the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
John Gossner's Treasury
Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. Jeremiah 31:3. Let thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me. Psalms 40:11. But as for me I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy. Psalms 5:7.
This is the answer to you when the heart, filled with wonder, asks. How can the Lord love such a wicked, sinful and unworthy being as I? Out of pure mercy, without your merit, says the Lord. I loved you even from the beginning when I saw you in your sins. Before we ever existed. His eyes saw how wicked and ungrateful we would be. Yet He Himself assures us that He loved us in this miserable and abominable condition, and that He in love, mercy, and goodness, has drawn us unto Himself. What kind of goodness is that? How can it love that which is wicked? Ah! it does not love the wickedness which is within us, but the good which it will work in us. It loves to make that which is wicked, good. Hence, if you feel thoroughly wicked and unworthy of His goodness, do not on that account push His blessed hand away, but believe and be fully convinced that His good hand is upon you to make you good, pure and holy, such as, according to His purpose, you shall be. Therefore, do not hinder it by an ill-timed humility. If you love that which is good, then let the good and gracious hand of God make you good, prepare, strengthen and establish you. Do you wish to remain wicked? You will remain so forever if you do not lay hold of His goodness and permit it to work in you. Rather pray with David (Psalms 5:8), as quoted above. He also felt himself an unworthy sinner. Resolve just because of your weakness as he resolved, "I will come into Thy house. I will seek Thy presence, Thy face, trusting in the multitude of Thy mercy. " ’’To come into His house" means to enter one’s own heart; for He dwells in the heart as His house. He who in spirit and in truth prays there and tarries with Him, shall experience His mercy and truth. There He makes His face to shine upon us.
Into His presence let us haste
To thank Him for His favors past;
To Him address in joyful songs,
The praise that to His name belongs.
