The Way Back To Peace

We may, dear friends, have been so unwatchful as to have brought ourselves into this condition by actual faults of life and conduct. I would make it a matter of personal enquiry among you by asking thoughtful answers to a few questions. Have you restrained prayer? Do you wonder that the land grows dry? Has the word of God been neglected? Have you left off its study of late through pressure of other concerns? Do you wonder if you have left the streams that your soul thirsts? Have you been over much engaged in hunting after temporal gain, and has the hot simoom* of worldliness parched your heart? Has there been anything about your spiritual life that has grieved the Holy Spirit? Have you been idle as a Christian? Have you been content to eat the fat and drink the sweet, and to do nothing to win souls? Or have you while you have fed upon the word of God taken the sweet things of the gospel as a matter of course, and not blessed the Lord for them? Has there been a lack of humility or a deficiency of gratitude? If so, can you wonder that you are in a dry and thirsty land?

Have you been careless in your walk? In domestic life has sin been permitted in the family? Have you been winking at evil in your children? Have you permitted it in yourself? If so, remember it is written, “He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and water springs into dry ground, a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.” You may have fallen into a parched condition of spirit because you have forgotten him of whom in happier days you sang, “All my fresh springs are in thee.” Because you have walked contrary to God, God is walking contrary to you; and it is your duty to repent and return at once to your Lord; only by so doing will peace return unto you.

* - a hot, desert wind

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Wilderness Cry," delivered August 4, 1878. Image by Stacy Manson on Flickr under Creative Commons License, without alteration.