Psalm 130: 1-4
From the depths of despair, O Lord, I cry for Your help. Hear my cry, O Lord. Pay attention to my prayer. Lord, if You kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive? But You offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear You.
As we examine our lives and our ways in the light of God's ways, we find that in many ways we come up short of what God wants for us, and even of what we want to be, ourselves. There is no way that we can always be and do and treat others perfectly; we will find ourselves resorting to our flesh and reacting with sarcasm or hurtful comments; or we think that no one's watching, or we excuse our behavior by blaming someone else. Or any of a great number of ways we fail to show Love to ourselves, to God and to others.
God knows this. That's why He gave us The Law, so we would know how far we fall short. Then He gave us the Perfect Sacrifice, to not only cover over, but to actually take away our sins. We are all born "by nature, vessels of wrath" (Ephesians 2:3). But God has provided a "new birth" for us, in placing His Holy Spirit into our dead human spirit, making us alive spiritually. He does this when we recognize that Jesus is our Christ, Who took our death on the Cross for us. Each of us deserves death ("the wages of sin is death," Romans 6:23), and Jesus was born as a human to die our human death in our place: "God made Him Who had no sin to be sin for us," (II Corinthians 5:21): "to be sin," take our sin-nature on Himself; "for us," in our place, each one of us.
If you have never admitted to God that Jesus took your place on the Cross, then ask Him to grant you the gift of faith to believe. "For we are saved by grace," God's undeserved blessings, "through faith," believing, trusting God implicitly, "which is not of yourselves," we cannot do this in our own selves, "it is the gift of God, not of works" (Ephesians 2:8-9). God draws us and gives us the faith to believe His Truth; anything we do ("works") is polluted by our sin-nature, and is not acceptable to God. That's why Jesus said that "no one can come to Me except that God draws him." But God also said that, "If you seek Me, you will find Me, if you seek Me with your whole heart."
So I pray for all of you who have yet to be born into God's family, that He would draw you by giving you the desire to know His Truth, and to grant you that faith to believe. Then you will have God's power to help you do the right thing, every time.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
