There is a moment in every believer’s walk with Christ when the first fire of conversion begins to cool.
The tears of the altar dry. The euphoria of a burden lifted gives way to the daily grind of denying self, mastering the flesh, and pressing on when no one is watching and nothing feels dramatic anymore. Many young converts, brimming with joy, sprint out of the gate—only to discover, sometimes painfully, that the Christian life was never designed to be run at a sprinter’s pace.
John Bunyan saw this centuries ago. And on Sunday, July 12, 2026, the GospelBells Radio Readers’ Club climbed straight into the heart of that discovery, picking up Christian’s ascent of the Hill Difficulty exactly where he had left off—refreshed at the spring, and about to learn that refreshment received once is not strength that lasts forever.
What followed was one of the most searching, personally convicting sessions in the entire series—a study that moved from a single sentence about a man running up a hill to a full theology of sanctification, endurance, and the daily war between flesh and spirit.
A Brief Look Back
The moderator, Bela Femi, opened by reminding the online congregation where the story had left off the previous week. Christian, freshly relieved of his burden at the Cross, had walked on and met Simple, Sloth and Presumption sleeping carelessly by the road, then Formalist and Hypocrisy, who had climbed over the wall instead of entering by the Wicket Gate. All had troubled him. None had shared his foundation.
Arriving at the foot of a steep hill, Christian had found three paths: Difficulty running straight ahead and up, with Danger and Destruction branching off to either side. Because Goodwill at the Gate had told him to always follow the path that connects directly to the narrow gate—”whether it is difficult, it should not matter”—Christian chose the hill. Formalist and Hypocrisy, having never passed through that gate, felt no such obligation and were free to reason the situation out for themselves.
Before climbing, Christian had done something the other two never thought to do. He found a spring at the foot of the hill and drank. Only then did he begin the climb. That spring, the class recalled, represents every means of grace God supplies before a trial: prayer, Scripture, the fellowship of the saints, the quiet inward work of the Holy Spirit. Formalist and Hypocrisy, never having been born again, could not see it. It was not withheld from them out of cruelty; it was simply invisible to eyes that had never opened to Christ.
With that foundation freshly laid, the class turned to the new passage—and the story took an unexpected and deeply instructive turn.
The Climb Begins: Running, Walking, Crawling
A volunteer reader took up the text: “I watched as Christian began his climb up the steep hill. He started by running, then slowed to walking, and finally had to crawl on his hands and knees.”
Three verbs. Three postures. One climb.
The moderator paused the group here longer than almost anywhere else in the evening, sensing—rightly, as the discussion would prove—that this single sentence contained a lifetime of pastoral wisdom.
Why did Christian start by running? The class quickly located the answer in Christian’s own recent history. He had just come from Calvary. His burden had rolled away and tumbled into the open sepulchre. He had received a new robe. He had received the seal of the Holy Spirit as his passport to the Celestial City. He had, in the words of one participant, been given “newly found strength” on top of newfound relief. Small wonder he launched up the hill at a run. As one participant put it, recalling testimonies of new converts who feel they could die and go straight to glory the moment they are saved, “he was in a hurry—let’s go, let’s go, what’s next?”
One contributor, drawing on years of climbing actual staircases in multi-storey office buildings, gently observed that Christian might have been wiser to pace himself from the start—”slow but steady wins the race.” It was a fair critique, and the moderator did not resist it. But the deeper question the class pressed toward was not whether Christian’s enthusiasm was strategically sound. It was why his strength did not last.
The Spring Cannot Be Carried in a Bucket
Here the evening produced its most memorable insight.
Christian had been refreshed at the spring before he began climbing. He assumed, understandably, that this one draught of water would carry him to the summit. It did not. His pace fell from running to walking, and eventually to crawling.
Was the divine strength itself defective? The class firmly rejected that idea. What had waned was not the strength God supplies, but Christian’s ongoing engagement with the source of it. He had drunk once and then relied on the memory of that refreshment rather than returning to it. “Our relationship with God must be ongoing,” one participant observed. “We don’t just get inspiration one time and then it carries us all the way. We need to continue getting refreshed with Him every day.”
The moderator connected this immediately to John 15: “Abide in me, and you will bear much fruit; without me you can do nothing.” The spring was never meant to be visited once and remembered. It was meant to be returned to continually.
This, the class agreed, explains a mystery many Christians quietly wrestle with: why the joy of a spiritual mountaintop experience fades within days, sometimes hours, if it is not followed by ongoing communion with God. The treasure of divine strength, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:7, is real—but it is deposited in “earthen vessels,” in jars of clay, “that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.” The clay is fragile by nature. It cracks. And when it cracks, the Potter—not the vessel itself—is the one who mends it.
The class drew a direct line to Gethsemane, where Jesus found Peter, James and John asleep instead of watching with Him in His hour of need. His diagnosis was neither harsh nor surprised: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Their love was never in doubt, the moderator observed—only their strength, which like Christian’s, had not been continually renewed.
Could Christian Have Carried the Stream With Him?
A participant posed the natural question: could Christian have simply carried water from the stream up the hill with him?
The class’s answer illuminated the whole allegory. The stream does not represent a resource that can be bottled and stored. It represents prayer and the living Word of God—realities that must be returned to again and again, not stockpiled. Tellingly, Bunyan notes that Christian had been given a scroll at the Cross, meant to be read continually as he travelled. Its loss later in the story—slipping from his hand while he slept—would prove to be no small detail.
The Hill Difficulty: What the Climb Actually Represents
Having examined the mechanics of the climb, the class turned to its meaning. What, precisely, is the Hill Difficulty in a believer’s life?
One participant offered a foundational answer: it represents the whole of the Christian’s everyday life after conversion—all the things that must still be learned and unlearned. He developed the point further, observing that character is formed not by dramatic moments but by “micro-behaviours”—the small, repeated choices of daily life. For the Christian, this means unlearning years of old habits while learning what the Spirit now requires. “That process is very difficult,” he said. “Some Christians don’t understand that, and that’s why some of them just give up and say this Christianity is not something I can keep up with.”
The moderator pressed the point home with 2 Corinthians 5:17: the old has passed away, the new has come. But how, practically, does a person who has spent a lifetime living the old life begin to live as a genuinely new creation? That daily transition—not a single moment but a sustained, often grinding process—is the Hill Difficulty.
A guest contributor, introduced simply as Reverend, offered an extended theological grounding for this idea. New creation, he explained, must be understood through the full weight of the Cross. When Jesus said in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself,” He was describing what new creation actually costs. Paul’s words in Galatians 2:20—”I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”—describe a life that is, quite literally, the death of the old self and the ongoing life of Christ within the believer. That transition, the Reverend said, is inherently uncomfortable, “like moving to a new climate.” A person unaccustomed to cold weather struggles at first; over time, through repeated exposure, the body adjusts. So it is with the soul learning to live the crucified life—not instantly, but through a “period of adjustment” sustained by dependence on the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, obedience, and trust.
Romans 8 and the War That Never Fully Ends
The discussion sharpened further around Romans 8:4–5, which the class read as confirming that the flesh and the Spirit stand in permanent opposition—”if you are in the flesh, you cannot obey the Spirit… you cannot please God.” The flesh, still very much alive in the believer even after conversion, is described in the text as being “always lost after”—that is, always in pursuit of and contrary to—the Spirit.
This, the moderator explained, is precisely what Christian’s slowing pace pictures. His flesh, still present despite his new birth, grew weary even as his spirit remained willing. The Hill Difficulty, therefore, is not merely a season a new convert eventually graduates from. It is the daily, lifelong climb of putting the flesh under the authority of the Spirit—a climb that will not be fully completed this side of glory.
Here the moderator turned to what he called “one of the most under-celebrated promises in Scripture”—1 Thessalonians 4:17 and 1 Corinthians 15:52, the promise that believers “shall be changed” at the last trumpet. That change, he explained, is not merely about immortality; it is about a body and nature that will no longer even want to sin. The struggle Paul describes in Romans 7—”the flesh sins and delights in it, but the spirit hates it”—will finally, fully end. Until then, the war continues, and the Hill Difficulty remains before every believer, in every season of life.
The Sluggard, the Scroll, and the Danger of Sleeping on the Mountain
The reading continued: about halfway up, Christian reached a resting place built by the Lord of the Hill for weary travellers. He sat, read his scroll for comfort, examined the garment given him at the Cross—and then drifted into a nap that deepened into a long sleep, lasting until nearly nightfall. As he slept, the scroll slipped from his hand. Someone came and woke him with the words of Proverbs 6:6: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise.” Startled, Christian hurried on and reached the summit—though, as later chapters reveal, without the scroll he would badly need.
Although the evening’s discussion focused chiefly on the run-walk-crawl sequence, this detail was noted as a sobering companion lesson: even a resting place provided by the Lord Himself can become a danger if rest turns into spiritual carelessness. The means of grace God provides—a place to pause, a scroll to read—must be used rightly, or they can be lost in the very act of resting.
A Marathon, Not a Sprint
One of the evening’s clearest and most practical takeaways came from a participant who reframed the entire discussion in athletic terms: the Christian race, he said, “is not a sprint—it’s actually an endurance race. It’s not 100 metres. You are almost running like the London Marathon. You need endurance.”
Building on this, the class agreed on a liberating principle: believers should not become disillusioned when they find themselves walking instead of running, or crawling instead of walking. The important thing, repeated several times through the evening, is never to stop. As one contributor put it, quoting a piece of folk wisdom, “if you can run, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl—but never stop.”
This, the class stressed, should also produce compassion rather than judgment—especially toward new believers whose zeal outpaces their endurance. Paul’s instruction that new converts should not be placed in positions of authority, “lest they become puffed up with pride,” was cited as evidence that the church has always understood the gap between early enthusiasm and mature endurance. The remedy is not to shame the crawling believer, nor to let the running believer grow proud, but to keep pointing every believer—whatever their current pace—back toward the ultimate goal of running well again.
The image of Paul himself anchored this lesson vividly. Stoned at Lystra and left for dead outside the city, Paul got up and went straight back into the city, and the next day continued on his journey preaching the gospel. “That kind of resilience,” one participant marvelled, “I don’t know anybody who would do that.” It is, the class agreed, the picture of a believer utterly unwilling to let any setback become a final stop.
Formalist and Hypocrisy Revisited: The Logic of the Easier Road
The class returned once more to the fate of Formalist and Hypocrisy, this time probing their reasoning more deeply than in the previous week’s session. Why, precisely, did they choose Danger and Destruction?
The answer, the moderator explained, lay in simple human calculation. Never having been born again, never having reckoned with the Holy Spirit, they reasoned exactly as the world reasons: “this path is easier, and it will probably reconnect with the main road anyway.” They were not stupid, the class noted—they simply trusted their own judgment rather than divine instruction. “The end justifies the means,” as one participant summarised, is precisely the logic that undergirds every doctrine that says, in effect, “keep sinning, grace will abound.”
The moderator drew a sharp contemporary application here, naming a temptation familiar to any observer of modern religious life: teaching that softens obedience, that tells believers “it’s not that deep, it’s not that difficult, God understands,” easing consciences that ought to remain tender. Such teaching, the class agreed, is simply Formalist and Hypocrisy’s logic dressed in modern language—and it leads, as Bunyan named it without euphemism, to Danger and ultimately Destruction.
A participant tied this directly to Eden: the enemy’s questioning of Adam and Eve—”Did God really say…? You will not surely die… He just doesn’t want you to enjoy yourself”—is the same voice offering an easier, supposedly equivalent path around obedience. The names Bunyan gives these paths, the class agreed, are not incidental. Danger and Destruction are not two different destinations; they are two descriptions of the same road.
Counting the Cost
Perhaps the evening’s most searching turn came when the discussion moved to discipleship itself. The class lamented what it identified as a significant gap in contemporary evangelism: new converts are frequently told that coming to Jesus means everything will be easy, when Christ Himself said the opposite.
The moderator cited Matthew 8:19–20, where a teacher of the law told Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go,” and Jesus answered, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To the rich young ruler, Christ said, “Go, sell everything you have.” To every prospective disciple, His consistent instruction was to “count the cost” before building—the way a wise builder assesses the price of a tower before laying its foundation.
“That is where discipleship is missing today,” the Reverend observed. “We are not asking people to count the cost. We are just saying to them, come, and everything is fine.” One of the costs every believer incurs, the class agreed, is precisely the climbing of the Hill Difficulty—and when believers are not warned of this in advance, the inevitable struggle against the flesh becomes, for many, a crisis of faith rather than an expected feature of the journey.
Because those who “understand the Scriptures,” the moderator said, are not surprised by the difficulty. They still feel the strain. They are still, at times, in pain. But they are not shaken, because they were told from the beginning: this climb is steep.
Closing Reflections: Never Give Up on Yourself, Never Give Up on God
As the evening drew toward its close, participants offered their personal takeaways.
One spoke of the need for balance—neither presuming on grace as though temptation no longer applies, nor living in such constant self-condemnation that the finished work of Christ is never truly enjoyed. “We need to give people a balanced Christian life,” he said. “There’s no way you can be a Christian and say everything will just be smooth sailing. That’s why we became born again—to show people that this world is tough, but the one we’ll be living in is tougher.”
Another returned to the promise of 1 Corinthians 10:13 and Matthew 24:13—”he that shall endure to the end shall be saved”—as the assurance underwriting every step, whether run, walked, or crawled. A third reminded the group that whatever their current pace, “God is with us at all times. He will never leave us. He’s ever ready to renew our strength and carry us on.”
The moderator brought the evening to its conclusion with a warning aimed squarely at discouragement itself: nothing would please the enemy more than a pilgrim who once resolved to walk this road now quietly deciding, “maybe this isn’t for me.” The counsel offered instead was direct and pastoral—crawl if you must, walk if you must, run if you must, but never let go of the confidence that God will not disappoint you in the end.
The class closed, as is now customary, by reading together the lyrics of the hymn “It’s Not an Easy Road,” a fitting seal on an evening spent tracing the hardest and most honest stretch of Christian’s journey so far—the discovery that the road to glory is not covered in a single burst of running, but climbed one step, one renewed breath of grace, at a time.
Looking Ahead
The Readers’ Club will continue next Sunday, God willing, following Christian as he reaches the summit of the Hill Difficulty and presses further along the pilgrim way—into fresh trials, fresh lessons, and fresh evidence that the God who appoints every hill also supplies every ounce of strength required to climb it.
🎧 The full recording of the July 12, 2026 session is available for those who wish to listen in full. Whether you are a longtime member of the Readers’ Club or discovering these discussions for the first time, this conversation offers rich encouragement for anyone currently walking their own stretch of the Hill Difficulty.
Those who would like to join the GospelBells Radio Readers’ Club or make enquiries are warmly invited to get in touch:
📧 Email: gospelbellsradio@gmail.com 📱 WhatsApp: 08094711629
Run if you can. Walk if you must. Crawl if you have to. But never stop climbing—for the same God who appointed the hill has promised to carry every faithful pilgrim to its very top.
