Misapplied Doctrine
“A certain type of ministry of the gospel is cruel. It does not mean to be, but it is.” In order to draw people to Christianity some may, unknowingly and wrongfully, place an over-emphasis on the overcoming power of the Christian life. That is, God’s guidance, power in overcoming prior sin, guidance and God’s help in resolving problems, peace of conscience and fellowship… “it is possible so to stress them, and so to play down the rougher side of the Christian life - the daily chastening, the endless war with sin and Satan, the periodic walk in darkness - as to give the impression that normal Christian living is ap erfect bed of roses, a state of affairs in which everything in the garden is lovely all the time, and problems no longer exist - or, if they come, they have only to be taken to the throne of grace, and they will melt away at once.”

It is for this reason that many new believers may fall away, losing hold on their faith and thinking that God had forsaken them or that maybe He was never there, when after a while the initial spiritual high and joy fade. Therefore, though we are promised overcoming power and other great things, it does not mean the Christian life is always easy and glamourous.

Wrong Remedy
The other problem is in “leading young Christians to regard all experiences of frustration and perplexity as signs of sub-standard Christianity… It insists on diagnosing the ’struggle’, which it equates with ‘defeat’, as a a relapse caused by failure to maintain ‘consecration’ and ‘faith’. At first the convert was fully surrendered to his new-found Saviour; hence his joy; but since then he has grown cold or careless, or compromised his obdience in some way, or ceased to sustain moment-by-moment trust in the Lord Jesus, and that is why his experience is now as it is.”

It may be true at times that this confession and reconsecration is necessary and totally called for. But it is a mistake, one that I’ve made, to think that just because I am not living a life where i can feel totally lifted up by the spirit and have a spiritual high that I am missing something. And not even a ’spiritual high’ to the extent of one a new convert or newly-baptized Christian may experience or a Christian at some camp, but just a constant and powerful sense that God is empowering me. I had realized that we should all be wary of falling away after the spiritual highs in our lives fade, but more than that, it is not a bad thing to not have spiritual highs and we are not to constantly seek it through attempts of daily consecration with the thought in mind that there is something wrong.

In the words of the author of Knowing God… what does this wrong frame of mind do? “It sentences devoted Christians to a treadmill life of hunting each day for non-existent failures in consecration, in the belief that if only they could find some such failures to confess and forsake they could recover and experience of spiritual infancy which God means them now to leave behind. Thus it not only produecs spiritual regression and unreality; it sets them at cross-purposes with their God, who has taken from them the carefree glow of spiritual babyhood, with his huge chuckles and contented passivity, precisely in order that he may lead them into an experience that is more adult and mature.”

As we are maturing we are subject to new trials and conditions for growth. We may be exercised in adult godliness as Job was, facing constant trials and attacks, so that our “powers of resistance might grow greater” and our “character as people of God become stronger.”

- Chapter: These Inward Trials