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Little progress?
-Spurgeon, "Weak Hands and Feeble Knees"
How is it that some of you have made but
little progress on the road to
heaven?
In looking back on your lives, some of you must acknowledge
that you do not know much more about Christ now than you did
six years ago. You do not enjoy greater nearness of access
to him now than you did then. You are not more diligent in his
service, or more fearless in his defense, than you were at
a period which has long since elapsed.
Perhaps you are compelled to feel that you have made no
advance, or even have gone backward.
Why is this?
Is it not because you have neglected prayer:
you have forsaken your closets, you have not poured out
your hearts before God with that frequency which
once distinguished you, and you have not the faith
you once possessed.
You have not believed the promise as you ought to have done.
You have not taken God at his naked word,
and trusted to him as he deserved.
Do you imagine that you shall ever go far along in
the heavenly pilgrimage if you neglect prayer?
As well could you expect a plant to grow without air and water
as to expect your heart to grow without prayer and faith.
A poor blanched thing may be produced in a dark cellar;
and so may you maintain a poor, blanched miserable existence,
if you live absent from your God, and apart from that strength
which faith can give you, but you can never attain the
healthy verdure of grace.
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