Spiritual Fluctuations by A. W. Pink

From here

“Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God” (Psa. 55:19). As there are some people who uniformly enjoy good health, so there is a class of religious professors who appear to maintain one steady level of experience. There is no rise and fall of their emotional thermometer, no ebbs and flows in the tide of their energy, no ups and downs in their history. Their faith (such as it is) does not flag, their “assurance” is never eclipsed by the dark clouds of unbelief, their zeal continues lively to the end. Are such people to be envied or pitied? Perhaps such a question seems senseless. Does not the timid and trembling believer, whose case varies as often and as radically as the weather, frequently wish that his experience approximated far more closely to that which we have just described?

Surely such a uniform level of experience is greatly to be coveted. What more desirable than unruffled peace, unbroken confidence, uninterrupted joy. Ah, but all is not gold that glitters, and much that passes in the churches for the coin of Canaan lacks a genuine ring to it. We must needs inquire, Is such a peace that of the graveyard or the peace of Heaven? Is such confidence a carnal one, or the fruit of the Spirit? Is it a delusive or a substantial joy? In order to ascertain this, the question has to be raised, Is the fear of God upon such characters? Do they furnish any clear evidence that it is so? The solemn declaration of our text demands an impartial answer to these queries.

What “changes” the real Christian experiences in his conflicts with sin! At conversion it often seems as though the believer is completely delivered from all his spiritual enemies. His heart has been so melted and drawn out Godwards, his sense of Christ dying on the Cross in his room and stead has imparted such a hatred and horror of evil, that he is filled with a desire and determination to live henceforth unto the pleasing of his Lord. He feels that the Song of Israel on the farther shores of the Red Sea (Exo. 15) is exactly suited to express his case. But how soon he discovers that the Wilderness of Sin lies between him and the Promised Land, and that though the Egyptians be dead there are Amalekites to assail him (Exo. 17:8). True, God grants him many a token of His favour along the way, and at each gracious reviving indwelling sin appears to slumber; but soon after it awakens and rages worse than ever, and, “I am carnal, sold under sin” (Rom. 7:14) becomes his cry.