Pleasant Stone Devotional Meditation: August 13

“O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” ~ Romans 7:24

Until this cry of agony rises from the loved one who has fallen back into the pit, God cannot fully answer the cry of our heart. It isn’t that God doesn’t want to answer before we reach desperation. He does. But he loves too much to do it that way. We would soon become heavenly spoiled brats.

He is about the dreadful and painful task of remaking us in His image so that although we live on earth we will feel at home in heaven when we get there. As long as we are crying “O, pathetic creature that I am! Who shall deliver me from my unmerited mistreatment?” God cannot do one thing for us but wait. And He will do that. We can be sure He will wait. “His mercy endureth forever.” He will stop at nothing, not even waiting to finish the work He has begun in His loved ones.
“I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.” Most of us know that feeling. But have we been crying in the right way? Have we cried from a “broken and contrite heart”? Have we cried the honest, openhearted, desperate cry of the “wretched man” who really wants deliverance from the “body of this death”? Just crying until your “throat is dried” is not enough. God is not waiting for our cry for sympathy and pity in our dilemma here in the bottom of the pit!

He waits only for the genuine cry for deliverance from those who really long to get out of that pit and who are willing to “live in the house of the Lord forever.”

“… who shall deliver me? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord …”