December 13 – Come As You Are

Hope for Today: A Daily Devotion from Reasons for Hope*Jesus

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“Return, you backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.” Jeremiah 3:22

“When he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” Luke 15:20

O backsliding child and lost sheep, hear the voice of your loving Father and Shepherd, crying earnestly, “Return! Return!” Do not run on in the broad way with the world any longer. Are you not tired yet of the husks of the world? Do you feel no troubles in your soul? Shall not these drive you to God?

Lo! Your Father and Shepherd seeks you. He is gone forth to call and meet you already. He will receive you willingly and joyfully. Approach Him, praying as the prodigal son, and He will freely forgive you, though you have sinned beyond what it is in your power to describe. He is also able to heal the most desperate corruptions of your heart. He can deliver you from the very jaws of hell. Begin, then, to call upon Him earnestly in prayer; and poor and wretched as you are, come to Him as the Physician of your soul. For the Physician and the sick, a rich Savior and a poor sinner, are the best suited to one another. Come just as you are to Jesus again.

Devotion by Karl Heinrich von Bogatzky (1690—1774)