Acceptable Sacrifice

This is an amazing book!  Though Bunyan writes in his vernacular, the old English writing style, his words transcend. I am not practiced in reading this style of writing, and I could not put it down.  It was moving and gripping... almost as if the pages had been written just for me.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.  Psalm 51:17

 This is a humbling book if you struggle with a prideful heart, like most of us do.   However, pride goes before the fall, and God has no use for a prideful, hard heart.  He gently cares for and nurtures the contrite heart.  He restores us as His beloved children, those with a broken heart....hearts that have become an acceptable sacrifice.

Excerpt:

Wherefore, what I have said as to this must go for the truth of God, to wit, That a broken-hearted sinner, a sinner with a contrite spirit, is of more esteem with God than is either heaven or earth. He saith he hath made them, but he doth not say he will look to them. He saith they are his throne and footstool, but he doth not say they have taken or ravished his heart. No, it is those that are of a contrite spirit do this. But there is yet more in the words, ‘To this man will I look’: that is, For this man will I care, about this man will I camp, I will put this man under my protection; for so to look to one doth sometimes signify; and I take the meaning in this place to be such (Prov 27:23; Jer 39:12, 40:4). ‘The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down’ (Psa 145:14). And the broken-hearted are of this number; wherefore he careth for, campeth about, and hath set his eyes upon such an one for good. This, therefore, is a second demonstration to prove, that the man that hath his spirit rightly broken, his heart truly contrite, is of great esteem with God.