06/26/2026 – Book Five: “The Practice of Prayer” / Chapter 2 – “More and More” excerpts – pgs 407 thru 423 // “Let Thy grace, Lord, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee.” (*A) – below / pg. #410
(*A) – from verse 3 – Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” by Robert Robinson (1758)
Excerpts:
“The true result of life is praise to God. “The chief end of man,” says the catechism, and I cannot put it better, “is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. When we glorify God in our private devotions, we are answering the true end of our being. If we desire to praise God more, we must ask for grace that our private devotions may rise to a higher standard. I am more and more persuaded from my own experience that in proportion to the strength of our private lives with God, so will be the force of our character and the power of our work for Him among men. Let us look well to this.” (pg. # 419)
THE IMPORTANCE OF PRAISE – pgs 421 – 423
‘”… You must either praise God or be miserable. You do have a choice: you must either worship the God who made you, or else you must be wretched. It is not that He kindles a fire for you or casts on it the brimstone of His wrath, but your wretchedness begins within yourself, for to be unable to praise to be full of hell. To praise God is heaven. When immersed in adoration, we are completely filled with happiness, but to be totally devoid of gratitude is to be totally devoid of joy.
… But Christians, the last word is for you. Are you praising God more and more? If you are not, I am afraid of one thing: that you are probably praising Him less and less. It is a certain truth that if we do not go forward in the Christian life, we go backward. You cannot stand still. There is a drift one way or the other. Now he who praises God less than he did, and goes on to praise Him less tomorrow’s nd less the next day, and so on — where will he go, and what is he? Evidently he is one of those who “draw back unto perdition” (Hebrews 10:39) and there are no persons on whom a more dreadful sentence is pronounced. Their terrible sentence was often spoken of by Paul, and more terribly by Peter and Jude: “Trees whose fruit withered, without fruit, twice dead, plucked by the roots … wandering starts, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever” (Jude 12-13). It would have been infinitely better for them not to have know the way of righteousness, than having known it, after a fashion, to have turned aside! Better never to have put their hands to the plow, than having done so, to turn back from it.
But beloved, I am “persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though [I] thus [write]“. Hebrews 6:9). I pray that God will lead you on from strength to strength, for that is the path of the just. May you grow in grace, for life is proved by growth. May you march like pilgrims toward heaven, singing all the way. The lark may serve us as a final picture and an example of what we should be. We should be mounting. Our prayer should be, “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” Our motto might well be, “Higher! Higher! Higher!” As we mount, we should sing, and our song should grow louder, clearer, fuller of heaven. Upward, beloved. Sing as you soar. Sing until you are dissolved in glory. Amen.”
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Soli Deo Gloria!