Mercy

"...Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" --Romans 2:4

I got to spend some time with a great friend last night (we baked cookies for me and Stephan's mechanic!). In the course of our conversation this passage came up. I recounted to my friend how these verses had impacted my heart.

When I first read them, it was like a dart flew at me and lodged in my sternum. It didn't hurt, but, well, I was really aware of this dart protruding from my chest. "Do you presume on the riches of [God's] kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that [this] is meant to lead you to repentance?" Wow. Did I ever do that? Did I ever ignore the conviction of the Holy Spirit and chuckle to myself, thinking I was getting away with sin, thinking by stealth I had subverted God's rightful response to those sins? Um...yes. All the time. And when there are consequences of those sins, or God brings correction through my husband or friends, or he yanks an idol out of my life, my response is offense. "God!" I say "How could you?" R.C. Sproul talks about this in his book The Holiness of God. When God does act against our sin, we're shocked because his default is to be merciful with us, giving us time to repent before he punishes. How often I abuse and exploit this time and persist in my sin...my response should be repentance.

There's a prayer in the book Valley of Vision called Need for Grace that expresses what I felt after I recieved my dart:

Return again with showers of converting grace
to a poor gospel-abusing sinner.
Help my soul to breathe after holiness,
After a constant devotion to You,
After growth in grace more abundantly every day.