Streams in the Desert October 16 Daily Devotional

Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us (Heb. 12:1).
There are weights which are not sins themselves, but which become distractions and stumbling blocks in our Christian progress. One of

the worst of these is despondency. The heavy heart is indeed a
weight that will surely drag us down in our holiness and usefulness.
The failure of Israel to enter the land of promise began in
murmuring, or, as the text in Numbers literally puts it "as it were murmured." Just a faint desire to complain and be discontented. This led on until it blossomed and ripened into rebellion and ruin. Let us give ourselves no liberty ever to doubt to God or His love and faithfulness to us in everything and forever.
We can set our will against doubt just as we do against any other sin; and as we stand firm and refuse to doubt the Holy Spirit win come to our aid and give us the faith of God and crown us with
victory.
It is very easy to fall into the habit of doubting, fretting, and
wondering if God has forsaken us and if after all our hopes are to end in failure. Let us refuse to be discouraged. Let us refuse to
be unhappy. Let us "count it all joy" when we cannot feel one emotion of happiness. Let us rejoice by faith, by resolution, by
reckoning, and we shall surely find that God will make the reckoning real. --Selected
The devil has two master tricks. One is to get us discouraged, then for a time at least we can be of no service to others, and so are
defeated. The other is to make us doubt, thus breaking the faith fink by which we are bound to our Father. Look out! Do not be tricked either way. --G. E. M.
Gladness! I like to cultivate the spirit of gladness! It puts the
soul so in tune again, and keeps it in tune, so that Satan is shy of touching it-the chords of the soul become too warm, or too full of heavenly electricity, for his infernal fingers, and he goes off
somewhere else! Satan is always very shy of meddling with me when
my heart is full of gladness and joy in the Holy Ghost My plan is to shun the spirit of sadness as I would Satan; but alas! I am not always successful. Like the devil himself it meets me on the
highway of usefulness, looks me so fully in my face, till my poor soul changes color!
Sadness discolors everything; it leaves all objects charmless; it involves future prospects in darkness; it deprives the soul of all its aspirations, enchains all its powers, and produces a mental paralysis!
An old believer remarked, that cheerfulness in religion makes all its services come off with delight, and that we are never carried
forward so swiftly in the ways of duty as when borne on the wings of delight, adding, that Melancholy clips such wings; or, to alter
the figure, takes off our chariot wheels in duty, and makes them, like those of the Egyptians, drag heavily.