www.bymonline.org | SEPTEMBER 2018
This very grief for offending God draws the
soul closer to God. This is the principle Jesus
referred to when He said those who had much
forgiven would love much (Luke 7:36-50).
It lives by the fountain of Jesus' blood; it weeps
silent tears; it embraces the compassion of God with
an inexpressible longing. This affectionate sorrow
for sin delivers the soul from many spiritual dangers;
it throws a tenderness into the whole character; it
makes us deep and flexible to the least touch of God;
it takes out all our harshness; it makes us charitable
toward all others. Constant sorrow for sin keeps the
heart melted, so that there is not an ache or a calamity
in one of Christ's members which does not awaken
our sympathy, and makes us more keenly alive to the
dangers of this world, and the advantages of being in
heaven.
Our Faults a Spur to Greater Humility and
a Closer Walk with God
Another remedial step is a fixed determination
to make all our failures the occasions for a higher
ascent in grace. Although it may sound like a
paradox (the spiritual life is full of paradoxes), we
are to make our falls to be stepping stones to our
ascensions into greater altitudes of grace.
This has been done in tens of thousands of lives.
It has happened that those who have suffered the
greatest declensions of grace, on being thoroughly
aroused, girded themselves with such a spirit of
mortification and heroic faith that, as Paul intimates,
they “revenge themselves” by a self-oblation and a
closer cleaving to God, which they would never have
done but for their failures (2 Cor 7:6-11).
This is the best way to be avenged on the devil
for all his malice and damage to us. It is in this way
that God can make absolutely all things in heaven,
earth, or hell, in success or failures all things work
together for our good!
But it must be remembered that this greater
victory is through the condition of his perfect
humiliation and repentance. It is only when the heart
turns in perfect loyalty of love to God that the Holy
Ghost makes everything work for its own good
(Rom 8:28).
Let us determine to make every fault, every
blemish, every mistake in our lives a spur to more
humility and a closer walk with God! This is the most
divine use we can make of them.
Self-Denial Encircling the Life
Another remedy against backsliding is self-
denial. This is the very essence of all spiritual victory.
Just as self-indulgence grows on us in a thousand
imperceptible ways, so self-denial should encircle
our entire lives. The doctrine of fasting in connection
with prayer is not much practiced. But if the example
of all the saints in the Scriptures and in the history of
the church is worth anything, we see that they
reached their highest degree of spiritual strength
through fasting, abstinence, and self-denial in the
bodily appetites, in mental pleasures, in social ease,
and of all worldly gratifications.
Tens of thousands of Christians are constantly
eating too much, talking too much, gratifying their
whims, their pleasures, in such measure as to grieve
the Holy Ghost, and lay foundations of much secret
sin, if not terrible outward falls. Luxurious ease and
self-indulgence are the poison in the lives of
thousands of Christians.
In ages gone by, asceticism went to extremes;
but in this age, it is sadly rare to find true, heroic self-
denial. Peter tells us that we are to “arm ourselves
with the principle of self-denial.” This principle of
self-denial is to extend to the use of our senses,
guarding our eyes, our words, our manners, our
social behavior, our plain and modest attire all
extravagance, in any direction, that would give the
body or the intellect power over the interior spirit.
If we look upon self-denial as a hard irksome
thing, over which our nature whimpers and whines, it
shows we have not yet entered the real crucifixion of
self. When we pass certain points in grace, self-
denial will have a secret joy and heavenly sweetness
attending it which far exceeds in peace and joy all the
overindulgence of nature. When we break down on
self-denial, we drift in our spiritual life!
The Deep Resolve to Be Always Industrious
Another safeguard is spiritual industry. Perhaps
there is no greater or more incorrigible vice in
religious lives than spiritual laziness. It is a sort of
omnipresent evil, like a satanic gravitation, that
pervades every atom of life, and pulls everything
towards a center of idle repose.
Religious laziness is the moth of Christian life.
It eats up the garments of spiritual experience, and
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