THE first secret lies in our wrong motive. It happens often that our desire for victory is more sinful than the sin about which we are praying!
Of course we will hardly swallow that without a bit of thinking. It deserves thought because it lies at the root of the problem, and is very common.
Do you detect beneath your desire to be free from the hateful limitations of sinful habit a desire to have your self-respect and sense of completeness restored? Do you want to go to God able to say, “I’m free at last. It was a hard fight but I’ve won and now I’m really qualified to serve Thee”? Take one quick look into the dark depths of your heart and motives, and maybe you will see the slither of the old serpent of pride. Perhaps you’ll hear the clank of the old chains of the law as you go, trying to climb a mountain of attainment to God and self-satisfaction. We want our self-respect restored, our wretched self-complacency that ought to have been judged for good in the sight of the cross!
So God leaves us, to struggle and lose and be crushed under the humiliation of defeat, to save us from the treachery of our own hearts and to throw us broken and helpless upon Himself.
As soon as you say., “I’ve got there,” you are in spiritual danger, and God shatters your “victory” by the humiliation of a fresh fall. You never “get there.” In fact you are really “there” already by the fact of your conversion, and God wants you to live where He has put you, by constant dependence upon Himself.
God won’t save in patches. Nothing will do but to maintain before God a steady refusal to trifle with sin of thought or word or deed, and a steady, dead-set desire to please Him by conformity to His Word and to Christ.
The second secret lies in a faulty vision.
Is it deliverance you are seeking, or a Deliverer? Something, or Somebody?
Stop looking for victory and look for God. Those that seek Him early shall find Him, and with Him, victory and joy unspeakable. You will find Him in Jesus whose thrice blessed name is Emmanuel—God with us.
The third secret lies in the cost.
Victory over sin is so expensive! The cost of my victory over sin is His victory over me. He is my Master, but has He the mastery? Has He?
George Herbert could never utter the sacred name without adding, “My Master!” “He is a good Master,” said David Livingstone, who knew Him, “None ever like Him.” Let us yield heart and life to His blessed mastery.
The fourth secret lies in faulty diagnosis.
Often the struggling soul is like an ignorant quack treating measles with ointments or a surgeon’s knife. The spots need not be touched. Medicine and treatment alone can touch the disease and rid the body of the damaging toxins and germs.
So with bad temper or any other sin, it is useless just to seek strength to control its wicked outbursts. Bad temper arises from self-will, and self-will from self-love. Only a deliberate choice of the moral being before God in turning from self-love to love for Christ can rid us of it. Christ is the medicine every time.
Diagnosis is fairly simple. Psalm 139. gives the right method of looking within, which is as different from the ordinary way as cheese is from chalk.
Christian introspection has little difficulty in tracking down the trouble, for it realizes that the heart is too big to explore, the motives too twisted to unravel, and it prays— “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” God does not so often search us “on our knees” as some expect. God searches, I have found, by the annoying folk who come my way, by disappointments and pain and the rough places of life.
God will find the hidden pride, the hidden greed, the hidden evil thoughts fostered, the hidden self-pampering and gratification, and then pitilessly (for the good surgeon heeds not the shrinking of flesh and blood) He will discover the root of self-love ever lying at the bottom. Let Him search, and when He has shown, you all, be done with it and let God pluck it from you even though it leaves for a moment a gaping wound and pain and loss.
The fifth secret lies in spiritual paralysis.
A wrong attitude to our brethren and our fellow men, a grudge, a harbored thought of contempt or cruelty, will paralyses the life of God in our souls.
You dare not pray for deliverance while you hold your brother by the throat and say, “Pay me that thou owest.” God’s moral law is inexorable and we must always pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive...” This, of course, is quite distinct from the forgiveness of our sins for Christ’s Name’s sake, which is complete and eternal. This phrase applies to disciples and to God’s ways in government with us.
The sixth secret lies in our rebellion against God’s will.
Some of us think that we would be all right if we could change our circumstances and live elsewhere, or if our temperaments were changed. It simply amounts to saying that we could be victorious if there were no sin to be victorious over!
One of the hardest lessons to learn is to accept God’s will, to believe that God is the God of circumstances and that He really does know and care about every detail. Such a faith, so contrary to us naturally and so hard to reconcile with life’s vagaries, brings an amazing rest of heart and is never disappointed.
The seventh secret lies in our petulant haste.
Victory is not an attainment, but a daily habit. It is not just a crisis of consecration; but a habit of admitting gladly God’s claims upon us, and of practicing Acts 20:2121Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. (Acts 20:21). A habit. Pay attention to that and you may be saved from the weariness of expecting a victory that is as elusive as a shadow.
If God leaves you in the shadow of a humiliating defeat don’t be petulant with Him. Don’t tell Him that you have done your part and that it isn’t fair to allow you still to suffer. Don’t become heroic or tragic. Petulant martyrs are trying creatures.
Read Isa. 1., verse 10 and 11, the golden rule for those plowing on in the dark.
“Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of His servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God.” Lean upon His unchanging love and cling to His faithfulness in naked faith until the morning dawns.
“Behold all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.” Beware of false fire. Sparks are a poor substitute for walking in the light! If you indulge in a light of your own making you will lie down in sorrow. I did, and you will.
Reading this article cannot deliver you any more than that pile of devotional books at home has done! But the Christ of whom we speak can.
A. F. S. Pollock.