Genesis 41:4

Pharaoh’s dream has too often been my waking experience. My days of sloth have ruinously destroyed all that I had achieved in times of zealous industry; my seasons of coldness have frozen all the genial glow of my periods of fervor and enthusiasm; and my fits of worldliness have thrown me back from my advances in the divine life.

I need to beware of lean prayers, lean praises, lean duties, and lean experiences, for these will eat up the fat of my comfort and peace. If I neglect prayer even for the shortest time, I lose all the spirituality that I had attained; if I draw no fresh supplies from heaven, the old grain in my granary is soon consumed by the famine that rages in my soul.

When the caterpillars of indifference, the cankerworms of worldliness, and the palmerworms of self-indulgence, lay my heart completely desolate and make my soul languish, all my former fruitfulness and growth in grace is of no avail to me whatsoever. How anxious should I be to have no lean-fleshed days, no unfavorable hours!

If every day I journeyed towards the goal of my desires, I should soon reach it; but backsliding leaves me still far off from the prize of my high calling and robs me of the advances that I had so laboriously made. The only way in which all my days can be as the “fat kine” is to feed them in the right meadow: to spend them with the Lord, in His service, in His company, in His fear, and in His way.

Why should not every year be richer than the past, in love, and usefulness, and joy?—I am nearer the celestial hills, I have had more experience of my Lord, and should be more like Him. O Lord, keep far from me the curse of leanness of soul; let me not have to cry, My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me! but may I be well-fed and nourished in Your house, that I may praise Your name.