The first step towards heaven – Thomas Brooks

“It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick.” Matthew 9:12

If you would be truly godly, then you must see how bad you are, how vile, how sinful, how wretched you are. No man begins to be good until he sees himself to be bad. Ah! You must see yourselves . . .
to be children of wrath,
to be enemies of God,
to be strangers from God,
to be afar off from God,
to be afar from heaven,
to be sin’s servants,
to be Satan’s bond-slaves.

The first step to mercy, is to see your misery.

The first step towards heaven, is to see yourselves near to hell.

You won’t look after the physician of souls,
you won’t prize the physician of souls,
you won’t desire the physician of souls,
you won’t fall in love with the physician of souls,
you won’t resign yourselves to the physician of souls
until you come to see your wounds, until you come to feel your diseases, until you see the symptoms, the plague-sores of divine wrath and displeasure upon you. As the whole do not need the physician, so they do not desire, they do not care for the physician. Acquaint yourselves with your natural and undone condition.