CONTACT US | WEB VERSION DAILY DEVOTION Devotion - October 3, 2014 Daily devotion from Hymn 304, verse 5. See series: Devotions DEVOTION - OCTOBER 3, 2014 Hymn of the Week I, a sinner, come to you With a penitent confession. Savior, show me mercy, too; Grant for all my sins remission. Let these words my soul relieve— Jesus sinners does receive. (Christian Worship: A Lutheran Hymnal – Hymn 304, verse 5) Mark Twain, in his novel, Huckleberry Finn, writes: “A man’s conscience takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides.” Anyone who has ever wrestled with a guilty conscience knows what Mark Twain is talking about. The big argument you had in the afternoon doesn’t go away when you go to bed. You lie in the dark, all awake, going over the angry words you spoke, again and again, all the while wishing you could take them back. Your conscience torments you. We’re all bothered by our consciences from time to time. In reality, though, we probably aren’t bothered as much as we should be. Imagine if every time we disobeyed God, our consciences would cause us to lose sleep. All of us would soon be zombies. Perhaps that is a wake-up call for us to think a little bit more seriously about what God says concerning right and wrong. Where is there relief from a guilty conscience? How can we sleep soundly at night, unbothered by the little voice that cries out about all the ways we’ve offended God? Maybe you think that unburdening your conscience would be as easy as ignoring that little voice, but an offended conscience is not easily silenced. You can try exercises in self-forgiveness, but in the end they offer no real relief. You can make your life so busy that you don’t have time to think about what you did, but in the smallest quiet moment your conscience will be right there to reawaken your anxiety once more. Is it even possible to sleep soundly at night? The words, “Jesus sinners does receive” show us God’s way of unburdening our consciences. God invites us to confess all of our sins, all of the times we’ve messed up, all of the things we regret and wish we could undo. He does so, so that he might give us relief. When your conscience torments you, take whatever is bothering you to Jesus. Remember, he receives sinners! He receives people whose consciences are weighed down. He delights in those who come to him with nothing but the admission that they’ve done wrong. As the hymn, “Jesus Sinners Does Receive,” says: I, a sinner, come to you With a penitent confession. Savior, show me mercy, too; Grant for all my sins remission. Let these words my soul relieve— Jesus sinners does receive. Prayer: Lord Jesus, you joyfully receive sinners. Let your forgiveness be the relief for our consciences that our souls may rest in you. Amen. From September through December 2014, the Daily Devotions on Thursday and Friday are based on the Word of God expressed in a Christian Hymn selected each week. All devotions in this series are located here. Todays Devotion is brought to you by WELS and WhatAboutJesus Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 10:58:54 +0000
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