Here is invariably a spiritual fact: Our spirit is released according to the degree of our brokenness.

is most vital that the Lord breaks us.

The books talked about it [the heart] as if it were a sump pump stuck down in the muck and mire of somebody's backyard. Never in all my scientific reading did I encounter anything that talked about a broken heart. Never did I read anything about what the heart felt, how it felt or why it felt. Feeling and knowing weren't important, only understanding

But repentance isn't supposed to feel good. In fact, if it does, you're probably doing it wrong.

The secret heart is fair devotion's temple; there the saint, even on that living altar, lights the flame of purest sacrifice, which burns unseen, not unaccepted.

A sense of our inadequacies and failings, a recognition that we could be better people than we usually are, is one of the forces for moral growth and improvement in our society. An appropriate sense of guilt makes people try to be better. But an excessive sense of guilt, a tendency to blame ourselves for things which are clearly not our fault, robs us of our self-esteem and perhaps of our capacity to grow and to act.

Any God worth worshipping should prefer honest anger to hypocritical praise.

Let not a libation of tears be the only offering at the shrine of Jesus; let us also rejoice with joy unspeakable. If we have need to lament our sin, how much more to rejoice at our pardon!

The work of God's Holy Spirit begins with bruising. In order to be saved, the fallow ground must be plowed up, the hard heart must be broken, the rock must be split apart.

Repentance is not true repentance unless it is specific and intelligent. We don't sin in the abstract; we sin in concrete, particular ways. Since that is true, we need to take an honest look at our lives—both heart and behavior. Spiritual awareness is a blessing. Through it, we can experience change.

While it may sound spiritual, the common practice of telling people to forget their lives over the past six days so that they can truly worship God for the next hour smacks more of Greek dualism than a biblical view of a spiritual person. Our lives over the past six days are what God is most interested in! A recognition of the Heat we all face will lead us to bring our messy lives before him.

Ah! Happy they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his path And cleanse his soul from sin? How else but through a broken heart May the Lord Christ enter in?