Could you but regard your duties as the medium in which you might walk in communion with God in which your soul might be filled with those ravishing and matchless delights which his presence affords, you might have no inclination to neglect them.

If you would have the distraction of your thoughts prevented, endeavor to raise your affections to God, and to engage them warmly in your duty. When the soul is intent upon any work, it gathers in its strength and bends all its thoughts to that work; and when it is deeply affected, it will pursue its object with intenseness, the affections will gain an ascendancy over the thoughts and guide them. But deadness causes distraction, and distraction increases deadness. Could you but regard your duties as the medium in which you might walk in communion with God in which your soul might be filled with those ravishing and matchless delights which his presence affords, you might have no inclination to neglect them. But if you would prevent the recurrence of distracting thoughts, if you would find your happiness in the performance of duty, you must not only be careful that you engage in what is your duty, but labor with patient and persevering exertion to interest your feelings in it. Why is your heart so inconstant, especially in secret duties; why are you ready to be gone, almost as soon as you are come into the presence of God


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Even those that are freed from Satan’s dominion are not free from his molestation.

Illustration of man catching butterfly, surreal minimal concept

Christ has not freed believers, in this world, from the temptations and assaults of Satan: even those that are freed from his dominion are not free from his molestation. It is said indeed, Rom. 16:20. “God shall shortly bruise Satan under your feet:” But mean time he has power to bruise and buffet us by his injections, 2 Cor. 12:7. He now bruiseth Christ’s heel, Gen. 3:10. i. e. bruiseth him in his tempted and afflicted members: Though he cannot kill them, yet he can and doth afflict and fright them, by shooting his fiery darts of temptation among them, Eph. 6:16. It is true, when the saints are got safe into heaven they are out of gunshot; there is perfect freedom from all temptation. A believer may then say, O thou enemy, temptations are come to a perpetual end. I am now arrived there, where none of thy fiery darts can reach me: But this freedom is not yet.

Excerpted from The Method of Grace in the Gospel Redemption</em

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