September 6 Daily Devotional

Don’t lose hope!

While there are people who hand in their resignations and say, ‘I am quitting’, that is not so with the majority. The danger of the majority at this point is just to resign themselves to it and to lose heart and to lose hope. They will go on, but they go on in this hopeless, dragging condition.... The danger at this point is to say something like this: ‘Well, I have lost that something which I had, and obviously I shall not get it back again. But I am going on, and out of loyalty I will go on, as a sheer duty. I have lost the enjoyment I once had, that is gone and it is undoubtedly gone for ever. I just have to put up with it, I will resign myself to my fate, I won’t be a quitter, I won’t turn my back on it, I will go on, though I go on feeling rather hopeless about it all, just shuffling down the road, not walking with hope as I once did, but keeping on as best I can’. That is the spirit of resignation, Stoicism if you like, putting up with it.

Now that is the greatest danger of all ... it is something which is dangerous not only on the spiritual level, about which we are most concerned, but also on every level in life. We can work like that in our profession, we can live our lives like that ... We are really saying to ourselves: ‘The golden hours have gone, the great days belong to the past. I may never know that again but I will just keep on’. There is something, of course, which seems wonderful about this, something that seems heroic about it. But ... it is a temptation of the devil. If he can get God’s people to lose hope, he will be content indeed. And ... this is perhaps the greatest danger of all confronting the Christian Church, the danger of doing a thing in a formal spirit and as a matter of duty. Going on, it is true, but wearily trudging along instead of walking as we ought to walk.

Spiritual Depression, pp. 194–5