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Repenting our sins brings Joy
Stanza 3 of Isaac Watts Joy To The World tells us:
No more let sins and sorrow grow. Nor thorns infest the ground.
He comes to make His blessings flow, Far as the curse is found…
Repentance is twofold
First, repentance is expressing our heart–felt sorrow for the wrongs we have done.
Without this sorrow for past sins, it is not Repentance.
Second, Repentance is intentionally turning away from our lives of sin, or from specific sins, and going God’s way (definitely a linguistic sense of the180–degree turn).
Without repentance, both sorrow and turning, JOY will be absent from our lives.
All because of the devil’s empty promises
Sin promises happiness, but it gives only regret, sorrow and frustration—when sin promises happiness, it’s an empty promise.
John 8 says that Satan is, most of all, a LIAR. It has always been this way, always will be this way: the curse Isaac Watts wrote of in stanza 3.
But Christ’s blessing—especially His forgiveness of sin—flows as far as the curse flows.
As long as there is Christ the King, His forgiveness will reach as far as sin, and will bless anyone willing to repent of his or her sin. In such repentance, there is JOY; without it, even happiness will be hard to come by.
NEXT TIME: JOY has three companions—Truth, Grace and Righteousness.
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