Softened, broke & melted your heart

Back to Man's religion & God's religion

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"I drew them with cords of a man, with ties of love." Hosea 11:4

When God draws His people near unto Himself, it is not done in a mechanical way. They are drawn, not with cords of iron, but with the cords of kindness—not as if God laid an iron arm upon His people to drag them to Himself, whether they wished to come or not. God does not so act in a way of mechanical force. We therefore read, "Your people shall bewilling in the day of Your power." 

He touches their heart with His gracious finger, and He communicates to their soul both faith and feeling. He melts, softens, and humbles their heart by a sense of His goodness and mercy—for it is His goodness, as experimentally felt and realized, which leads to repentance.

If you have ever felt any secret and sacred drawing of your soul upward to heaven, it was not compulsion—not violence—not a mechanical constraint—but an arm of pity and compassion let down into your very heart, which, touching your inmost spirit, drew it up into the bosom of God.

It was some view of His goodness, mercy, and love, with some dropping into your spirit of His pity and compassion towards you, which softened, broke and melted your heart. You were not driven onward by being flogged and scourged, but blessedly drawn with the cords of kindness, which seemed to touch every tender feeling and enter into the very depths of your soul.