God Will Complete His Work in Us (2)

Christians should magnify the mercy of God that there is any change in such defiled and polluted souls; that he has granted any spiritual light of understanding, any love of good things; that the bent of their affections is contrary to what it was; that God has granted any beginnings. Magnify his mercy, rather than quarrel with his dispensation, that he does not do all this at once. And, indeed, if we enter into our own hearts, we find it is our fault that we are not more perfect. But let us labour to be meek, and say, 'Lord, since you have ordained that I will grow from glory to glory, from one degree of grace to another, let me have grace to magnify your mercy that you have given me any goodness, rather than to complain that I have no more.'
Nor may we be discouraged with a seeming interruption in our spiritual growth. God sometimes works by contraries. He makes men grow by their decreasing, and to stand by their falls. Sometimes when God will have a man grow, he will allow him to fall, that by his fall he may grow in a deeper hatred of sin and in jealousy over his own heart, and in a nearer watchfulness over his own ways; that he may grow more in love with God for pardoning him, and stronger in his resolution; and that he may grow more in humility. No one grows so much as those who have their growth stopped for a time.
Let no one be too discouraged who finds a stop. There is no interruption altogether of the Spirit, and this little interruption is like a sickness that will make them grow and shoot up more afterwards. It draws out the toxins that hinder growth. There is such a mystery in the carrying of men from glory to glory, that it makes them more glorious sometimes by base sins. So, I would not have anyone discouraged. God will go through with the work he has begun and will turn everything to good.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
Glorious Freedom, pp. 151-53 [164-66]
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