Spiritual suicide and personal prayer
“At the bottom and to begin with, there is some absolutely unaccountable alienation of our sinful hearts away from our Maker and our Redeemer. There is some utterly inexplicable estrangement from God that has, somehow, taken possession of your heart and mine. There is some dark mystery of iniquity here that has never yet been sufficiently cleared up. There is some awful ‘enmity against God,’ as the Holy Ghost has it: some awful malice that sometimes makes us hate the very thought of God. We hate God, indeed, much more than we love ourselves. For we knowingly endanger our immortal
souls; every day and every night we risk death and hell itself [i.e. our greatest spiritual dangers] rather than come close to God and abide in secret prayer. This is the spiritual suicide that we could not have believed possible had we not discovered it in our own atheistical hearts. The thing is far too fearful to put into words. But put into words for once, this is what our everyday actions say concerning us in this supreme matter of prayer.
‘No; not tonight,’ we say, ‘I do not need to pray tonight. I am really very well tonight. My heart is much steadier in its beats tonight. And besides I have business on my hands that will take up all my time tonight. I have quite a pile of unanswered letters on my table tonight. And before I sleep I have the novel of the season to finish, for I must send it back tomorrow morning. And besides there is no such hurry as all that. I am not so old nor so frail as all that. Go thy way for this time, when I have a convenient season I will call for thee.’
But even when it is not so bad with us as that, at our very best there is a certain backwardness in prayer to which all praying men have to confess … There is no worse sign of our spiritual danger than the backwardness we have to pray. So weary are we of the duty, so glad are we to have it over, and so witty are we to find an excuse to evade it.”
– Alexander Whyte, Thomas Shepherd: Pilgrim Father and Founder of Harvard (Reformation Heritage; Grand Rapids, MI) 1909/2007. Pp. 55-56.
Tony Reinke 
What does this excerpt mean to you?
This post exposes the atheism of my own heart. I, and all sinners who have been saved, have remaining sin that causes us to not want to depend upon God. I especially forget that He is the source of all my life and breath. I may talk it up, but at times I am just as atheistic in my practice as anyone else. To some level there is an animosity towards God even in the Christian heart. I frequently live as though He does not exist. This amazing power struggle for the Christian heart is encapsulated in this quotation. But though I move away from Him every day, He draws me back by His grace and reveals more of His beauty in creation and especially in sustaining my life in the Cross of Jesus Christ! The Cross is what makes me truly alive, though some level of atheism ever remains in my heart until the day I am set free to enjoy God forever! Oh, how I am drawn to atheism and oh how God prevents it and sustains me by His grace! – Tony
… or to put it biblically, believers have a remaining “enmity” against God (see 1 Pet. 2:11; Rom. 7:19; Rom. 8:7). To better understand this enmity towards God in the Christian heart I would also recommend, The Nature, Power, Deceit and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin by John Owen. It’s a classic. – Tony
John Newton — the man who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace — wrote when he was 54 years old: “Every year, and indeed every day, affords me new proofs of the evil and deceitfulness of my heart, and of my utter insufficiency to think even a good thought myself. But I trust, in the course of various exercises, I have been taught more of the power, grace, and all-sufficiency of Jesus.”
Tony,
Thanks for your responses. I was wondering on the connection between your post and your “Atheism” tag.
I have to tell you that the internal struggle you defined above sounds a bit hard, doesn’t it? It just doesn’t seem like a very enjoyable life to live.
Do you really believe your heart is evil or deceitful (like Newton believed) or do we just have a loose definition of these terms.
Evil to me centers around things like murder, rape, stealing from others and a few other atrocities mainly centered around denying another individual of their right to life, freedom of choice, and to their possessions. I have almost ZERO desire to do any of these things to others hence I do not feel my heart is evil.
I think Christians define normal human emotions as evil and hence this constant internal struggle that really is useless and steals their lives.
My thoughts…
aA
Nietzsche called sin the “pathological excess of feeling.” You are right in calling evil the breaking of a law and not a mere emotion. The true extent of evil is only properly understood in light of the law and the lawgiver. Evil is ultimately defined in the breaking of God’s Law (i.e. never lie). But here is where it gets interesting — only with spiritual life can a sinner like myself see the spiritual battle. Without God’s grace I would be spiritually dead and perfectly content without Him, lying, cheating on taxes and committing the million of other evils that seem to go unnoticed and without remorse. Instead I’ve been given spiritual eyes to be sensitive to the effects of indwelling sin. That’s a very gracious gift because I live within the larger reality of the eternal. Even if that makes life tougher it also draws me closer to the One who created life and His power and that makes life more satisfying as well. … What’s also amazing is that I can never reform enough or be good enough or go to church enough to cover even the evil of my heart today. I must have the free gift of God’s righteousness and I have that through the substitution of God Himself in Christ. I struggle with sin because I see it, not because appeasing God depends upon it. Does that makes sense? -Tony
Wow! What a convicting post that depicts the condition of the human heart (of my heart). “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; Who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and I test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jeremiah 17:9-10 (ESV)
Even as a believer, the wickedness of my heart is revealed by the on going struggle with indwelling sin. “Wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Romans 7:24-25a (ESV)
Thanks Tony for this post. It confronts the very depths of my soul with the need for repentance. It also