Monday, January 26, 2009

The Christian's heaviest burden


(Arthur Pink, "An Honest Heart")
"Behold, I am vile!" Job 40:4
Sin is the Christian's heaviest burden--and his greatest grief.
"We are lying if we say we have fellowship with God--but go on living in darkness." 1 John 1:6


Repentance is not only a sorrowing for sin--but also a turning away from it; the throwing down of the weapons of our warfare against God.
If we truly love God, we will . . .
forsake our sins,
abandon our idols
and mortify our lusts.
An honest soul cannot do otherwise; anything short of that would be hypocrisy.
The upright man is the one who "fears God--and turns away from evil." Job 1:8

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good one!

That IS tghe life of the believer....repentance and forgiveness.

What comes to mind in the photo is the 'publican'. A man who Jesus said was the justified one while the good church guy was in big trouble because he was 'doing' all the right things but there was no honest picture of himself (the Pharisee)...no repentance.

Keeping God's law in front of ourselves abd being honest and not being self righteous about our works, our faith, our...anything ...is where we should be. Knowing that for all of our wickedness...we are forgiven.

Thanks Wayne!

Dawg said...

The publican is the guy I had in mind!

Yes - the freedom of knowing that our sins have been paid for and we don't need to carry the burden of guilt on my back is something, I think, most Christians struggle with.

Do we goof up - yes, of course.

But repent and get up and keep serving Him!

Anonymous said...

Amen!

Serve Him by serving the neighbor, living out our vocations, and speaking of Him when the opportunity presents itself.