HH, Sir Godfrey Gregg D.Div
“Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” Jeremiah 17:5
“ How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? for the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man.” Jeremiah 31:22
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9
How numerous are the points of departure from God? Directly opposite experiences and circumstances may prove equally disastrous to my truest and inmost being success and misfortune; the mind and the body; company and solitude; self-pleasing and self-denial.
Each day, each minute brings with it its own allurements!
And how plausible and specious the points of departure are! The heart is the most deceitful of all things — it has a hundred arguments to urge in favour of yielding to the temptation.
For how terribly momentous and fatal the points of departure are! Increasingly they diverge from the good land which the Lord our God cares for, and from the pilgrim road to the Celestial City. Deeper and deeper they plunge into ravines and dark forests and quagmires — a salt land and not inhabited — until the conscience is seared and the heart is hopeless.
O God, preserve my feet in Your effective ways of peace! O God, have mercy on me who has wandered far, and restore me to the paths of righteousness, for Your Name’s sake!
