Tuesday May 21, 2024
Jeremiah 31:18
I have heard Ephraim grieving, “You have disciplined me, and I was disciplined,
like an untrained calf; bring me back that I may be restored,
for you are the LORD my God.”
Broken prayers are the best prayers. Do not suppose that you require fine words and elegant phrases in order to affect the Lord. Your tearful eye shall be more mighty a metaphor, and your heavy sigh shall be more eloquent than the polished period and lofty climax of the orator. Only prostrate your soul before God with humble heart and downcast eye, and your Father will accept you. What man among you can stand against his children’s tears? When King Henry II, in days past, was provoked to take up arms against his ungrateful and rebellious son, he besieged him in one of the French towns, and the son, being near to death, desired to see his father and confess his wrongdoing; but the stern old sire refused to look the rebel in the face. The young man, being sorely troubled in his conscience, said to those about him, ‘I am dying; take me from my bed, and let me lie in sackcloth and ashes, in token of my sorrow for my ingratitude to my father.’ Thus he died, and when the tidings came to the old man outside the walls that his boy had died in ashes, repentant for his rebellion, he threw himself upon the earth like king David and said, ‘would God I had died for thee’. The thought of the boy’s broken heart touched the heart of the father. If you, being evil, are overcome by your children’s tears, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven find in your bemoaning’s and confessions an argument for the display of his pardoning love through Christ Jesus our Lord. This is the eloquence which God delights in—the broken heart and the contrite spirit. He heard and he understood all that Ephraim said, and he was moved by it. Note the word ‘surely’—‘I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself.’
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
You must be logged in to post a comment.