Whatever the pressures are to the contrary, the serious Christian must keep a careful watch over the inner state and attitude of his own soul. Just as there are temptations for the careless and the idle Christian, so too are there snares for the Christian who becomes too busy. We are too busy when­ever we cannot safeguard our times of private prayer, meditation and devotional Bible reading. What happens when outward duties become excessive and over-demanding is that inner, secret duties are performed in a merely routine way. It is all too possible to conduct our private and family worship with our minds half taken up with other things. We persuade ourselves that we have been worshipping God, but on such occasions we have been no better than those to whom God said, 'This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me' (Matt. 15:8).

The tendency of our soul when we allow ourselves to pray, read and worship with only half our minds is that we become accustomed to it. 'Practice makes perfect' in bad habits as well as in good ones. Days go by when we attend to the familiar work of secret worship in our 'closet' and yet never really put our heart in what we are doing. The sacred page is turned, but the lofty truths which we are reading have no effect upon our minds or upon our characters. This bad practice, if indulged in for long, becomes the norm. Days become weeks and weeks become months, during which we unconsciously slip deeper and deeper into the practice of prayerless praying and shallow, unfeeling devotions. For this soul sleep there is a high price to pay.

How do we account for the fact that scores and hundreds of persons who once called themselves 'evangelical' and even 'Reformed' have over the years slipped from this early zeal for God into an easy conformity? Their once burning concern to defend and promote the truth of God has in too many cases become no more than a comfortable acceptance of the prevailing apathy. No doubt there is in us all a youthful exuberance which requires curbing and maturing with the experience gained as we grow in knowledge. But if growth in knowledge results in loss of conviction, loss of zeal for truth, loss of passion for the distinctives of the gospel and a willingness to associate with the enemies of the truth, we have paid too high a price for our 'knowledge'. Something has been forgotten. The excellence of true religion is that it exerts a power over our heart and over our entire life. This power is the spiritual influence of grace and truth acting on every part of our souls and firing us with a conscientious desire to advance God's honour with all our might in this world as long as we live. When we cease to live realistically for God, commending truth fervently and combatting error unflinchingly, we betray the fact that the power of God has declined in our life. We can still repeat the formulas of orthodoxy, perhaps, and we can still say what is sound and scriptural. But there is not the same passion or conviction in what we say. It is sadly all too clear that although in such cases we retain a 'form of godliness', we have 'denied the power thereof' (2 Tim. 3:5).

The remedy for all such lukewarmness is to 'repent and do the first works' (Rev. 2:5). That is, we must put first the state and condition of our own soul. There is no known way to do this which does not involve us in heartfelt repentance, evangelical sorrow and renewed attention to the secret place. To keep up the power of godliness in the soul is about the most difficult thing the Christian can do. A violin hung up on the wall soon goes out of tune, and a knife in constant use quickly loses its sharpness. So does the soul, because of indwelling sin, soon lose its spiritual 'edge' and become untuned for communion with God and other spiritual exercises. When this happens, the Christian can go through the motions of prayer, worship and service to God, but there is a difference which cannot fail to be noticed – by others as well as by ourselves. Too many prayers and sermons which we pray and preach betray the neglect of communion with God in private. The vehicle of devotion still travels along, but it is obvious that the tyres are flat and the whole machine in need of overhaul. It must surely be agreed by all serious Christians that the ideal state of soul is that in which we have a conscious delight in God and are emotionally involved in all that we say to him in prayer and praise. All Christians know what it is at times to enjoy God's presence, to be 'filled' to the point at which we feel the whole world to be one vast nothing by comparison with having God. At such seasons of blessing a believer 'rides on the high places of the earth' (Deut. 32:13) and soars aloft on eagle's wings. Such times are high points in his experience and they assure us of the truth of the gospel better than a dozen manuals on apologetics could do. To have such seasons of spiritual unction when we feed on the heavenly manna and sit consciously under Christ's shadow is to know that true religion is more by far than notion. At such times we 'have the witness in ourselves' that God is true and that Christianity is the religion of heaven.

On the other hand, the Christian knows what it is to go through periods of spiritual sluggishness and deadness. At such times prayer is agonizingly difficult and the actions of the soul feel wooden. This night-time of the soul is a joyless time for those who profess that 'for them to live is Christ' (Phil.1:21). Nevertheless, there is even then in the Christian's experience a 'lesser light to rule the night'. This is the activity of a Christian's conscience telling him that he must arise and stir himself up to seek the face of God anew. The hypocrite is happy to sleep on at his ease. But the believer has conscientious stirrings of heart which rouse him sooner or later out of his slumbering state like the cockerel which electrified Peter's soul and drew from him hot tears of self-loathing.

All the troubles in the church are related, more or less, to our failure to watch over our souls. It is in our twilight states and 'midnight' moods that we are most likely to speak the foolish word, voice the hurtful criticism or make the hasty decision. Such things are said and done in a moment, but the harm which follows may last a lifetime. Who is there that would not wish a thousand times to re-live a thoughtless moment or re-word a thoughtless statement, if only he could? Had we but walked more closely with Christ, had we but spent longer in his sanctifying presence before these sad moments in life, we might well not need now to bear the scars of regret upon our memory and upon our conscience! But we had learnt to be self-confident and to suppose ourselves strong. God therefore left us to ourselves, that we might know what is in our hearts.

The way to measure whether we are lively or else formal in our devotions is to face up to the question: are we seeking God in them or not? To seek God is to desire him, to want him, to thirst for him above all else. This must be done, as Christ teaches by word and example, in some solitary place alone and with the 'door shut'. The way to get God's blessing is to put ourselves down low in the dust before him. The more we prostrate our soul before him, the more likely we are to get a fresh taste of his love and grace, for God gives 'grace to the humble' (James 4:6). To get a blessing from our Bible is similarly done when once we are able to 'tremble at his word' (Isa. 66:2). On the other hand, if we approach God and his Word with little or no self-abasement, we shall be sent away empty and unblessed.

There is a world of difference between the way one person approaches the means of grace and the way another does. This point is clearly made by our Lord in his parable of the Pharisee and the publican (Luke 18:10f). We are, however, not always inclined to come to God with the publican's shame­facedness and self-abasement. Unwisely, we grow too familiar with God and, all unconsciously, talk over-confidently to him, forgetting that even Christ himself, who at times prayed 'with strong crying and tears', was 'heard in that he feared' (Heb. 5:7).

Our best examples of Christian spirituality in past days often made 'rules' for themselves to help them avoid formalism and to promote the power of godliness in their own souls. Jonathan Edwards did so. So did M'Cheyne. Are there any 'rules' which a believer might use to assist him in this lifelong task of living and worshipping in the conscious enjoyment of God? We suggest that the following guidelines should be borne in mind by Christians who seriously wish to live in a lively state of soul:

There are different kinds of prayer which we are called on to pray. Each day we are to bear up to God our family, our church, our nation and its concerns, missionaries far and near, and the cause of Christ in general. However, we ought to have also another kind of prayer in which we are not so much praying for others as wrestling to get our souls close to God. This latter type of praying is what has probably fallen most into abeyance in our own day. But it is essential that we seek God's face for his own sake and desire him because he is God, the fountain of all spiritual life and joy. He is the life of our soul.

It is a mistake habitually to leave off praying before we have been moved. Our expectation should be that as we abase ourselves before God he will warm our hearts with gladness. This is a part of the 'lifting up of the downcast' by which 'out of weakness we are made strong' (Heb. 1 1:34). It is good for us in secret prayer to be moved to tears, either of joy or of repentance. At any rate, there is something to be felt in prayer, and it is to our loss if we rise and go before we have felt anything. Similarly with our Bible reading, it is good when we feel our hearts burning within us by the time we have finished. We may not always have this experience, but we sometimes do, and it is right to feel disappointed when we leave the throne of grace unmoved. If we expect to feel nothing, we shall probably receive nothing. But never to feel anything when we pray and worship God is a loss to us.