My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!',

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"My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!" 
Isaiah 24:16

There is no more continual source of lamentation 
and mourning to a child of God than a sense of his 
own barrenness. He would be fruitful in every good 
word and work. But when he contrasts . . .
his own miserable unprofitableness,
his coldness and deadness,
his proneness to evil,
his backwardness to good,
his daily wanderings and departing from God,
his depraved affections,
his stupid frames, 
his sensual desires,
his carnal projects, and
his earthy grovelings,
with what he sees and knows should be the fruit 
that should grow upon a fruitful branch in the only 
true Vine, he sinks down under a sense of his own 
wretched barrenness and unfruitfulness.

Yet what was the effect produced by all this upon 
his own soul? To wean him from the creature; to 
divert him from looking to any for help or hope, but 
the Lord Himself. It is in this painful way that the 
Lord often, if not usually, cuts us off from all human 
props, even the nearest and dearest, that we may 
lean wholly and solely on Himself.

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