Give careful thought to the paths for your feet
and be steadfast in all your ways.
Proverbs 4:26

Read: Psalm 69:1-15, Proverbs 4:26-27
Pilgrim’s Progress Stage 1 Part 7

Relate: They are walking together, Christian and Pliable, in conversation full and hopeful. Suddenly, the ground gives way beneath them. They have tumbled into the Slough of Despond. It is a deep, boggy, miry place that Bunyan describes as being saturated with the scum and filth of sin. Christian is sinking into the fears and doubts and discouragements that rise up in a soul that has just begun to see the truth. It is not an obstacle placed there by an enemy. It is not a punishment. It is simply the natural consequence of a person who has just come alive to their own sinfulness. The Slough is not a detour from the journey. For many pilgrims, it is one of the first things that happens along the way.

Most of us have spent time in the Slough. It is that season, sometimes days, sometimes years, when the spiritual desire of our grace filled tomorrow runs headlong into the sad reality of our sin filled today. The excitement of our spiritual hunger fades. The old patterns reassert themselves. The burden, which we thought we might soon be free of, seems heavier, not lighter. The gate we were running toward seems further away than it did when Evangelist pointed at it. The mire is real. The sinking feeling is real. And because we are covered in mud and exhausted and embarrassed, the most natural thing in the world is to begin to wonder whether you made the right decision. Was any of this real? Does the Gate exist at all? Or were we simply fools who got swept up in an emotional moment?

React: What Bunyan understood, and what we in the church have sometimes failed to communicate well, is that the Slough is not a sign that God has abandoned us. It is not evidence that our faith was false. It is, in fact, one of the most normal features of growth in our spiritual life. It is the collision between a more highly sensitized conscience and the accumulated weight of a life lived in the City of Destruction. The road through the Slough has stepping stones. Bunyan tells us they were put there by the King’s workers, and they are there still. They have names like Promise, and Assurance, and the Word of God. They are sometimes hard to see when we are sinking. But they are there. And they hold.

Respond:

Dear God,
Help me to recognize the difference between the guilt that leads me to repent and draw closer to You and the shame that leads me to despair and mires me in the Slough of Despond. You want me to go higher, to live holier, and to draw closer to You. So a holy discontent is a good thing. An unsettledness that I am not yet what You are calling me to be is healthy. But do not let that discontent turn into discouragement or despondency. Let it instead lead me to walk faster and straighter down the path You have set before me.
Amen