According to 2 Cor. 7: 8-13 there is a worldly sorrow and a Godly sorrow. Only the Godly sorrow produces true repentance. Even though the Scriptures exhort us to repentance, it is necessarily God's gift. Only by the will and mercy of God are we able to understand and acknowledge the magnitude of our sin and thus exercise true repentance. Only in this way can God be glorified. And so, it should be our constant prayer that He would make us to understand our sin that put the Son on the cross.

From Death to Life

Reading in John 11 where Jesus brings Lazarus back to life. Lazarus had been dead four days and the narrative indicates that Jesus was in no hurry. This was to be a sign-miracle of the choosing of the Son of God. Sometimes, I feel like a Lazarus who needs a resurrection, a rising, from having been dead for several days or, as my friend John Bunyan would have termed it, in a "slough." I think I have had hundreds of resurrections and they have all been according to God's timing. His sovereignty becomes obvious.

What do we expect when we pray?

When we pray do we really expect God to be listening? I'm not saying that God may not be entering in with us in prayer. No, do we have the confidence, faith, that we are in His presence and that He cares to make a difference?

Or are we just reciting some words because that's what we're supposed to do? Is it just an exercise, a part of regimen, because it's expected of us as Christians? And when we recount instances of "answered prayer" do we really believe that God intervened in those instances? Or do we really think that we somehow produced whatever took place? i.e., We strived long enough, we did the right things, it would have come about eventually, we were careful to say a prayer along the way to whereever we needed to get to.

When we pray it should be the major event of our day. We should come away from it impacted and catching our breath, sweating, even. And as we look back on days of prayer, periods of prayer, a life of prayer, we should be Moses people; we knew there was a radiance in us when we were meeting with God.