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{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Improvement of Holy Duties
Maintain and Keep Alive What You Received from God at Duty}
Whatever you have gotten from God in duty, what life, what warmth, what refreshing, what enlargement of heart—be careful to maintain and keep it alive afterward. See that your spirits do not soon sink and cool again after they have been thus raised and warmed. Do not satisfy yourselves with this: that you have had some comfortable interaction with God, feel some warm and lively workings of your heart toward God, and found some refreshment from Him in duty. But look to it that you keep that holy fire that is there kindled from being quickly quenched again. You do not eat and drink for an hour only so that you may have the comfort of your food only while your meal lasts. Rather you eat for afterward, that the energy and strength that you have obtained by one meal may hold you over to the next meal. Duties are the regular meals of the soul in which it feeds itself from God, so that in the strength of what it receives, it may afterward walk with God more comfortably and cheerfully.
The Lord promises to His people, “Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing” (Leviticus 26:5 ESV), and “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed” (Amos 9:13 ESV). The meaning is that your old store will be so plentiful that it will last you past the time of a new harvest. You will not only reap enough for the time of harvest, and you will not only gather enough to serve you during the time of vintage, but your corn will last from harvest to harvest and your wine will serve you from vintage to vintage. Your old store will not be spent until a new supply comes to you. Duties are the harvests and vintages of our souls. Oh, what blessed lives would we live if we were to so improve and preserve what we got in one duty that it might last us out to another. What blessing if the vintage would reach to vintage and harvest to harvest. What blessing if the life, warmth, and refreshing we get in one duty would last until the next, and thus we might be carried on in a holy, lively, and heavenly mind-set from duty to duty. It would be like Israel walking on from strength to strength until they come and appear before God in Zion (Psalm 84:7).
That which holds us so low and barren in Christianity is that, whatever we have obtained from the Lord in duties and ordinances, we soon lose it. There are times when we have been weeping before the Lord, wrestling with Him, and pleading hard for some enlivening or comforting influences of His Spirit on our hearts, and the Lord has heard us and given us our desires. But then, as soon as duty is over, we go away, forget all, and bury all that we have thus obtained in a confused heap of worldly thoughts and business. We relax, let down our spirits, and lay aside all thoughts of God until we come to duty again. We content ourselves to live in an estrangement from God all the rest of our time. Thus, sin and the world have a whole day’s time to pull down what an hour’s duty has built and a whole week’s time to destroy and steal away what a Sabbath has obtained. As a result, when we return to duty, we find our hearts at the same loss and in the same deadness and hardness as before.
In the Old Testament, though the sacrifices were offered only morning and evening, the fire that kindled them was not to go out night or day. There must be fire kept alive from the morning sacrifice to kindle the evening sacrifice and fire left from the evening sacrifice to kindle the morning sacrifice. Oh, behold, how often it is that at our morning sacrifice a fire is kindled, yet we let this fire lie all day under the ashes and take so little care to keep blowing at it that it goes entirely out before the evening. And when we come to our evening sacrifice, we have no fire to kindle it.
Brethren, has the Lord visited you and enlivened and comforted you? Oh, think with yourselves: What a sweet life I would live if it might be thus with me always. What a pity it is that such light should ever go out and that such grace should be so short lived. Why, if I do not look to myself better, this sunshine will last just a little while. And how will the Lord take it when I allow the sparks that He has kindled to be so suddenly quenched. How likely is it that my soul will ever prosper if such precious food passes away from it as soon as it is received? “Is this a fast that I have chosen, for a man to afflict his soul for a day?” (Isaiah 58:5). Is this a prayer that God regards: for a man to afflict his heart for an hour, be in the mount with God, and to be raised up to Heaven for the time—and within a few minutes afterward to sink into the dirt of the earth? What a sad change this is! How can you bear such a loss as this? When will your souls amount to anything if you have only some few such bright, shining respites, and all the rest of your time are covered over with clouds and darkness?
Beloved, to the extent that you expect to prosper in grace or be settled in peace, be warily careful to maintain the income from your duties. Do not think to make use of your comforts from prayer to save you the labor of care afterwards, but use these comforts to help you to be more careful and fruitful.
QUESTION: But what can we do to keep this holy and lively mind-set?
First, be watchful. “But we prayed to our God, and because of them we set up a guard against them day and night” (Nehemiah 4:9 NASB). Beloved, it is with you as it was with those Jews. Whatever you have gained, you have adversaries lying in wait to steal it away. Whatever you have built, you have adversaries lying in wait to pull it down again. I have heard fables of some enchanted places where, what people built in the day, the devil pulled down at night. And this is the danger you are in all the time. What is built at one prayer, the devil labors to pull down before the next. Let your eye be much on your hearts and diligently observe how they hold up or sink. Thus, if there is the least mildew or decay growing on you, you may see it before it has gone too far. It is no wonder we lose everything so suddenly, when ordinarily, as soon as our duties are done, away we go and think no more where we have been or what we have been about. It is as if we were well content to take leave of our duties and our God at the same time. Rather, when you depart out of your prayer closets, leave your hearts behind you with God, so to speak. Worldly people seldom bring their hearts into the prayer closet. When they go to pray, they leave their hearts behind them out of the closet. Let Christians never carry their hearts out of the prayer closet. When you are done praying and must be about your earthly affairs, let your hearts stay behind with God. Let your thoughts be much on the interaction you have had with God. See to it that the temptations that you meet do not easily divert you from remembering and thinking about that for which you have been begging or wrestling.
A second thing you can do to keep this holy and lively mind-set is to make present use of what you have obtained. God gives grace, strength, and life for use, and use will preserve it. Has the Lord warmed your heart? Then go and warm your brother’s heart, and that will keep yours from cooling. Has God spoken comfortably to your soul? Then go and speak of your God and of what He has done for you to others. Has God inclined you to and fitted you for some action? Then take the opportunity and you may do more for God and for your soul in such an hour than in many days. Be using what you have received and you will then not need to fear losing it. When we are idle, then we fall asleep and grow cold. Instruments do not rust while they are in use. We never spend our strength more than when we spare our labor.
A third thing you can do to keep this holy and lively mind-set is to lift up your hearts to the Lord multiple times each hour in some short prayers. No business or company can hinder this duty, and it will be of special advantage to you. Therefore do not neglect it. Every sigh or breathing of your soul heavenwards will fetch down fresh influences from Heaven to you.
A fourth thing you can do to keep this holy and lively mind-set is to actually commit yourselves to these things every morning, and then every evening, examine how well you have done.
A fifth thing you can do to keep this holy and lively mind-set, if you cannot otherwise bring or hold yourselves to it, is to bind yourselves to it for a time by a special vow. In time, after it becomes a habit, it may become easier to do.
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