September 11 Daily Devotional

The phases of life

There are phases in the Christian life as in the whole of life. The New Testament talks about being babes in Christ, it talks about growing. John writes his first epistle to little children and young men and old men. It is a fact, it is Scriptural. The Christian life is not always the same, there is a beginning and a continuing and there is an end. And, because of these phases there are many variations. Feelings, perhaps, are the most variable. You would expect to have most feeling at the beginning, and this is what usually happens. Very often Christian people become weary because certain feelings have gone. They do not realize that what has happened is that they have grown older. Because they are not as they once were they think that they are all wrong. But as we grow and develop spiritually, changes must take place and all these things obviously make a difference in our experience.... I happened to see, the other day, a little child, about four years old I should think, coming out of her house with her mother, and I could not help being attracted by the way she came out of that house. She did not walk, she jumped out, she skipped out, she gambolled out like a lamb; but I noticed that the mother walked out... there is something like that in the spiritual life. The child is abounding in energy and has not yet learned how to control it. The mother actually had a great deal more energy than the child, although ... it would seem that she had much less because she walked out quietly. But we know that that is not so. The energy is actually much greater in the adult though it appears to be greater in the child; and it is because they have misunderstood this experience of slowing down, that so many people think they have lost something vital and so become weary and depressed. Let us recognize that there are phases ... there are stages of development in the Christian life.

Spiritual Depression, pp. 198–9