Day 34 – A PERSONAL PARDON

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Moment of Transformation:

  • Pray for the items listed in your Transformational Journal
  • Pray for the transformation of the five individuals/families you chose
  • Pray that your colleagues will be transformed by Christ’s HOPE
  • Pray for your transformation in order to become a defender of God’s truth.

A PERSONAL PARDON

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.. Psalms 5:17-18 NKJV

We should remember that all make mistakes; even men and women who have had years of experience sometimes err; but God does not cast them off because of their errors; to every erring son and daughter of Adam He gives the privilege of another trial.

Jesus loves to have us come to Him just as we are, sinful, helpless, dependent. We may come with all our weakness, our folly, our sinfulness, and fall at His feet in penitence. It is His glory to encircle us in the arms of His love, and to bind up our wounds, to cleanse us from all impurity.

Here is where thousands fail: they do not believe that Jesus pardons them personally, individually. They do not take God at His word. It is the privilege of all who comply with the conditions to know for themselves that pardon is freely extended for every sin. Put away the suspicion that God’s promises are not meant for you. They are for every repentant transgressor. Strength and grace have been provided through Christ to be brought by ministering angels to every believing soul. None are so sinful that they cannot find strength, purity, and righteousness in Jesus, who died for them. He is waiting to strip them of their garments stained and polluted with sin, and to put upon them the white robes of righteousness; He bids them live and not die.

Can you believe that when the poor sinner longs to return, longs to forsake his sins, the Lord sternly withholds him from coming to His feet in repentance? Away with such thoughts! Nothing can hurt your own soul more than to entertain such a conception of our heavenly Father…. Come with your whole heart to Jesus, and you may claim His blessing.

He who through His own atonement provided for man an infinite fund of moral power will not fail to employ this power in their behalf.   

Ellen G. White, The Faith I Live By, p. 134 – May 8

Quote of the Day “No salvation without regeneration – no spiritual life without a new birth – no heaven without a new heart.” J. C. Ryle

Did You Know?

Ps. 51 is a penitential psalm. It was composed by David “after his great sin [with Bath-sheba], in the anguish of remorse and self-abhorrence” (Ed 165). It is an expression of his “repentance, when the message of reproof came to him from God,” intended “to be sung in the public assemblies of his people, … that others might be instructed by the sad history of his fall” (PP 724, 725).

Going Deeper

Forgiveness involves a creative work: “Create in me a pure heart.” This is not a creative work in the sense of creation-out-of-nothing, but a creative work in the sense of bringing order and peace where chaos and hopeless turbulence were before. As in Gen 1, light is created to overcome darkness; days emerge from what had been endless night; life emerges where there had been only surging matter; purpose and blessing are given to human beings, themselves created into an order of life that had not existed before; the ceaseless roaring of the primeval sea gives way to the ordered world, and God and man pause for a sabbath to celebrate its completion. The creative work of God is the prelude to his blessing. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17, NIV; cf. Gal 6:15; John 3:3, 6; 1 Pet 1:23).

Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 51–100, vol. 20, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1998), 30–31.

Question…

What is holding you back for praying like King David, “Create in me a pure heart”?

This Week’s Homework

  1. Memorize: “Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.” Jeremiah 29:12 NKJV
  2. Take the invitation for the special outreach event, that the church will be hosting, to the five individuals/families that you are praying for.