In Spiritual Disciplines Remember the Spirit

When you look to have any grace or comfort, then put out of your hearts too much reliance on any outward thing. Do not think that education or steady effort can make us good, or bodily exercise, or listening often to sermons, or conferring often, or taking any pains of our own. Certainly, these are things that the Spirit will be effectual in if we use them as we should. But without the Spirit what are they? 'The flesh profits nothing' (John 6:63). What are the ordinances and the word? Dead things without the Spirit of the Lord. Nothing, no outward thing in the world, can work upon the soul but the Spirit of God. And the Spirit of God works upon the soul by the means of grace, altering and changing it according to the image of Christ, more and more.
In using all these outward things, whatever they are, look up to Christ, who sends the Spirit into our hearts. The Spirit must give life to all these things, and then something will be accomplished by hearing, and reading, and praying, and receiving the ordinances. In all of these first look to the Spirit. We labour in vain if we do not depend wholly upon the Spirit of God and do not trust to a higher strength than our own. It must be a higher strength than our own to work any good in our souls, either grace, or comfort, or peace. And so, as an old proverb says, 'Let the eye be to heaven while the hand is at the helm.' Then we will be transformed and changed by the Spirit of God. Before we set upon anything in which we look for spiritual good, desire God by his Holy Spirit that he would give the substance. Words are wind without the Spirit. The Spirit must give life to the word. So, clothe divine truths with the Spirit, and then it works wonders.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
Glorious Freedom, pp. 170-72 [184-86]
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