"The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit." Psalm 34:18. NKJV
Contrition is being sincerely remorseful about a wrongdoing. There is a deep remorse, regret and sorrow about what has happened. It can be described as being broken with the greatness of the calamity.
When we have fallen into sin, we need this. It's a deep Godly sorrow. Without it, a marital partner may tell their other half that they are sorry for shouting and being rude to them and then do the very same thing the next day, and be back to square one. If there isn't contrition, then there will be no full repentance.
Let's be honest, we can do things like this on a regular basis with each other. Afterwards, we feel so guilty; so full of shame and regret that we can tend to close down and even avoid God because we feel so unworthy. But God knows that when this happens, we need Him the most and He longs to comfort us, His strength being always available. Some days we can never seem to get things right. Oh, we mean well, but things go pear-shaped and instead of saying and doing what we know is right, a lot of old garbage utters out of our mouths and by then, it's difficult to change things. We know this, so we end up going down into the doldrums because we feel so awful. But take comfort, when we're under conviction, it's a sure sign that God is with us, because if God didn't reign in us, we would have no remorse at all - no Godly sorrow.
However, what it does flag up is that we need to do some work on these areas in our lives. Start by playing the video back in your mind, of what happened. Identify what you should have done differently and make a note to make some adjustments. You can't change what has happened but, you can change what happens in the future.
You're not perfect. No one is except Jesus, but you can come pretty close by being a mirror-image of Jesus:
'But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.'
2 Corinthians 3:18
Look in the mirror and see Jesus in you and decide that whatever mistakes you make, that you're going to learn by them and avoid them in the future.
Copyright 2020 Grahame Howard
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