Repentance
23
determined rejection of His love. “Behold, now is the accepted time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.” “Today if ye will hear His voice,
harden not your hearts.”
2 Corinthians 6:2
;
Hebrews 3:7, 8
.
“Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh
on the heart”—the human heart, with its conflicting emotions of joy
and sorrow; the wandering, wayward heart, which is the abode of so
much impurity and deceit.
1 Samuel 16:7
. He knows its motives, its
very intents and purposes. Go to Him with your soul all stained as it
is. Like the psalmist, throw its chambers open to the all-seeing eye,
exclaiming, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know
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my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me
in the way everlasting.”
Psalm 139:23, 24
.
Many accept an intellectual religion, a form of godliness, when
the heart is not cleansed. Let it be your prayer, “Create in me a clean
heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”
Psalm 51:10
. Deal
truly with your own soul. Be as earnest, as persistent, as you would be
if your mortal life were at stake. This is a matter to be settled between
God and your own soul, settled for eternity. A supposed hope, and
nothing more, will prove your ruin.
Study God’s word prayerfully. That word presents before you, in
the law of God and the life of Christ, the great principles of holiness,
without which “no man shall see the Lord.”
Hebrews 12:14
. It con-
vinces of sin; it plainly reveals the way of salvation. Give heed to it as
the voice of God speaking to your soul.
As you see the enormity of sin, as you see yourself as you really
are, do not give up to despair. It was sinners that Christ came to save.
We have not to reconcile God to us, but—O wondrous love!—God
in Christ is “reconciling the world unto Himself.”
2 Corinthians 5:19
.
He is wooing by His tender love the hearts of His erring children. No
earthly parent could be as patient with the faults and mistakes of his
children, as is God with those He seeks to save. No one could plead
more tenderly with the transgressor. No human lips ever poured out
more tender entreaties to the wanderer than does He. All His promises,
His warnings, are but the breathing of unutterable love.
When Satan comes to tell you that you are a great sinner, look up
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to your Redeemer and talk of His merits. That which will help you
is to look to His light. Acknowledge your sin, but tell the enemy that
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” and that you may