Roots by the River

This is an excerpt from Dynamic of Service by Paget Wilkes. Confession involves self-judgment. It is much easier to ask for pardon in a general way than to confess our sins in all their naked shame. If a child has done wrong, it is much less difficult to ask to be forgiven than openly and ingenuously to confess the wrong. I came across an instance of this while on my recent furlough. I had been taking a series of meetings on Scriptural holiness. At the close, a lady came to me saying that one sentence I had spoken had set her soul at liberty from a bondage of some years’ standing. On my making inquiry as to what it might be, she replied, “You said if God has been convicting you and revealing your inward sin and need, whatever you do, don’t cry for deliverance! I was so astonished at this amazing statement that I looked up, wondering whatever you would say next, when you proceeded thus: The Word of God does not say, ‘If we cry for deliverance, God is faithful and just to forgive us...

This was written by my wife Bessie for The Hammer magazine. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:19-20) What is it that helps us set our hearts at rest in His presence? The preceding verse (verse 18) establishes the context: “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” The immediate context is that if we see a brother in need and we have no pity, the question is, “How can the love of God be in us?” Years ago, just after Mother’s Day, a friend (the wife of a pastor) told me that her young daughter had defied her and gone to a public park. She was wondering how to handle this when the child returned. My friend had been folding clean laundry and was about to take it to her daughter’s room when she remembered the loving card received on Mother’s Day. She put it on top of the ...