This is a recent readings post (so to speak). I am presently finishing up Personal Declension and the Revival of Religion in the Soul by Octavius Winslow. This is a meditation I put down in writing after reading chapter 1. For more on the allegorical and illustrative use of Song of Solomon, see HERE.
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Why is it that we go through spiritual peaks and valleys? Why is it that we may be disciplined readers of the Bible, that we may have discipline in prayer, that we may observe the means of grace week by week and yet still at times feel that our souls are declining? Perhaps, like me, you have found that there are times when it feels that you are spiritually dry, spiritually dull. There may be no gross sin in your life, nothing out of the ordinary (though I hate to put it that way), and yet your soul slumps. How can this be explained?
Octavius Winslow put it like this:
This incipient state of declension may not involve any lowering of the standard of holiness; and yet there shall be no ascending of the heart, no reaching forth of the mind towards a practical conformity to that standard…there shall be no panting after conformity to Christ, no breathing after holiness…when there is more knowledge of the truth than experience of its power, – more light in the understanding than grace in the affections…The state of secret departure from God may exist in connexion with an outward and rigid observance of the means of grace; and yet there shall be no spiritual use of or enjoyment in, the means. And this, it may be, is the great lullaby of his soul. Rocked to sleep by a mere formal religion, the believer is beguiled into the delusion that his heart is right,k and his soul prosperous in the sight of God (pp. 15-16).
That’s the state we’re talking about – a dry, powerless state which is religious nonetheless. What is the answer to such a position? Winslow finds it only in the presence of Christ, mediated by the Holy Spirit. And Song of Solomon illustrates such a condition and its cure. First, from Song of Solomon 5:2-6:
- Song of Solomon 5:2 I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound! My beloved is knocking. “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.” 3 I had put off my garment; how could I put it on? I had bathed my feet; how could I soil them? 4 My beloved put his hand to the latch, and my heart was thrilled within me. 5 I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, on the handles of the bolt. 6 I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer.
Winslow uses this as an illustration:
‘I sleep, but my heart waketh.’ Here was the existence of the Divine life in the soul, and yet that life was on the decline. She knew that she had fallen into a careless and slumbering state, that the work of grace in her soul was decaying, that the spirit of slumber had come over her; but the awful feature was, she was content to be so. She heard her Beloved knock: but, so enamoured was she with her state of drowsiness, she gave no heed to it – she opened not to him…A believer may fall into a drowsy sate of soul, not so profound as to be entirely lost to the voice of his Beloved speaking by conscience, by the word, and by providences: and yet so far may his grace have decayed, so cold may his love have grown, and so hardening may have been this declension, he shall be content that this should be his state (pp. 21-22).
The Shulamite had had the presence of her beloved before. She had experienced his love, his intimate presence, yet this presence was not static. This time sleep overcame her. Behold, he stood at the door and knocked. She heard his voice. But she was too drowsy to open the door that he might come in and commune with her.
This was a familiar occurrence for the Shulamite. Consider the first verse of Song of Solomon 3, and Winslow’s comment on it:
‘By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth; I sought him, but I found him not.’ And the reason why she found him not, was her slothful posture, and her drowsy spirit in seeking him! Guard against a slothful seeking of Jesus…Seek him as that which can supply the absence of all other good, without whom nothing is good (p. 25).
How often I have lay in my bed, realizing that I had not sought Christ as I ought in the day that had passed. And so, when you find yourself in such a position, will you seek communion now as your eyes get heavy, as you prepare to fall asleep?
Spiritual slumps, backsliding, lethargy of the soul, call it what you will, is often the result of a loss of, as Winslow calls it, the ‘sensible presence’ of Christ. This is why Jesus tells the lukewarm church in Revelation 3:20 that he stands at the door and knocks. This was not an evangelistic statement per se. It was a statement of possibility to those who had already been evangelized. A deeper fellowship awaited them, it was there for the seeking. This is why the Apostle prayed for the Ephesians,
- ‘that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God’ (3:17-19).
How could the Apostle pray that those who were already believers, who were already in Christ, and Christ in them, would have a future experience of Christ dwelling in the heart which they had not yet known. He was praying for a ‘sensible presence,’ for a deeper communion, for the most intimate of fellowship. That’s the answer to spiritual slumps – only the presence of Christ through the mediation of the Spirit.
George MacDonald put it this way:
Sometimes I wake, and, lo! I have forgot
And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!
My soul that was at rest now resteth not,
For I am with myself and not with thee (Diary of an Old Soul, 1.3).
Heed the words of Isaiah:
- Isaiah 55:6 “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near;
And remember the words of Spurgeon:
There is a point in grace as much above the ordinary Christian as the ordinary Christian is above the worldling. (from Spurgeon’s sermon on Jeremiah 5:24, The Former and the Latter Rain).
Why was it better for his disciples that Jesus go away? (John 16:7) Because the Spirit now bears witness of Jesus – not only of his words, but of his presence. And that presence can lift up to heights we know little or nothing of. This is what explains the slumps – this presence, by the Spirit – this point in grace so far above the experience of the ordinary Christian (because the ordinary Christian doesn’t care to seek it).
This does not mean signs and wonders. It doesn’t mean chills and goosebumps necessarily. It means a spiritual presence of a real Christ with his people. And we don’t seek it nearly enough. What joy there could be if we did.
- Acts 3:19 Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus…
