“But just here lies our main evasion, the one we have all practiced a thousand times: like the Israelites indicted by Jeremiah, we ‘forget God.’ (Jer 2:32; 13:25; 18:15). For weeks at a time we go through the motions, never seriously attending to God, never focusing on God, never--with all the weight of mind and heart--turning ourselves over to God. The thought that by such negligence we keep on wounding the only being who loves us with a perfect and expensive love, the thought that we are deeply entangled not only in our sin but also in the bloody remedy for it--these thoughts become bearable and routine. At last we put them away and sink into functional godlessness. When we are in that state, God does not seem very real to us. So we do not pray. The less we pray, the less real God seems to us. And the less God seems real to us, the duller our sense of responsibility becomes, and thus the duller our sense of ignoring God becomes.”
That is so true of me! But we have hope in a good and gracious God who pursues us.
“Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way.”
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