ALPHA MAAMA (A.M.)

Friday March 24, 2017

“I hate the sin that made thee mourn”

"For I acknowledge my transgressions,

And my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned,

And done this evil in Your sight—

 That You may be found just when You speak,

 And blameless when You judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,

And in sin my mother conceived me." - Psalms 51:3-5

True Repentance

The Nature of Repentance

Elements in repentance – (continued)

3)  Being humbled, sorrow and regret fill our hearts. It is both natural and necessary that we should long that what has been, might not have been; that we should grieve and mourn over the despite we have gone to God, to others and to ourselves. How we regret the wasted privileges and the wasted years.

4)  But this is not yet repentance. For these characteristics only pave the way to produce a distaste of sin for what it is. This is part of the conviction, that we taste the real nature of our sin. It is part of a divine illumination, that we see it all that ugly horror. We do not merely regret inconveniences and its consequences in our own experience, but we find ourselves crying out with David:

For I know my transgressions,

and my sin this ever before me.

Against you, you only, have I sinned

and done what is evil in your sight…

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,

and in sin did my mother conceive me.

(Psalm 51:3 – 5)

And we say with the hymn writer William Cowper:

I hate the sin that made thee mourn

and drove thee from my breast.

Challenge:

How do we view sin? Is it just a “mistake” or as we call it in Tongan, “humipato’a” – as if it was just a “slip-up”? Oh, that we develop (by God’s help) a true, eye-opening, abhorrence of it! To see it as Ugly and repulsive as God sees it! So often, we are so blinded to it and take it so casually that we “adopt” it as a “black sheep” and not treat it as a PLAGUE! – contagious, evil and to be avoided as if our very survival depended on it!

Today in Christian History: FRANCIS ASBURY, America’s first Methodist bishop, PREACHED HIS LAST SERMON, On this day, 24 March 1816, he delivered his last sermon. Although he was so weak that he had to lie on a table in the Richmond, Virginia, church that was hosting him, he spoke for an hour, taking as his text, “For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth” (Romans 9:28). The seventy-one year old bishop died a week later.

Memory Verse:

Pea hae homou loto, ‘o ‘ikai ko homou kofu, pea mou foki kia Sihova ko homou ‘Otua; he ko e Angalelei ia mo e ‘Alo‘ofa, Tuai-ki-he-houhau, pea Fonu-‘i-he-kelesi, pea ‘oku ne momou ‘i he kovi. – Sioeli 2:13

So rend your heart, and not your garments;

Return to the Lord your God,

For He is gracious and merciful,

Slow to anger, and of great kindness;

And He relents from doing harm. – Joel 2:13

Bible Reading Plan: (52 weeks; 5 days a week)

Week 12 – Deuteronomy 6-26; Psalm 5, 115, 6; Luke 7-11