DAILY DEVOTION: "God's Kindness"

Day 8: God’s kindness

Scripture: (Romans 2:4) “…do you show contempt for the riches of His kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”                                                                                     

Author:   Laurie Steele

Recently a dear friend got a splinter in the ball of her foot, which troubled her with quite a bit of pain and inconvenience over a two-week plus period. She initially pulled the large piece of wood from her foot, but this “small puncture wound resulted in wearing special shoes, multiple daily soakings, and two trips to the doctor due to a feeling (a knowing) that “there is something still in there.”

As I listened to her account the Holy Spirit pricked my heart with “This is your sin.” As the body works wonderfully to fester and push a splinter out, so the Lord brings me to conviction that “there is something still there.” Sins such as self-righteousness, pride, unforgiveness, love of comfort, wasting time that take “another pair of eyes” to help pull out. I approach the holy throne of the LORD and cry out as David did in Psalm 51 – “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your unfailing love; according to Your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones You have crushed rejoice.”

How can my heart not rejoice? Ann Oskamp states, “Repentance, turning around, is the only way to be ushered into grace.” What a kind and loving Father, full of grace and truth! Now I may approach His throne with a clean conscious, with worship, with supplication, FOR HE has “washed away all my iniquity and cleansed me from my sin.” How cleansing, how praiseworthy to know “all that was in there” has been removed!