Isaiah 30:15
This is what the Sovereign LORD,
the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.
2 Corinthians 7:10
For godly grief produces a repentance
that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
Remember,
this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is
not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He
could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to
Him is like.
If you ask God to take you back without
it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot
happen.
Very well
then, we must go through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it,
makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we
mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of
Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is
how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one
another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the
letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love
and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it.
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