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Dear brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus, part of the growing repentance remnant:
On these holy days this weekend, as REPENT was the key Word preached on Pentecost by Peter, the words of Sister Basilea Schlink, from "Repentance-the Joy-Filled Life" pages 60-61 speak to you and me today:
Dear Lord Jesus, I ask Thee for what I long to have in my life: Thy greatest gift of grace, repentance.
Send me by Thy grace the Spirit of truth that I may recognize myself in Thy light and see the depths of my sin.
Help me through Thy Word that it may convict me as Thy standard for my thinking and speaking, for my ways and doing, for my work and actions.
Keep me from applying my own cheap standards.
Bind me to the measurement of the Sermon on the Mount that I may see myself as Thou doest see me, that I may judge myself as Thou wouldst judge me if I had not repented of my sin.
Give me though Thy Holy Spirit sensitivity to recognize in everything that happens to me especially in Thy chastening----Thy loving admonition to repentance, and that I may respond to it willingly.
Answer my prayer by giving me a broken heart, not one that is self-righteous and self-satisfied, but one that is always able to weep anew over its sins and is then able to rejoice for Thy forgiveness.
I thank Thee that Thou wilt surely answer this prayer, because Thou dost enjoy more than anything else a sinner who repents.
Therefore, Thou dost require tears of repentance from us.
I do not want to look on my hard impenitent heart but upon Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, who came to destroy all self-righteousness and hardness of heart, and who has won for us by His redemption a new heart that is soft and humble.
Make me continue in the prayer of faith until my hard heart has melted, and I am able to weep over the things I have done to God and to my fellow men.
Give me the grace to weep over my old nature, over my hardness, lack of mercy and kindness, my evil speaking about others, my jealousy and envy, my insincerity, my dependence on human beings and the material things of this world.
Bring about a complete change in me.
I thank Thee, Oh Lord, that Thou art calling for what I still do not have, repentance, and that by its coming my love for Thee will grow out of it.
Let me this way---through the redeemed and happy life of a pardoned sinner---praise Thee here on earth and be prepared for Thy return, so that I might enter with Thee in glory to the Marriage of the Lamb. Amen.
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