Dear Friends of “Dial Daily Bread,”
Can we lowly, unworthy mortals do anything that can have an effect on the Lord, the Ruler of the universe, to make Him happy or unhappy?
We read that when King David, the anointed ruler of God's people Israel, had committed a double crime of adultery and then murder to cover it up, but "the thing that David had done displeased the Lord" (2 Sam. 11:27). When we read the entire story we see how the displeasure of the Lord was realized in the terrible disasters that befell David's house; not that God did them all directly, but He was forced to withdraw His former blessings on David. But the fact that God was "displeased" with David did not mean that now God hated him or cursed him forever. David had plenty of troubles thereafter, but the Lord still loved the poor sinner.
David's two penitential psalms make clear that he knew that he had come within a tiny fraction of losing his soul forever: "Do not take Your Holy Spirit from me," David pleads with anguished tears (Psalm 51:11). Also, David's Psalm 32 is the prayer that every one of us sinners can pray over and over again when we remember that a wise writer has said that the books of heaven record the sins that we would commit if we had had the opportunity.
That means that it is our privilege to pray the Lord to forgive that long, long list of sins that we would have committed if we had had the opportunity! That is "corporate repentance," repenting of sins that we may not have actually done in the flesh but which we would have done if the Lord had not held us by the hand and kept us from diving into that deep, bottomless hole (cf. Prov. 22:14).
No matter how you or any of us looks back onto his life, we can humbly thank the Savior that He has held us by the hand in times of peril. For myself, I look back to my teenage years and just humbly thank the Lord for saving me from utter ruin. I could never have become a minister of the gospel if He had not saved me. I think over and over of Isaiah 54:17: "This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from Me, Says the Lord." Yes! Whatever "righteousness" there ever was at any time, it was "of the Lord"! Just the mercy and much more abounding grace of the Lord Jesus (cf. Rom. 5:20).
Eternity will not be long enough for me to praise Him!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: June 6, 2008.
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