1 John 5:1–5
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and
everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.
This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving
God and carrying out his commands.
This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are
not burdensome,
for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory
that has overcome the world, even our faith.
Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that
Jesus is the Son of God.
And that
is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does
not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any
degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and
the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme
forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in
any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for
Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat
the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves;
merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do
a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications
of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional
sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of
affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from
their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the
creature to stand up on its own legs-to carry out from the will alone duties
which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than
during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants
it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which
please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because
we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with
the better. He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants
them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the
will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be
deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no
longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a
universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he
has been forsaken, and still obeys.
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