A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford
You get those calls, too, don’t you?—robocalls with the same dreary recorded messages. It isn’t especially comforting to complain to a recording that you are on the government “Do not call” list, so the call is illegal. But occasionally a live person is on the line, and then I have the great satisfaction of speaking my mind.
Once the caller was a live man with a British/Indian accent. He was so glad to tell me that I had inherited a million dollars—think of it, a whole million dollars!—from an anonymous benefactor in India. All I had to do was to go to Walmart and buy enough gift cards to cover the $200,000 inheritance tax. I could then give him all the numbers on the cards, and he would immediately send me my million dollars!
“Sir,” I asked quietly, “can I ask you something?”
“Certainly,” he answered quickly, thinking he had a sucker on the hook.
“You and I both know there is no million dollars waiting for me. You just tried to steal $200,000 from a 98-year-old widow. I wonder, when you go to bed at night, doesn’t your conscience ever hurt you and keep you awake?”
“Of course it does,” he answered to my astonishment. “That’s why, every night, I confess my sins to God and ask Him for forgiveness.”
“And then you get up next morning, and try the same sorry fraud all over again? That’s not sorrow, and that’s not repentance. If you were really sorry, you’d stop your scamming, and God would forgive you. It’s hypocritical and lying when you say you’re sorry and then keep on doing it on purpose. No use in telling God that silly lie!”
He mumbled an excuse, like, “A man has to feed his family.” I hung up.
But the whole concept troubled me. God is a merciful God, eager to forgive our sins when we repent and ask Him to. God made a beautiful promise to the Israelites when they were trying to get out of slavery and back to their homeland. They had forsaken God and worshiped idols. They had broken His laws and broken His heart. Because God loved them, He had to punish their sins. But in love, He said to them:
The LORD will scatter you among the people. . . .
But from there you will seek the LORD your God,
And you will find Him,
if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.
When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days,
when you turn to the LORD your God and obey His voice,
(For the LORD your God is a merciful God)
He will not forsake you nor destroy you,
nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them.
Deuteronomy 4:27-31
God has great compassion for a sinner who is sorry for his sins and is eager to change. Since sin strangles a sinner and makes it hard for him to shake off the temptation, God comforts and has pity on him. But, as this Scripture reminds us, we must turn to the Lord and obey His voice, and “Seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.” My scammer friend had no intention of giving up his scams; rather he made excuses for why he had to keep robbing old and vulnerable people. His asking for forgiveness had no sincerity and no efficacy.
But I take comfort that God is a merciful, loving God who yearns to forgive us and help us to do right. He doesn’t give up on us when we fail. Take comfort, dear friend, if you are struggling against temptation. God is your faithful, forgiving God, and He will help you conquer the sin.