Internal causes of discouragement
Richard Sibbes, in The Soul’s Conflict, examines the causes of spiritual discouragement that are internal to ourselves (i.e. those that are not directly attributable to some external cause, such as God or Satan).
1. Lack of knowedge and understanding. ‘Ignorance, being darkness, is full of false fears. In the night time men think every bush a thief.’
2. Forgetfulness. See Heb 12:5. ‘We have no more present actual comfort than we have remembrance…He that hath formerly known things, takes ready acquaintance of them again, as old friends; things are not strange to him.’…