Repentance, Mourning, Sin

"Godly sorrow worketh repentance."

Corinthians 7:10

Genuine, spiritual mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God.
Repentance is too choice a flower to grow in nature's garden. Pearls
grow naturally in oysters, but penitence never shows itself in sinners
except divine grace works it in them. If thou hast one particle of real
hatred for sin, God must have given it thee, for human nature's thorns
never produced a single fig. "That which is born of the flesh is
flesh."

True repentance has a distinct reference to the Saviour. When we repent
of sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross, or it
will be better still if we fix both our eyes upon Christ and see our
transgressions only, in the light of his love.

True sorrow for sin is eminently practical. No man may say he hates
sin, if he lives in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not
merely as a theory, but experimentally-as a burnt child dreads fire. We
shall be as much afraid of it, as a man who has lately been stopped and
robbed is afraid of the thief upon the highway; and we shall shun
it-shun it in everything-not in great things only, but in little
things, as men shun little vipers as well as great snakes. True
mourning for sin will make us very jealous over our tongue, lest it
should say a wrong word; we shall be very watchful over our daily
actions, lest in anything we offend, and each night we shall close the
day with painful confessions of shortcoming, and each morning awaken
with anxious prayers, that this day God would hold us up that we may
not sin against him.

Sincere repentance is continual. Believers repent until their dying
day. This dropping well is not intermittent. Every other sorrow yields
to time, but this dear sorrow grows with our growth, and it is so sweet
a bitter, that we thank God we are permitted to enjoy and to suffer it
until we enter our eternal rest.

“Heartlight” - Oct 13/07

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Getting into God's stride

Enoch walked with God.

Genesis 5:24

The test of a man's religious life and character is not what he does in the exceptional moments of life, but what he does in the ordinary times, when there is nothing tremendous or exciting on. The worth of a man is revealed in his attitude to ordinary things when he is not before the footlights
(cf. John 1:36). It is a painful business to get through into the stride of God, it means getting your second wind spiritually. In learning to walk with God there is always the difficulty of getting into His stride; but when we have got into it, the only characteristic that manifests itself is the life of God. The individual man is lost sight of in his personal union with God, and the stride and the power of God alone are manifested.

It is difficult to get into stride with God, because when we start walking with Him we find He has outstripped us before we have taken three steps. He has different ways of doing things, and we have to be trained and disciplined into His ways. It was said of Jesus - "He shall not fail nor be discouraged," because He never worked from His own individual standpoint but always from the standpoint of His Father, and we have to learn to do the same. Spiritual truth is learned by atmosphere, not by intellectual reasoning. God's Spirit alters the atmosphere of our way of looking at things, and things begin to be possible which never were possible before. Getting into the stride of God means nothing less than union with Himself. It takes a long time to get there, but keep at it. Don't give in because the pain is bad just now, get on with it, and before long you will find you have a new vision and a new purpose.

“Heartlight” - Oct 12/07