Do not be lazy.
Be like those who have faith and have not given up.
They will receive what God has promised them.
Hebrews 6:12

Read: Luke 9:57-62, Hebrews 6:1-12

Relate: Pliable thrashes his way to the edge of the Slough nearest home, hauls himself out, and without so much as a backward glance at his companion, walks back to the City of Destruction. He is done. The Slough was not in the brochure. Nobody mentioned mud when they were discussing streets of gold. Christian, meanwhile, is still struggling toward the far bank. He keeps pushing toward the side that leads onward to the gate. He doesn’t make it look graceful. Bunyan doesn’t spare him any dignity. He struggles. He sinks. He climbs. But he keeps moving toward the far side. And Pliable keeps moving toward home. That is the difference between them.

Bunyan was not being unfair to Pliable. He was being honest. The history of the church is full of Pliables. Some people come in with great enthusiasm, sit in the front rows, sign up for every ministry, and have told everyone they knew about the transformation they were experiencing. Then things got tough. When the real difficulty arrives, they quietly disappear. The Slough of Despond is, in this sense, one of the most important narrative devices in all of Christian literature. It tells us the truth about what happens to faith that has no root. Jesus told us the same thing in the parable of the sower. Some seed falls on shallow ground, springs up quickly, and withers just as quickly when the heat comes. Pliable is that seed. My dad used to say, “It isn’t how high we jump, but how straight we walk once our feet hit the ground. Enthusiasm, however sincere in the moment, is not a substitute for the kind of faith that keeps slogging to reach that far bank.

React: Bunyan does not fully develop something that we should keep in mind. Pliable is not a villain. He is just not ready. Perhaps he will be, one day. Perhaps the memory of that conversation, of what Christian described, of what the Celestial City was said to hold, will stay with him. Perhaps he will find himself at the edge of another Slough someday. Older, wiser, and with less to lose, this time he will fight his way to the far bank. We do not know the end of his story. But God, who devises ways to bring us back, is not done with the Pliables in our lives.

Respond:

Dear God,
Help me to be faithful to the end. Help me not to be one of those who “shrinks back” as the author of Hebrews wrote. I want to follow You. And I want to keep following You until I can go no further. Then help me to get up and go further. Help my mindset to be You always and You only in everything I value.
Amen.