Next time you hear of a hurricane approaching go out to meet it face-to-face. Stand at the edge of the shore and blow against its force with the breath of your mouth to try and stop it.

Sound foolish?

That is exactly what you are doing every day that you continue in your rebellion against God.

The Lord has sent his word to you. You have heard. You have heard the Lord's sure promise of mercy to those who take sides with God against themselves--who confess (who agree with God) that they are sinners who can not save themselves and who must place all their trust in Christ alone. You have heard the Lord's sure promise of judgment, of eternal separation and everlasting torment to those who are foolish enough to stand on the shore and blow against the hurricane.

You have beheld the judgment of God all around you--in the world, in our nation, through wars, through storms on the seas, through economic storms--still you have not turned away from yourself to God. Why is that? It is because you desperately need God's mercy! You desperately need God to break your heart of stone and to reveal Christ in you or else you will never repent and turn to him.

God's promise of judgment--not even the judgment of hell itself--will make a sinner repent. Only the grace and power of God in revealing Christ Jesus in you can turn you from yourself to him.

I tell you this because it is through this word that the Lord works grace in the hearts of his people. Through the word that declares your absolute utter inability, the Lord alone in power can bring you to see yourself as small and useless as the one standing on the shore blowing against the hurricane. But when he calms the storm by turning you to Christ, then you shall be turned indeed. It is my prayer that he might cause you to do so.