It is both wise and necessary to constantly ask God to strengthen what he has already wrought in us. Listen: many Christians can trace their spiritual trials and the torment of unbelief back to this one neglect. They simply stop asking.

Yes, Satan seeks to flood the beautiful garden of the heart and turn it into a wasteland. That's true. But it is also true that many Christians leave the floodgates wide open themselves. Through carelessness, through prayerlessness, they let the devastating flood rush in.

We forget so easily that the Author of our faith must also be the Preserver of it. In the temple, the lamp was never allowed to go out, but it needed fresh oil every single day. Your faith is exactly the same. It can only live by the continual supply of grace, and that oil comes from God alone. We will prove ourselves to be foolish virgins if we don't secure what our lamps need to keep burning.

The One who built the universe holds it together moment by moment, or it would fall in one tremendous crash. The One who made you a Christian must maintain you by his Spirit, or your ruin will be speedy and final.

So then, evening by evening, go to your Lord for the grace and strength you need. And here's the beautiful thing: you have an argument he cannot resist. You're asking him to strengthen his own work of grace! "That which thou hast wrought for us." Think you he will fail to protect and sustain that?

Only let your faith take hold of his strength, and all the powers of darkness, led on by the master fiend of hell, cannot cast a cloud or shadow over your joy and peace.

Why faint when you may be strong? Why suffer defeat when you may conquer? Oh! take your wavering faith and drooping graces to him who can revive and replenish them, and earnestly pray, "Strengthen, O God, that which thou hast wrought for us."