Cast Down? Diagnosing Spiritual Discouragement (1)

Causes of spiritual discouragement.
(1) God himself sometimes withdraws the beams of his countenance from his children, whereupon the soul of even the strongest Christian is disquieted. The child of God, when he sees that his troubles are mixed with God's displeasure, and perhaps his conscience tells him that God has a just quarrel against him; this anger of God puts a sting into all other troubles. When the Son of God himself, having always enjoyed the sweet communion with his Father, complained in all his torments of nothing else, but 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Matt. 27:46). So, when the soul, raised up and upheld by the beams of his countenance, feels that God has left, it presently begins to sink. We see when the body of the sun is partially hid from us in an eclipse by the body of the moon, that there is a drooping in the whole frame of nature; so it is with believers, when there is anything that comes between God's gracious countenance and the soul.
(2) If we look down to inferior causes, the soul is often cast down by Satan. For being a cursed spirit, cast and tumbled down himself from heaven, where he is never to come again, he is full of disquiet, carrying a hell about himself. All that he labours for is to cast down and disquiet others, that they may be, as much as he can procure, in the same cursed condition as himself. He thinks Christ's members never low enough, until he can bring them as low as himself. By his envy and subtlety we were driven out of paradise at the first, and now he envies us the paradise of a good conscience; for that is our paradise until we come to heaven, into which no serpent will ever creep to tempt us. When Satan sees a man strongly and comfortably walking with God, he cannot endure that a creature of lower rank by creation than himself should enjoy such happiness. It is his continual trade and course to seek his rest in our disquiet.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
The Soul's Conflict with Itself, Works, vol. 1, pp. 133-34
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