M. Basilea Schlink

“The spirit of contrition and repentance has by and large become foreign to us. Repentance implies a turning to God. Instead of repenting, however, we demand that God adjust to our modern concepts.Because the spirit of contrition and repentance is missing, church services , evangelizations and other Christian meetings often lack power and cannot move the listeners to tears of contrition. How very much we, the members of the Body of Christ, have hardened our hearts!We no longer want to see sin for what it is. When God is dishonoured and blasphemed and His commandments are abandoned, we do not regard it as such. Nor do we see that when God Himself is declared dead in His Church and His commandments are no longer regarded as binding, these are the signs of the times that Jesus said we should watch for.”

“We are apathetic and indifferent towards our sins, and we are usually not disturbed by them at all. We are more likely to weep over what is done to us, or over difficult leadings. We weep over our sorrows, troubles and disappointments. Each one of us does so, for this is our human nature.But not everyone comes to the point of true contrition and repentance and weeps over his sins. Such reactions are foreign to human nature. The human heart has a way of thinking that it is always in the right and has no need to weep over its sins. By nature, we are self-confident and impenitent. We blame others or even accuse God when we do not understand His ways.”

“He has been waiting for us, waiting in vain, and His fatherly heart was filled with grief. When He then sought to call us home through chastenings, we rebelled against Him and His actions and again refused to come home to the Father. What else should He do with us?”