(This is a little unedited sample of something I am writing currently: God Never fails)

          The older I get the clearer it becomes to me what it centrally means to know God or have a relationship with Him. This year my reading of John Calvin sermons was one such means of grace to mature me in this most blessed goal that my whole life it shaped for; to Glorify God by knowing and enjoying Him forever in the communion of the Spirit of Christ, my heavenly Bridegroom.

          To anyone acquainted with reading the sermons of Calvin knows the typical prayer that he most often prays at the end of every sermon. In this prayer that he prays at almost every sermon he says something to this degree: may we grow in our recognition of all our sins and mature by quickly repenting of then in sincerity before our Good God. This might not seen like a big deal to some, but it did become a big deal to me when I read this at the end of every sermon Calvin preached! I found my self very convicted over my sins and growing in more sincere repentance before my good God. During this time I found that despite my original hesitation, that making such intense inquiry of every sin of mine and repentance of them quickly, would cause me to feel very shameful and thus more distance from God in relationship, yet I discovered the opposite! I found my love and experience of knowing God's precious presence grew in depths and intensity that I have rarely known. Then if hit me! This is the centrality of what our relationship to God is, particularly here on earth, a broken heart finding its rest at the cross of Jesus Christ.

          A point that most Christians do not recognize to its depths is that God's love comes only to us through mercy. This is because our good God made it and set it up this way! He did not have to set it up this way, but He did. Therefore, it must very important to God our Father to have set up our fellowship with Him in this way, when He had to go so far out of His way to make it happen! We should then make it our utmost priority to fellowship with our Father in the manner He has set up: To know His love by His mercy: meaning we are to be broken hearted all days of our lives! 1 John 4:9, "In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

          What does this mean for us in practical terms here on earth for us saints? It means we know God's love though the practical means of daily and sincerely repenting of all our sins along with admitting all our weakens at the cross of Jesus Christ. Therefore, by this we experience the loving arms of God our Father holding us. This is our relationship with our good God, to stray from this in continuance or degree is to lose the core and primary way we have relationship with our blessed God. God's desire, therefore, is that we meet him hourly in His arms of love though finding forgiveness by our sincere repentance and brokenness! According to the scripture it is utter foolishness to expect, even as a Christian, the deep experience of the Father's love if you do not continually come to Him by recognizing all your sin and faithfully repenting of if at the foot of the cross, in all faith in believing. Do you do this my friend? How often do you really face up to all your sin? How hard to you even try to find out and discover all your sin so that you can quickly repent of it and turn from it by the power of experiencing Christ's free mercy?

        In my day and age people sinfully and stupidly think that God's love is free no matter what they do. But this is not so! It is His mercy that is free! God's mercy by Christ's bloodshed is free and through this mercy God's love, in this sense, is free and freely given. Those who desire to experience God's love without brokenhearted repentance, finding mercy bowed down in the dust at the foot of the cross, will not find God's love as free as they had thought on that Great Day of Judgment! Dear friend do you not understand that the basic message of the gospel is that God's love is for all who believe in His free mercy. God is saying to the world: I will give My love unsparingly to guilty sinners who believe in My free mercy; and this free mercy has a Name, My Son Jesus Christ! Repent and believe while today is still called today and you will know that infinite love is!

          OH, how I have come to grasp that all my best moments of enjoying God's communion and fellowship are those when I am most brokenhearted. Yet my sinful heart seems to trick me in believing the opposite far more often than what I would like. Why is it only after we have sinned and experienced truly incredible moments of God's fellowship, as we find His love wrapping us in our true confession of repentance and throwing ourselves in His strong arms finally admitting how weak we are, that we realized what fools we have been for not having a broken heart before God until now? Why does it take our sinning and then true repentance for us to again realize that if we want the strength and satisfaction that comes from a deep relationship with God our Father that we must be utterly broken and humble coming to our Father as helpless beggars and children? This I believe is the doctrine we learn from why the Bible calls King David a man after God's own Heart. To be after a person's heart is one way of poetically saying that David was entering with God on the truest and deepest level of relationship as one could. Therefore, what do you suppose does the bible reveal as the secret for this deepest form of fellowship with our Good God? A broken and contrite heart! This was the main focus of the scripture concerning David's action toward His God. David was shown to have deep fear and reverence of His God. He was shown to be consumed with love toward His God by daily, nightly and even hourly meditating on His Good God. But David's broken and contrite heart toward God I believe was that silver lining what the scriptures reveled as that particular aspect, which admitted David into such sweet fellowship with God, that God calls him a man after His Heart. Even David said this himself, Psalm 51:17, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart -- These, O God, You will not despise."

         I have come to know that a broken, a very broken heart, one that comes to God as a helpless beggar is that silver thread that keeps all other aspects of Christianity sincere and powerful, especially that of: true fellowship with God, love toward your neighbored and that which turns theology and doctrine into personal communion with God. There is a prayer that I often pray and it is that God would not take any good dream or godly desire for ministry of mine any farther as I would have a utterly broken heart before Him and His blessed Son. If there is one aspect of my Christianity that I wish I could grow more in it is that I would be a more broken and humbled hearted man toward my Good God and Savior. In this I know I would have the deepest level of fellowship with God and that my studies in theology would more easily transform into loving communion with my Savior. I pray you would have this passion in your life as well.

          1 Corinthians 13:13, "Now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." Here on earth our action toward God is faith, hope and love. But when Heaven comes we will have no use of faith and hope since seeing Christ face to face is the fulfillment for both of those. Only love will remain. As for now I wish to deal with faith since it corresponds more closely with our subject. Faith is mostly concerned and centered with our repentance under the foot of the cross, both for salvation and hourly relationship with God! Faith believes Christ was the Son of God sent by Him to take away the sins of the world and that through His bloodshed God's free love comes to us, both for salvation and hourly communion of repentance each and every day we live here on earth and sin as blood bough saints. Faith in repentance is that act of the saints by which we actively take hold of Jesus Christ as free mercy and, through this have the delight and love of the Father poured in our souls. For those who wonder why they do not experience the love of God as they would like, I would ask how often do you abhor yourself in the dust by recognizing all your sin and in brokenness repent of all your wrongs believing in the secured and free mercy of Jesus Christ? If you engage in relationship with God in this way, as He has termed out, then you will feel the love and delight of the Father shown abroad in your heart as you desire it to be.

          In heaven we will not need to exercise faith both because we will see ourselves in heaven dining with our Blessed Savior and, therefore, impossible for disbelief to arise concerning God's free mercy and promises. Also because we will no longer sin we will no longer need to daily repent of our sins as we are committing them now. Also our hope will be achieved, for hope is mainly concerned with the promise of all spiritual blessing realized by have ourselves united to Christ in heaven delighting in Him face to face. Therefore, only loving our good God with holy affections remains. But there is more to this love than what meets the eye.

          Isaiah 57:15, "For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: "I dwell ...With him who has a contrite and humble spirit, To revive the spirit of the humble, And to revive the heart of the contrite ones." God will dwell in heaven and have intimate fellowship only with humble and brokenhearted saints. But how can we be brokenhearted if we are no longer sinning? Yes, this is true, and God will wipe away all our tears with His own finger of love. Yet we will still see hell across that great gulf and see the persons we knew burning in God's fierce vengeance. We will be continually aware of what our fates should have been for the sins we committed! This awareness will not bring broken fear, despair or pain but broken beautiful humbleness. As the saints sit and commune with the King of the Ages they will sing a song that I believe would closely resemble a song the group Delirious wrote: "What would I have done if it wasn't for Jesus," Amen! One reason why our fellowship on earth is so heavily concentrated around our daily repentance of sin and confession of our weakness is because it is preparing us for that ultimate place of humble love that divinely fits a saint to dwell with the Most High God, who's Name is Yahweh and His Son Jesus Christ the Magnificent! Praise God He has done everything we need to prepare us for Glory, to be closer to Him than what the greatest love story ever wrote could have ever hope to describe.

"All gracious affections that are a sweet odor to Christ, and that fill the soul of a Christian with a heavenly sweetness are brokenhearted affections. A truly Christian love, either to God or men, is a humbled brokenhearted love. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humbled desires: their hope is a humbled hope; and their joy, even when it is unspeakable, and full of glory, is a humble brokenhearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit, and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behavior." (Jonathan Edwards, Religous Affections)

          Therefore, we need to make it our highest aim: to ready ourselves for humbled love in heaven, that the Father has designed for us to have, by striving to know God in relationship now, through hourly broken repentance believing by Christ Jesus' free mercy God's love is ours to hold and cherish! Are you in real satisfying relationship with God, or a make-believe relationship devised on your own foolish heart's terms? Now is the time to search your heart.