The Best of the Portals of Prayer

Read: Proverbs 31:10-31 // Luke 7:36-50

“Her sins, which are many, are forgiven – for she loved much.”
Luke 7:47

What Produces Repentance

From the story of the sinful woman who anoints Jesus’ feet we learn what produces true repentance. If you would go out into the open in below-zero weather and take a piece of ice and crush it, it would remain ice. You may pound it into a thousand pieces, but as long as you stay in that cold atmosphere, every fragment will remain frozen. But bring the ice into a warm house, and soon it will melt and turn into water.
A man may try to crush his cold heart of sin. He may set his sins before himself and dwell on all their enormity and still not become penitent. There may be elaborate confession, a bowed humility, a voluntary reformation, but no godly sorrow.
But come to our Lord Jesus and His sweet Gospel. From the cold of winter, come into the summer of God’s love. Let your frozen spirit bake in the warmth of the Sun of Righteousness. Listen to the Savior’s words, which melted the woman’s heart into penitence, which caused her eyes to flow with tears and her hands to pour out the precious ointment. Then we, too, will find that we have been forgiven much, and we will love much.

July 22, 1947