"Genuine, spiritual mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God. Repentance is too choice a flower to grow in natures garden. Pearls grow naturally in oysters, but penitence never shows itself in sinners except divine grace works it in them. If you have one particle of real hatred for sin, God must have given it to you, for human nature's thorns never produced a single fig. 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh.'
True repentance has a distinct reference to the Savior. True sorrow for sin is eminently practical. No man may say he hates sin if he lives in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely as a theory but experimentally ~ as a burnt child dreads fire, we shall be as much afraid of it, as a man who has been stopped and robbed is afraid of that thief upon the highway; and we shall shun it ~ shun it in everything~ not in great things only, but in little things, as men shun little vipers and great snakes.
True mourning for sin will make us very jealous over our tongue, lest it should say a wrong word. We shall be very watchful over our daily actions, lest in anything we offend, and each night we shall close the day with painful confessions of shortcomings, and each morning awaken with anxious prayers that this day God would hold us up so that we would not sin against Him.
Sincere repentance is continual. Believers repent until their dying day."
Charles Spurgeon
True repentance has a distinct reference to the Savior. True sorrow for sin is eminently practical. No man may say he hates sin if he lives in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely as a theory but experimentally ~ as a burnt child dreads fire, we shall be as much afraid of it, as a man who has been stopped and robbed is afraid of that thief upon the highway; and we shall shun it ~ shun it in everything~ not in great things only, but in little things, as men shun little vipers and great snakes.
True mourning for sin will make us very jealous over our tongue, lest it should say a wrong word. We shall be very watchful over our daily actions, lest in anything we offend, and each night we shall close the day with painful confessions of shortcomings, and each morning awaken with anxious prayers that this day God would hold us up so that we would not sin against Him.
Sincere repentance is continual. Believers repent until their dying day."
Charles Spurgeon
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