart of every backsliding believer: the Lord restores the soul gently. The moment he shows it its sin, he conveys some token of pardoning mercy. The balm is applied the moment the wound is made, and the remedy is at hand the moment the disease is found.

See it with David. How did God bring his sin to mind? By the rod? By heavy judgment? By angry words? No. He sent a kind, tender, faithful prophet to show David his terrible backsliding. The words "You are the man" had hardly died on his ear before the healing balm poured in: "The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die" (2 Samuel 12:13, ESV). What gentleness! Who could have expected this except from the One whose nature and name is love, who could say to his backsliding Ephraim:

"Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, declares the LORD." (Jeremiah 31:20, ESV)

That is an outpouring of tenderness toward a poor, returning backslider that could have its home only in the heart of Jehovah.

How You Return

Now let us speak of the way of a backslider's return. May the Spirit give wisdom and anointing as we go.

Remember. First, the spirit in which he should return. Look at the backsliding church of Ephesus. Her sin and her recovery are set out together:

"But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first." (Revelation 2:4–5, ESV)

The first exhortation was "Remember therefore from where you have fallen." She was called first to think seriously about her former prosperity. So let the backsliding believer begin there. Go back over your history, your former spiritual state. Remember your first sorrow for sin and the first joy of pardon. Remember the springtime of your first love: how precious Jesus was, how glorious his person, how sweet his cross, how fragrant his name, how rich his grace. Remember how dear the throne of grace was to you, how often you went to it, counting it the most blessed place on earth. Remember how, under the anointing of adopting love, you walked with God as with a Father: how close, how childlike, how holy was your fellowship with him. Remember the times of refreshing in church, in fellowship meetings and in your closet, when your soul seemed to live on the sunny side of glory and you longed for the wings of a dove to fly to your Lord. Remember how, publicly and before many witnesses, you put off sin and put on Christ, turned your back on the world and took your place among the followers of the Lamb. Remember how holy and careful and spotless your walk was, how tender your conscience, how simple your spirit, how humble your whole manner. And what and where are you now? Remember from where you have fallen! From what a high profession, what an elevated walk, what holy occupations, what hallowed joys, what sweet delights, what pleasant ways have you declined? You may well ask with the poet of Olney, William Cowper:

Where is the blessedness I knew
when first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
of Jesus and his word?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
the world can never fill.

Repent. The second instruction to Ephesus fits every wanderer: "repent, and do the works you did at first." How can a departing soul return without repentance? By what other road can the prodigal reach his Father's heart? Repentance assumes there is sin, and that you feel it. Is it no sin, reader, to have turned your back on God? Is it no sin to have lost your first love, to have backslidden from Jesus, to have moved your affections from him to the world, to a creature, or to yourself? Is it no sin to go no more with the Shepherd, no more to follow the footsteps of the flock, no more to feed in green pastures or rest by still waters? Oh yes. It is a sin of particular weight. It is a sin against God as a loving Father, against Jesus as a tender Redeemer, against the Holy Spirit as faithful indweller and sanctifier. It is a sin against the most precious experience of his grace, the most melting shows of his love and the most tender proofs of his covenant faithfulness. Repent of it. Think how you have wounded Jesus afresh, and repent. Think how you have repaid your Father's love, and repent. Think how you have grieved the Spirit, and repent. Humble yourself in dust and ashes before the cross, and through that cross look up again to your forgiving God and Father. The sweet promise is:

"When they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child." (Zechariah 12:10, ESV)

Come through Jesus. One more point of great weight: every real return of a backsliding soul is through Jesus. Jesus is God's great door of approach to his throne. No other entrance will bring us to the golden sceptre or into the holy of holies.

"Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near." (Hebrews 10:19–22, ESV)

What a blessed door of return for a poor, backsliding, broken-hearted believer: a crucified Saviour in whom God is well pleased, for whose sake he can receive the sinner and put away his sin, welcome the backslider and heal his backsliding.

The Spirit's work. Nor must we overlook the Spirit's work in restoring a backsliding soul. Without him the believer would not take a single step back. The first serious reflection, the first wistful glance toward the Father's home, the first sigh that heaves the heart, the first tear that starts from the spring of grief, the first step toward a forsaken God, is the fruit of his working, of his unchanging love and covenant faithfulness. What debtors we are to the blessed and Eternal Spirit! What reverent thoughts of his person we should have, and what tender thoughts of his work.

Encouragements to Return

The encouragements to return to the Lord are many and great.

God himself invites you. How many and how touching his invitations are! Where is the heart, deeply aware of its backsliding, that could resist this?

"Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, 'Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD; I will not be angry forever.'" (Jeremiah 3:12, ESV)

Here is your warrant to return: God's own free invitation. You need no more. What if Satan discourages you? What if your sins plead against you? What if guilt and unbelief and shame all combine to block your way? If God says, "Return," that is enough. If he is willing to take you back, pardon your sins, forget your base ingratitude, heal your backslidings and restore your soul, you have full warrant to return in the face of all opposition. And again the cheering invitation runs:

"Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the LORD your God." (Jeremiah 3:13, ESV)

"Return, O faithless children, declares the LORD; for I am your master." (Jeremiah 3:14, ESV)

"Return, O faithless sons; I will heal your faithlessness." (Jeremiah 3:22, ESV)

"I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them." (Hosea 14:4, ESV)

[Editor's note: In Jeremiah 3:14 the ESV has "I am your master" where Winslow's King James has "I am married unto you." Either way the verse is God's call to his wandering children.]

God's character encourages you. In the invitations he has given, he presses them on the ground of what he is: "Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful." What a touching, heart-melting argument: Return to me, for I am merciful. Merciful to receive you, to pardon you, to heal you. How boundless God's mercy in Christ toward a soul coming back from its wanderings! Will this not draw you?

"I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you." (Isaiah 44:22, ESV)

Return, for I have blotted out your transgressions. Return, for I have put away your sins. Return, for I have redeemed you. The work is already done. The pardon has already gone out. The backsliding is already forgiven. So do not linger. Return, for I have redeemed you. Here, on the broad ground of the Lord's free and full pardon, the wandering soul is urged to return. Truly the apostle says:

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9, ESV)

This is just the view of God you need as a backslider. In yourself you see everything that discourages you and forbids your return. Even when you wake up to the fact that you have left, your first thoughts of God drive you away from him. You say, I left the Lord on purpose. I went after other lovers and dug other cisterns. Now the Lord has given me up in his displeasure and forsaken me forever in his wrath. But God comes out and defends his own gracious character. He opens up his love and speaks to his wandering child in the most encouraging and persuasive tones: Return, for I am merciful.

The father in the parable. In the parable of the prodigal son we have God's character toward a returning soul truly and beautifully drawn. Look only at the father's posture as his child comes near. It is the most expressive picture of undiminished love, yearning tenderness and eagerness to welcome:

"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him." (Luke 15:20, ESV)

All this God is to you, dear returning soul. He is on the watch for your first movement toward him, as with outstretched neck, looking for the first sign of your return, the first sound of your footsteps, the first relenting of your heart. More than that, or this would be nothing, he sends his own Spirit to work that return in you, to break your heart, to rouse your sleeping spirit, to draw you and win you into his arms. This is your God, the God you have forsaken and whose ways you have left, but who, in the very depth of your decline and the very farthest point of your departure, has never taken his eye of love off you for a moment.

The cross. The great source of encouragement to a returning soul is the cross of Christ. Without a crucified Saviour there could be no return to God. In no other way could he, consistently with the holiness and right of his government and with what he owes to himself as a just and holy God, receive a poor wandering, returning sinner. Repentance and humbling and confession could not by themselves win any act of pardon. The obedience and death of the Lord Jesus laid the foundation and opened the way for this great and sovereign act of grace. The cross shows God's hatred of sin in the most awful way, and at the same time his readiness to pardon it in the most majestic way. Full, free pardon is written in every drop of blood, proclaimed in every groan and shines in the wonder of mercy that closes the scene.

What a blessed door of return, open and never shut, to the wanderer from God! How glorious, how free, how accessible! Here the sinful, vile, guilty, unworthy, poor and penniless may come. Here the weary spirit may bring its burden, the broken spirit its sorrow, the guilty spirit its sin, the backsliding spirit its wandering. All are welcome. The death of Jesus was the opening and emptying of the full heart of God. It was the outpouring of that ocean of infinite mercy that heaved and longed for an outlet. It was God showing how he could love a poor guilty sinner. What more could he have done? What stronger proof, richer gift or costlier boon could he have given as a witness to that love? It is simply believing this that brings the tide of joy into the soul. It is faith's sight of this that dissolves the diamond, splits the flinty rock, flattens the pyramid of self-righteousness, lays the rebel will in the dust, and wraps the repenting, believing soul in the arms of free, rich and sovereign love. Here, too, the believer is led to trace the sin of his backsliding in its darkest lines and mourn over it with his bitterest tears:

Then beneath the cross adoring,
sin does like itself appear;
when the wounds of Christ exploring,
I can read my pardon there.

If the Lord has restored your soul, dear reader, remember why he did it: to make you hate your sins. He hates them, and he will make you hate them too. He does it by pardoning them, by sprinkling the atoning blood on your conscience and by restoring to you the joy of his salvation. Sin is never so sincerely hated, so deeply lamented, so bitterly mourned and so completely given up as when he speaks to the heart and says, "Your sins are forgiven; go in peace." It is as though he said, I have blotted out your transgressions, I have healed your backslidings, I have restored your soul, "that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord GOD" (Ezekiel 16:63, ESV).

Begin where you left. Remember that where the departure began, the return should begin. Did it begin at the closet? Then let your restoration begin at the closet. Go back to secret prayer. Rebuild the ruined altar. Rekindle the dying flame. Let that holy place once more hear your confession and your humbling and your strong crying and tears and your close, childlike, holy fellowship with God. What a blessed moment that sees you there again, even if it is to beat your breast in anguish and cover yourself in sackcloth and ashes before the Lord!

Remember his intercession. And do not overlook, in this work of restoration, the intercession of Jesus, the High Priest, at God's right hand. If your heavenly Father has restored your soul, he did it not only from the spring of his own unchanging love; what prevailed with him was the sweet incense of the Redeemer's blood before the mercy seat. Moment by moment that fragrant cloud goes up, carrying all the circumstances of all the Israel of God. There is not only the blood already sprinkled on the mercy seat, which satisfied divine justice, but there is also the constant pleading of that blood by Jesus the Priest before the throne. What a precious, comforting thought for a soul retracing its steps to God! It has nothing of its own to plead but its folly, ingratitude, misery and sin. But faith can lay its trembling hand on this truth, and see Jesus in his priestly robes standing between the soul and God, spreading out his hands and pleading for the returning believer the merit of his own precious obedience and death. And so encouraged, he may draw near and touch the sceptre.

"But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." (1 John 2:1, ESV)

"For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf." (Hebrews 9:24, ESV)

An Appeal

In view of all these encouragements and appeals, will you, dear backsliding soul, still refuse to return? I entreat you, I implore you, I beg you, get up and go to your Father and say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you" (Luke 15:21, ESV). By all that is tender and forgiving in that Father's heart, by all that is melting and precious in the work of Jesus, by his agony and bloody sweat, by his cross and passion, by his death and burial and resurrection, I beg you to return. By the honour of the holy faith you have wounded, by all the hopes of glory you have cherished, by all that is sacred in the memory of the past and all that is solemn and real in the prospect of the future, I implore you to return. By the faithful promises of God, the tender yearning of Jesus, the gentle drawing of the Spirit, by all the joy and peace and assurance you will know in a restored soul, by the glory of God, the honour of Christ, the nearness of death and the seriousness of the judgment, I entreat you, wanderer, prodigal, return.

Return, O wanderer, return,
and seek an injured Father's face;
those warm desires that in you burn
were kindled by reclaiming grace.

Return, O wanderer, return!
Your Savior bids your spirit live;
go to his bleeding side, and learn
how freely Jesus can forgive.

---

In plain words. You cannot restore yourself. Your divine life lives in a flesh that keeps pulling away, so you need the Lord to restore you every day, and he does. He takes the first step. He uses his love, his power and his wisdom, and often your own trials. He is gentle, like the shepherd carrying the lost sheep on his shoulders and like the look that broke Peter's heart. Your part is to remember where you have fallen from, to repent, and to come back through Jesus and his blood. The Spirit even gives you the will to turn. Everything encourages you to return: God's own invitations, his mercy, the father running to the prodigal, the cross, and Christ's constant pleading for you. Begin where you left off, and go home.

---

Chapter 9: The Lord Who Keeps You

"The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand." (Psalm 121:5, ESV)

The Holy Spirit tells us again and again, plainly and solemnly, that salvation is wholly from God, with no help from any worth or strength in us. Because his people's salvation is his work alone, it is worthy of him in every way. God cannot do anything beneath himself. All the works of his power in nature, and all the acts of his wisdom in providence, from the least to the greatest, carry the mark of "his eternal power and divine nature" (Romans 1:20, ESV). But in salvation this is most of all true. Here the whole Godhead shines. Here Jehovah steps out from the veiled tent of his greatness and glory and, by one amazing act of power, one majestic act of grace and one unspeakable showing of love, walks among men in his full majesty. John heard it:

"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.'" (Revelation 21:3, ESV)

That dwelling place with men is nothing less than Jesus in our own nature, God made visible in the flesh. Truly, "his glory is great through your salvation" (Psalm 21:5, ESV). Is he the only wise God? Then his salvation must be the deepest work of that wisdom. Is he holy? Then his salvation is holy. Is he just? Then it is just. Is he gracious? Then it is gracious. It bears the mark of every attribute and holds in itself every perfection. No other work of his wisdom, no other product of his power, no other showing of his greatness gives so true a picture of God as the cross of his beloved Son.

This salvation, so completely out of the creature and in God, covers every circumstance of a child of God. It is not only salvation from the wrath to come, which would be an immeasurable act of grace. It is a present salvation, planning for every need of this life: rescue from all evil, help in all trouble, comfort in all sorrow, supply for every want, and through all conflicts and attacks, perfect safety and final victory.

The one point I want to look at now is the believer's present and certain security, which the covenant of grace provides for, which is made sure in Jesus the covenant head, and which is revealed in God's plan of salvation. In the last chapter we saw how a child of God tends to leave him. Now I ask the Holy Spirit to show us the comforting truth that in the midst of all their weakness, waywardness and tendency to wander, the Lord is the keeper of his people, and those he keeps are well and eternally kept. "The LORD is your keeper."

You Cannot Keep Yourself

We cannot see this rightly without first seeing the believer's own helplessness. If there were any power in him to keep himself, if he were not weakness, nothing but weakness, then the Lord could not truly be called his keeper. This is the groundwork, and a believer needs to be reminded of it all the time. Self-confidence is the natural product of the human heart. The mark of our fallen race is a desire to live, think and act independently of God. What is the great stronghold God's grace attacks first? What is the first step in bringing a sinner under God? It is breaking down this lofty, towering conceit of independence, so natural to us and so hateful to God. Yet grace does not pull the root of this evil principle out of the heart of its subjects. The root stays to the end of life's journey. It is weakened, subdued and put to death in part, but it remains, and demands the strictest watchfulness and constant prayer, lest it spring up to the ruin of the soul's health, the grieving of the Spirit and the dishonouring of God. How much of God's tender and faithful discipline has the killing of this hateful principle as its end, who can tell? We will not fully know until we reach our Father's house, where the dark and puzzling dealings of our loving Father will unfold in light and glory.

The angels. Scripture shows, in some of its most solemn examples, that no creature, angel or human, can keep itself. If any creature could have kept itself from falling, why not a pure angelic spirit? They had everything on their side. God created them in perfect uprightness. They were bound by a law written in their nature, the same law of nature that was written on Adam's heart, which matches the moral law in substance. They were bound to love God supremely, obey him fully, and serve him gladly and forever. Nothing could release them from that. They did not lack the ability to obey it. The bent of their wills, the lean of their minds and the desire of their affections all went that way. Yet they fell. Why? Because God left them to the freedom of their wills, which could change, and the instant they were left to themselves they fell. "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven" (Luke 10:18, ESV). If created power could ever have held itself up, here was the glorious stage for it. Their natures were holy, the God they served was holy, the place they lived was holy, their companions were holy, their work was holy, and yet they fell. Why? Because no creature ever has or can keep itself by any strength of its own. The moment God leaves him to himself, he falls.

Adam. Look at Adam. He too was created in perfect holiness. There was not a taint of sin in his nature. No cloud darkened his mind. There was not the slightest lean of his will or a single inclination of his heart that did not centre on God. Yet he fell. Why? Because he could not keep himself. God left him to his natural and moral ability, which in a creature is natural and moral weakness. He left him to his own free will and his own inner power, and the sad result was that he fell at once, and in him, as the head of the race, all of us. Adam was poor in himself, a pensioner on the free bounty of the God of heaven. Even while he rested in the beauty of Paradise, walked the earth as monarch of a new and glorious world, and everything in it did him homage, he was still, as every creature must be, poor in himself and hanging as a weak dependant on the God who made him. The moment God withdrew his upholding power, Adam tore the crown of creature glory from his own head and trampled it into the dust.

The saints. If the angels in their purity and Adam in his innocence fell when left to their own keeping, what can we expect from a fallen, sinful, imperfect creature, even a renewed one? Look at what God's Word says about the power of a renewed person to keep himself. The words are conclusive: "he gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength" (Isaiah 40:29, ESV), "while we were still weak" (Romans 5:6, ESV), "weakened by the flesh" (Romans 8:3, ESV), and "made strong out of weakness" (Hebrews 11:34, ESV). Could any language set out the utter weakness of a child of God more strongly? The figures used are most expressive. The believer is a lamb among wolves, a dove with a vulture about to seize it, a lily among thorns, a bruised reed, a smoking wick, a feeble branch hanging on the vine. And the saints' own confessions are the same: "The LORD is the stronghold of my life" (Psalm 27:1, ESV). "Hold me up, that I may be safe" (Psalm 119:117, ESV). "Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins" (Psalm 19:13, ESV). "Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves" (2 Corinthians 1:9, ESV). "I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10, ESV).

[Editor's note: Winslow also quotes Psalm 17:5 in the King James form, "Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not," as a prayer. The ESV renders that verse as a claim, "My steps have held fast to your paths; my feet have not slipped," so it is left out here. The prayer of Psalm 119:117, which is already quoted above, carries the same plea.]

And look at the examples, to take only a few: Noah's drunkenness, Abraham's unbelief, David's adultery and murder, Solomon's idolatry, Job's self-righteousness, Moses' impatience, Peter's self-confidence and time-serving. What solemn lessons of the creature's nothingness! What affecting examples of perfect weakness!

But why speak of others? If you are a professing child of God, stop and look back over your own life. What marks of weakness do you find? What proofs of your fickleness and folly and poor judgment? What outbreaks of deep sin? What showings of hidden corruption? What startling signs of the most awful departure from God does the review turn up? And remember, this is the history of a believer in Jesus, a renewed child of God, a sharer in the divine nature, an heir of eternal glory. Blessed are those who, as they close this book, give up their fond idea of self-power and self-keeping, and pray, and never stop praying, "Hold me up, that I may be safe." "Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall" (1 Corinthians 10:12, ESV).

How the Lord Teaches You This

The Lord will make his people know their weakness and their inability to keep themselves. He will not teach it as an idea or a theory or something they hear or read, but through their own deep experience. He keeps teaching it. I do not mean only the blessed time when the Spirit first lays his axe to the building of your self-righteousness. You first learn it then. But it is a truth you grow in, a lesson you are taught daily, and the best-schooled in it is the one who watches his heart most closely, notes his own ways most carefully and deals most constantly and simply with the cross of Jesus.

The ways are many. Sometimes the Lord brings you into great straits and hems in your path with thorns or paves it with flint. Sometimes it is a deep adversity after great prosperity, as with Job, stripped of everything and laid in dust and ashes until he came to see and say how vile he was. Sometimes it is in a time of full prosperity, when he gives the heart its desire and sends leanness into the soul. What a lesson that is to a godly man in his own nothingness! Sometimes it is by letting a messenger of Satan buffet you, sending and keeping some heavy, lingering, wearing cross. Sometimes it is by taking away some beloved prop you leaned on too fondly and surely, putting a worm at the root of your pleasant spreading gourd, drying up your refreshing spring, or leading you down into the valley of humiliation.

But the great school in which we learn this painful, needed and wholesome lesson is the body of sin we carry about with us every day. Here Paul learned it, as Romans 7 shows, and the saints will always have reason to praise the Eternal Spirit for that letter:

"For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me." (Romans 7:18–20, ESV), and then the cry: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24, ESV)

In this school, and in this way, the great apostle to the Gentiles learned that the holiest, most deeply taught, most useful, most privileged and even inspired saint of God is in himself nothing but sin's perfect weakness.

So do not be cast down, dear reader, if the Lord the Spirit is teaching you the same lesson the same way: if he is ploughing up the hidden evil and breaking up the fallow ground, showing you more of the evil principle of your heart and the sin of your fallen nature, and doing it perhaps at a time of deep trial and heart-breaking affliction. You may be ready to cry, as Job did:

"I was at ease, and he broke me apart; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target; his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare; he pours out my gall on the ground. He breaks me with breach upon breach; he runs upon me like a warrior." (Job 16:12–14, ESV)

Am I a child of God? Can I be a subject of grace and at the same time of so much hidden evil and such deep trial? Is this how he deals with his people? John Newton wrote what many have found true:

I asked the Lord that I might grow
in faith, and love, and every grace,
might more of his salvation know,
and seek more earnestly his face.

'Twas he who taught me thus to pray,
and he, I trust, has answered prayer;
but it has been in such a way
as almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favored hour
at once he'd answer my request,
and by his love's constraining power
subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, he made me feel
the hidden evils of my heart,
and let the angry powers of hell
assault my soul in every part.

"Lord, why is this?" I trembling cried;
"Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?"
"'Tis in this way," the Lord replied,
"I answer prayer for grace and faith.

"These inward trials I employ
from self and pride to set thee free,
and break thy schemes of earthly joy,
that thou mayest seek thy all in me."

Dear believer, you are not alone. All the covenant people of God travel this road to their better and brighter home. Here they learn their weakness and their constant risk of falling. Here they give up their old thoughts of self-power and self-keeping. And here they learn more of Jesus as their strength and all-sufficient keeper, more of him as "our righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30, ESV). Cheer up, then. The Lord your God is leading you by a safe and right way to a city of rest.

The Lord Is Your Keeper

If what I have said about the believer's helplessness and constant tendency to leave is true, it needs no argument that he needs a keeper just like God. If he cannot keep himself, no mere creature can keep him. Only God in Christ can. Our Lord himself said so. See the double security of the believer in his hands and the Father's:

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one." (John 10:27–30, ESV)

Here they are called his own chosen people, his sheep, given to him by his Father, perfectly safe in the hands of both. Listen to his soul's prayer for them:

"And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled." (John 17:11–12, ESV)

He is able, as God. That the Lord Jesus is able to keep his people from falling is worth thinking about with special thanks. It is the groundwork of our faith: Christ has power to keep, through all time and eternity, the people entrusted to his care. They are his portion, his bride, his jewels. They were given to him by his Father, and so he is responsible for their present and eternal salvation. Let us see how he is fitted for it in every way.

As God, Christ is able to keep his people. When Jehovah promised his ancient people some blessing, to confirm their faith that he could do what he said, he would add to his name "the LORD who made heaven and earth," so that however great and seemingly impossible the thing promised, the One who made heaven and earth was able to do it. This very work that stamps his omnipotence belongs to Christ, the keeper of his people:

"For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:16–17, ESV)

"He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." (Hebrews 1:3, ESV)

Here Jesus is clothed with creating and sustaining power, which belongs only to God. This is the great ability of Christ as keeper of his covenant people. The same power that made him the covenant head and surety of his people, the same strength that let him work out their salvation and bear the burden and curse of their sins, lets him keep them while they are dead in trespasses and sins, and keep them after they have been called and renewed by the Spirit.

He is able, as Mediator. As God-man Mediator he is able too. As the covenant head and preserver of his church, "in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell" (Colossians 1:19, ESV). The Father knew what his beloved family would need. He knew what corruptions would threaten them, what temptations would beguile them, what foes would attack, what weaknesses would surround them and what trials would press them down. So it pleased him that all fullness should live in his Son, the mediator of his people: a fullness of merit, pardon, righteousness, grace, wisdom and strength to match the many and varied circumstances of his family.

John Owen drew out this fullness beautifully. Christ's fullness, he said, is enough for every purpose of grace. It is full enough to be an example to men and angels in obedience; full enough to guarantee unbroken fellowship with God; full enough to be ready to supply others; full enough to meet every occasion and need of human souls; full enough for perfect victory over every temptation; full enough to match the whole law, each of God's holy commands; full to the limit of what a created nature can hold; and full enough to be the delight of the Father's soul and an everlasting monument to God's glory in giving such inconceivable excellences to the Son of Man.

As Mediator, then, he keeps his people in perfect safety day and night. No man and no power can pluck them from his hands. He has taken their full salvation upon himself. To die for their sins and rise for their justification, and not to provide for their safety on the way through a world of sin and temptation, to leave them to look after themselves, an easy prey to their own corruptions, Satan's schemes and the pull of the world, would have been only part of a salvation. They face a threefold enemy: Satan and the world, joined by their own imperfectly renewed hearts, that traitor inside the camp ready to hand the soul to its enemies. How could a poor, weak child of God stand against such an army? But he who was mighty to save is mighty to keep. In him provision is made for all the trying, tangled, dangerous circumstances a believer may be in. Grace is stored up to subdue every inner corruption. Armour is ready for every attack. Wisdom, strength, comfort, sympathy and kindness, everything a poor believing sinner could need, is richly stored in Jesus, the covenant head of all God's fullness to his people.

How you draw on it. How is a child of God to use this provision? By the simple and glorious life of faith. It is by faith in Christ that the soul is made strong in battle. This is the channel through which Christ's fullness comes. By faith the believer takes his nothingness to Christ's all-sufficiency, his unworthiness to Christ's infinite merit, his weakness to Christ's strength, his folly to Christ's wisdom. He takes his fearful heart, his timid spirit, his shaky nerves, his doubting mind, his clouded evidence, his stubborn will, his painful cross, whatever his particular case is, and in simple faith goes with it to Jesus, and hangs himself like an empty vessel on that "peg in a secure place," the glorious Eliakim, on whom hangs "the whole honor of his father's house" (Isaiah 22:23–24, ESV). So the weakest believer, the most sharply attacked, the most deeply tried and the most painfully tempted, may lay his Goliath dead at his feet by simple faith's dealing with the fullness in Christ Jesus. How strong the believer is who, deeply distrusting his own power and throwing off every spirit of self-dependence, looks simply and fully at Jesus and goes out to meet his enemy only as he is "be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 2:1, ESV).

Kept From Falling

What is the great evil the true saints are most in danger of, and which their timid hearts dread most? Is it not secret and open backsliding from God after conversion? Every honest, God-fearing person will say so. It is a comfort, then, to know that Jesus is able to keep him from falling:

"Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen." (Jude 24–25, ESV)

This is the most overwhelming evil that stares a believer in the face. Some, poorly taught in the Word, dread an awful falling away from the faith now and final condemnation hereafter. They believe that though Christ has fully satisfied divine justice for their sins, cancelled the great debt, credited to them his righteousness, blotted out their wrongdoing, called, renewed and sanctified them, taken full possession of them by his Spirit, and gone up on high to plead for them with the Father, they may after all be left to fall away from God completely and be finally and eternally lost. If there is a doctrine more awful in its nature, more distressing in its results, and more against the glory of God and the honour of Christ, I do not know it.

Others, better taught by the Spirit, say: I believe in the firmness of the covenant, the unchangeableness of God's love and the faithfulness of my heavenly Father, but I fear that some day, under some sharp temptation, some burst of the sin within me, when the enemy comes in like a flood, I shall fall, to the wounding of my peace, the shame of my brothers and the dishonour of Christ. Dear believer, you would fall if he left you to your own keeping for one moment. But Jesus is able to keep you from falling. Read the promises, believe them and rest on them. Of his redeemed church he says:

"I, the LORD, am its keeper; every moment I water it. Lest anyone punish it, I keep it night and day." (Isaiah 27:3, ESV)

"But the LORD upholds the righteous." (Psalm 37:17, ESV)

"Yet the righteous holds to his way, and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger." (Job 17:9, ESV)

"They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion." (Psalm 84:7, ESV)

"Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people, from this time forth and forevermore." (Psalm 125:1–2, ESV)

"I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD is your keeper." (Psalm 121:1–5, ESV)

A threefold cord. A look at these passages shows the believer three cords that keep him from falling. First, God the Father keeps him: "who by God's power are being guarded through faith" (1 Peter 1:5, ESV). The power that made and upholds the world keeps the believer. The eternal purpose, love and grace of the Father keep him. That is the first cord. Second, God the Son keeps him: "no one will snatch them out of my hand." The covenant engagements, the perfect obedience and the atoning death of Immanuel keep the believer. That is the second cord. Third, God the Holy Spirit keeps him: believers are those who "were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it" (Ephesians 1:13–14, ESV). The effective calling, the personal indwelling, the tender love, the covenant faithfulness and the omnipotent power of the Eternal Spirit keep the believer. That is the third cord. [Editor's note: Winslow's text for this cord is Isaiah 59:19 in the King James, "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him." The ESV translates that verse differently, so Ephesians 1:13-14 is used here, and the echo is with the fear of the enemy coming in like a flood earlier in the chapter.] And "a threefold cord is not quickly broken" (Ecclesiastes 4:12, ESV). Exceeding great and precious promises!

Your Part

With these promises of the triune God to keep his people from falling, he has wisely and graciously joined the diligent, prayerful use of the means he has appointed. The Bible never treats the believer as a lifeless machine. It speaks to him as one "alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:11, ESV), "created in Christ Jesus for good works" (Ephesians 2:10, ESV), a sharer in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). As such he is commanded to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12, ESV), to "be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure" (2 Peter 1:10, ESV), and to "watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation" (Matthew 26:41, ESV). And Jude writes with warm affection to the saints:

"But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life." (Jude 20–21, ESV)

So God lays some of the responsibility for his standing on the believer himself, so that he will not be lazy, careless and prayerless, but will always be aware of his duty to "renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age" (Titus 2:12, ESV), remembering that he is "not your own, for you were bought with a price" (1 Corinthians 6:19–20, ESV).

Guard against the least misuse of any of the great truths in this book, especially this one. If God's power is the efficient cause of the believer's eternal security, still, as the helps God has appointed and works through, the believer must use all the holy means of keeping himself from failing. As a temple of the Holy Spirit, a subject of the divine life, a pardoned and justified man, he is called to work steadily, pray without ceasing and watch carefully. He is not to run into temptation on purpose, or expose himself needlessly to the enemy, or surround himself with unholy and hostile influences, and then take refuge in the truth that the Lord will keep him from falling. God forbid! That would be an awful abuse of the doctrine that leads to godliness. Dear reader, watch and pray against this.

The prospect. And finally, let the cheering prospect of the glory you are kept for stir you to patient perseverance in holy duty and to patient endurance of suffering. In all your battles with the sin inside you and all the pressure of outward trial, let this comfort you: your heavenly Father has

"According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (1 Peter 1:3–5, ESV)

Soon, how soon, all that now loads the heart with care and wrings it with sorrow, all that dims the eye with tears and makes the day anxious and the night sleepless, will be as though it had never been. Coming out of the tangle, the dreariness, the loneliness and the temptations of the wilderness, you will enter your everlasting rest, your unfading inheritance, where there is no sorrow, no decline and no sin. There is no sunset, no twilight, no evening shade, no midnight darkness, but one perfect, cloudless, eternal day, for Jesus is the joy and the light and the glory of it.

"Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen." (Jude 24–25, ESV)

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In plain words. You are weak, and it is no use pretending otherwise. The angels fell, Adam fell, and the best saints in Scripture stumbled. The Lord teaches you this by experience, often through trial and through the sin that still lives in you. But the same Lord is your keeper. Jesus is able to keep you as God, as Mediator and as the one who holds all the fullness you need, and you draw on it by simple faith. Father, Son and Spirit together keep you in a threefold cord that is not quickly broken. This is no excuse for carelessness. You are to watch, pray and use the means, and not to play with temptation. You are kept for an inheritance that will never fade, and he who keeps you will not slumber.