05.05. HINDRANCES TO CHRISTIAN PROGRESS contd

ADDRESS TO THE READER

If in an important mission, journey, or undertaking of any kind, you were impeded in reference to the object contemplated, you would inquisitively and anxiously search for the cause of delay, and never rest satisfied until you had found and removed it. I am now supposing there is a hindrance of one or more kinds to your progress towards heaven, to your increase of faith and holiness. There are stones in the way, which must be removed, if you are to make progress in your Christian pilgrimage. It is fearful to think of hindrances to heaven, and impediments to holiness. If there were anything that hindered your health, or prosperity in business, or the success of any earthly scheme—how earnestly you would ask the question, "What is it? What is it?" How thankful you would be to the friend who pointed it out, and how diligently you would set to work to remove the impediment out of the way. Well, there are obstacles in your way to Zion. You are hindered. You do not perhaps make progress. How is this?—I say to you what the apostle did to the Galatians, "Who hindered you?" "What hindered you?" Look back through this chapter; take up every particular; say of each, Is it this, or that, which stops my progress? I ask you, and I implore you to ask yourself— Is it indifference to the spiritual growth? Is it the unsubdued corruption of your nature, left to itself, unresisted, unmortified? Is it a besetting sin? Is it the peculiarity of your situation being unfriendly to a life of piety? Is it unsuitable companionship? Is it the inconsistencies of professing Christians? Is it a taste for worldly amusements. Is it persecution?

Examine, I beseech you, examine, what it is that arrests you in your course—and take it away! Again I say, "Remove the stones!" "Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us!" Hebrews 12:1