For My New Year's Resolution!
I pray that the Lord would help all of us to learn to forgive when we are rejected, misunderstood and let down, by believers and unbelievers alike. Christ went through it and we are not above the Master. So may we learn to live in His shadow as we follow His footsteps. - All of you and none of me, my Lord & Saviour!
To find out why this short prayer, read January 1 post)
This is an excerpt from the new uploaded Kindle " Trust & Patience" by J. C. Philpot
The Patient Submission of the soul
The PATIENT SUBMISSION of the soul to the Lord's righteous dealings, and the reasons why it thus submits– "I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause, and executes judgment for me."
The Lord will bring our secret sins to light, and set them in the light of his countenance. And O, what a day and hour is that when the Lord summons up dead and buried sins like so many gaunt spectres, brings them to mind and memory, and lays them with weight and power upon the conscience. Men conceal their sins, not only from others but from themselves– they are not willing to have them brought forth and laid upon their conscience, so as to feel true repentance and godly sorrow for them. They think repentance is so bitter a thing, and that true sorrow for sin is attended with such guilt and distress, that they are glad to escape such bitter feelings and such a fiery furnace.
But the Lord will and does bring forth out of the heart of his people all their secret sins, visibly arrays before their eyes the iniquities they have committed in times gone by– transgressions of their infancy, childhood, youth, and manhood; of heart, and lip, and life. So Job found it– "For you write bitter things against me, and bring up all the sins of my youth." (Job 13:26.) And thus Moses the man of God testified, "You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance." (Psalm. 90:8.) Now though painful, this is necessary to true and sincere repentance. The great Searcher of hearts must lay it bare before sin is felt, or confession made.
There is a covering transgressions, as Adam, by hiding iniquity in the bosom (Job 31:33), as well as rolling it like a sweet morsel under the tongue; but "God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing whether it be good or whether it be evil," (Eccl. 12:14); and then "the morsel which you have eaten shall you vomit up" (Prov. 23:8), and loathe both it and yourself. But though the Lord sets his people's sins in the light of his countenance, and brings them to bear with weight and power upon their conscience, and thus for a time at least lets them sink and fall into distress and grief, he will support them under the heavy load, that they may not altogether be crushed by it.
I do think, and here I must express my opinion, that if there is one single grace more overlooked than another in the church of God at the present day, it is the grace of repentance. Though it lies at the very threshold of vital godliness, though it was one main element in the gospel that Paul preached, for he "testified both to the Jews and also to the Greeks repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 20:21), yet how it is passed by. Men speak of faith, hope, and love; but repentance, contrition, godly sorrow for sin, how much this part of God's work upon the soul is passed by. But the Lord will not pass it by. Books may pass it by; men may pass it by; ministers may pass it by; but the Lord will not pass it by. He will bring out these secret sins and set them in the light of his countenance; and when he lays them upon the sinner's conscience, he will make him feel what an evil and bitter thing it is to have sinned against the Lord.
