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Steps to Christ
“I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord
God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.”
Ezekiel 18:32
. Satan
is ready to steal away the blessed assurances of God. He desires to
take every glimmer of hope and every ray of light from the soul; but
you must not permit him to do this. Do not give ear to the tempter, but
say, “Jesus has died that I might live. He loves me, and wills not that I
should perish. I have a compassionate heavenly Father; and although I
have abused His love, though the blessings He has given me have been
squandered, I will arise, and go to my Father, and say, ‘I have sinned
against heaven, and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called
Thy son: make me as one of Thy hired servants.’” The parable tells
you how the wanderer will be received: “When he was yet a great way
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off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his
neck, and kissed him.”
Luke 15:18-20
.
But even this parable, tender and touching as it is, comes short
of expressing the infinite compassion of the heavenly Father. The
Lord declares by His prophet, “I have loved thee with an everlasting
love: therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.”
Jeremiah
31:3
. While the sinner is yet far from the Father’s house, wasting
his substance in a strange country, the Father’s heart is yearning over
him; and every longing awakened in the soul to return to God is but
the tender pleading of His Spirit, wooing, entreating, drawing the
wanderer to his Father’s heart of love.
With the rich promises of the Bible before you, can you give place
to doubt? Can you believe that when the poor sinner longs to return,
longs to forsake his sins, the Lord sternly withholds him from coming
to His feet in repentance? Away with such thoughts! Nothing can
hurt your own soul more than to entertain such a conception of our
heavenly Father. He hates sin, but He loves the sinner, and He gave
Himself in the person of Christ, that all who would might be saved and
have eternal blessedness in the kingdom of glory. What stronger or
more tender language could have been employed than He has chosen
in which to express His love toward us? He declares, “Can a woman
forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the
son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.”
Isaiah 49:15
.
Look up, you that are doubting and trembling; for Jesus lives to
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make intercession for us. Thank God for the gift of His dear Son and