What's the use of getting up early to pray if your sins have broken your connection with God?
That's the problem that brought Jesus to this world, in order to solve it. He is our Savior FROM sin. He welcomes sinners to come, just as they are. "But the Bible says that the Lord is seeking people 'whose heart is perfect toward Him,' and I am not perfect!" (2 Chron. 16:9), someone says. That's the very reason why He invites you to come have a visit with Him, so you can talk to Him and He can communicate with you in response. In fact, the people whom He especially invites for such a reasoning session with Him are those whose "sins [are] as scarlet, ... red like crimson," for He says, "Come now, and let us reason together" (Isa. 1:18).
But someone objects, "The more I pray, the more sinful I feel myself to be!" Hold on, don't run away: that is how it should be, for the first work the Holy Spirit does when He comes to anyone is to "reprove ... of sin" (John 16:8). The truth is, that's a happy experience for you, for it is first-hand experiential evidence that God loves you individually, personally. That same passage in Isaiah that speaks of the Lord inviting us to come for a reasoning session with Him tells us what our problem is. We are "sick," like having a spiritual cancer: "Your head is already covered with wounds, and your heart and mind are sick. From head to foot there is not a healthy spot in your body" (vss. 5, 6, GNB).
That cannot be Bad News if you believe the Good News that you have a Physician "nigh at hand." If we never know our true condition, we are like the symphony orchestra conductor who collapsed in a heart attack on the podium before a vast crowd of concertgoers and died in the midst of his orchestra--we need the Holy Spirit to tell us the truth about our spiritual health before it's too late.
"But it's painful for me to hear my Heavenly Physician tell me the truth about my heart!" That's because you don't stay on your knees long enough for Him to heal you. You rush away to some "busy-ness" before you give the Great Physician time to heal your heart wounded with sin. When the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin, you say "Amen!" You confess He is telling the truth; "I acknowledge my transgressions. ... Blot out all my iniquities, ... take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation" (Psalm 51:3-12).
Let Him do it! Don't resist Him!
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: April 24, 2001.Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.
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