Cast Down? Diagnosing Spiritual Discouragement (4)

(4e) One main ground is false reasoning. Thinking we have no grace when we feel none. Feeling is not always a fit rule to judge our states by. Thinking that God has rejected us because we are confused by things which issue from God's wisdom and love. There are many who imagine their failings to be fallings, and their fallings to be fallings away; that every sin against conscience, to be the sin against the Holy Spirit. Satan, as a cunning debater, here enlarges the fancy, to apprehend things bigger than they are, abuses confident spirits in another contrary way; to apprehend great sins as little, and little as none. Some also think that they have no grace, because they have not grown as Christians, even though they have been several years in Christ. Some are so desirous after what they have not, that they mind not what they have.
(4f) Some are much troubled because they proceed by a false method and order in judging of their state. They begin with election, which is the highest step of the ladder; when they should begin with a work of grace wrought within their hearts, from God's calling them by his Spirit, and their answer to his call. By so doing they raise themselves upward to know their election by their answer to God's calling. 'Give all diligence,’ said Peter, ‘to make your calling and election sure' (2 Pet. 1:10), your election by your calling. God descends down to us from election to calling, and so to sanctification; we must ascend to him, beginning where he ends. Otherwise it is as great a folly as removing a pile of wood by beginning at the lowest first. This great secret of God's eternal love to us in Christ is hidden in his breast, and does not appear to us, until in the use of means God by his Spirit reveals the same to us. We know God must love us before we can love him, and yet we often first know that we love him (1 John 4:19).

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
The Soul's Conflict with Itself, Works, vol. 1, pp. 137-38
Banner of Truth has granted permission for the use of this material.