When beginners in the school of devotion hear lectures on godly sorrow and God-longing and are told to lift up their hearts to God with an unceasing desire to feel his love, sometimes their too-clever minds misinterpret this spiritual instruction superficially to mean that they should strain themselves physically and emotionally. So they push their bodies to do the work that only grace can do. They’re conceited and too inexperienced to know that intellectual vanity robs a person of grace and only leads to mental, physical, or emotional injury. But they think they can accomplish the work of
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