“Robbing God: Instances in which you have misspent your time, and squandered hours which God gave you to serve him and save souls, in vain amusements or foolish conversation, reading novels, or doing nothing; cases where you have misapplied your talents and powers of mind; where you have squandered money on your lusts, or spent it for things you did not need, and which neither contributed to your health, comfort or usefulness…
Go thoroughly to work in all this. Go now. Don’t put it off; that will only make the matter worse. Confess to God those sins that have been committed against God, and to man those sins that have been committed against man. Don’t think of getting off by going round the stumbling blocks. Take them up out of the way. In breaking up your fallow ground, you must remove every obstruction. Things may be left that you may think little things, and you may wonder why you do not feel as you wish to in religion, when the reason is that your proud and carnal mind has covered up something, which God required you to confess and remove. Break up all the ground and turn it over. Don’t balk it, as the farmers say; don’t turn aside for little difficulties: drive the plow right through them, beam deep, and turn the ground all up, so that it may all be mellow and soft, and fit to receive the seed and bear fruit a hundredfold.”
Charles Grandison Finney from “The Sins of Commission” in Lectures on Revivals of Religion (New York: Leavitt, Lord and Company) 41-42.