The Best of the Portals of Prayer

Read: 2nd Corinthians 7:5-13 / Psalm 51

“For Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”
2nd Corinthians 7:10

First Grief – Then Joy

“Repent”, was the call of John the Baptist. “Repent” was the stringent note sounded by Jesus in His first public utterance. The first step to God is through the dust of repentance. Without it, there is no faith; without faith there is no love; without love, nothing is worth having. “The whole life of a Christian is to be an ongoing repentance,” Martin Luther wrote in the first of his 95 Theses.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” Jesus said [Matthew 5:6]. We hunger and thirst for righteousness when we realize how far we are from God’s standard: “you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” [Matthew 5:48]. First, the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin. Then He leads us to the righteousness of Christ. In that righteousness, we are righteous in God’s sight.

May 02, 1983