Quotes about Self-despair

stooping very low, He engraves with care His Name, indelible, upon our dust; And from the ashes of our self-despair, Kindles a flame of hope and humble trust. He seeks no second site on which to build, But on the old foundation, stone by stone, Cementing sad experience with grace, Fashions a stronger temple of His own.

The Puritans, then, were not afraid to use the law of God as an instrument of evangelism. When God is about to play the chord of grace in the soul, they taught, he usually starts with the bass note of the law. In order for man to come to Christ, he must first come to an end of his own righteousness. "They held [that] the index of the soundness of a man's faith in Christ is the genuineness of the self-despair from which it springs," says Packer.