www.bymonline.org | SEPTEMBER 2018
when we attempt to clothe ourselves for real
conflict, we find our garments crumbling to pieces,
having been eaten through with the insidious moth
of idleness.
How much time have we lost in our lives by
late sleeping, lounging, gadding, useless visitations,
long and worthless conversation! How much of our
time has been worse than wasted!
Let us heartily repent, and set ourselves like a
flint against this demon of idleness; let us rise earlier
and spend more time in prayer, in reading spiritual
books, doing good works of every kind; let us have a
righteous hatred to everything slovenly and slouchy
and silly.
Wesley's motto was, “Never be unemployed,
and never be triflingly employed.” St. Alphonso
vowed that he would never knowingly waste a
moment. We can always find something to do in
reading, or writing, or praying, or conversing to a
definite spiritual end, or attending to a ll our
ordinary work in a spirit of meditation.
Many think that a life of great spiritual
industry would prove tiresome; but the opposite is
the case. When the mind is always occupied with
something divine or useful, it brings a restful and
sweet quietness in the life which nothing else can do
and takes the hurry and impetuosity out of the soul.
We must not only be industrious, but be so in
spiritual things or we decline in grace!
which grow the ribs of all other virtues.
Perseverance is the cure for those souls whose
experience consists in spasmodic blessings. Many
Christians rely upon some instantaneous blessing
which they receive in a crisis of prayer, and then
expect that blessing to run through life, like a sort of
wound-up machine. With them life consists of great
droughts, with intermittent freshets. The droughts
kill all their crops, and the great, instantaneous
freshets wash away their fences, and cut great
trenches in their land. Could these souls once get the
true idea of constant, unvarying perseverance, it
would serve like a divine inundation, which gently
waters the ground without washing the seed out.
Perseverance is the remedy in seasons of great
discouragement and temptations and loneliness
(Luke 18:1).
Whatsoever your failure has been though all
things in heaven and earth seem against you; though
your difficulties seem insurmountable; though your
falls have been so numerous as to wear out the
patience of your best friends, and exhaust the love of
great saints; though every virtue seems to have left
your soul yet if you have perseverance, the
omnipotent God will lay hold upon that single
disposition of your will, and pull you through to
everlasting victory. God will always pull us through,
if we have enough fiber in our nature to endure the
pull!
God takes delight in doing things for us that
other people despaired of ever seeing done. You will
find thousands of saints in heaven who have said,
with Micah,
“I will look unto the Lord; I will wait for the
God of my salvation: my God will hear me. Rejoice
not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall
arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light
unto me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord,
because I have sinned against Him, until He plead
my cause, and execute judgment for me: He will
bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold His
righteousness” (Mic. 7:7-9).
Perseverance is the axle on which the sphere of
a Christian life revolves.
Perseverance
The old-fashioned virtue of perseverance is a
good medicine to keep all hearts from wandering.
Perseverance is the backbone of spiritual life, out of
Independent Obedience to God
Independent obedience to God is another
remedy for heart wanderings, because it causes
toughness to the moral fiber. Thousands have waned
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