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Nov. 19, 2007
Repentance
Do you have repentance?
I want to share my experience and thoughts.
I truly think repentance is the key to being a follower of Christ. Yes, you nod. That's a no-brainer.
Everyone knows that. But bear with me. I think there is more there than most people realize. It is a hard
concept to grasp in full, because in this day and age, Christianity has been canned and packaged in tidy and tiny little pocket tracts and three point prayers of salvation. Professions of faith are made... but the concept of repentance is lost.
It was lost to me for a long time. I tried to "get it." I understood it in my head. When I was a little girl and I "asked Jesus into my heart," I meant it with all my heart. In my head, I understood I was a sinner and that He had died for me. But I don't remember feeling sorry, or grieving over my sinful state. But I tried to be.
When I finally, really turned my life over to Christ about 6 years ago, I still didn't get it. But I was much more desperate than I was at age four--I realized I needed Him and couldn't live without Him. God graciously answered my pleas for help and was gentle with me, and showed me His love, and truth.
So I "repented." To the best of my ability. I prayed for forgiveness for all the things I could think of that I knew were sins--all the past boyfriends and immoralities, and stealing pens and legal pads from the places where I worked, lying to my mother as a teenager... and although I was sorry, as sorry as I could be, I didn't have a deep sense of repentance. There was no agony over my sins.
But then one day, I heard a speaker explain it so that I got it. I got on the road to repentance. And that's when I truly became a follower of Christ. You see, she said that in order to really have a change of heart, I needed to have true repentance. And true repentance came from having godly sorrow. That means I needed to be able to view my sins and my sinfulness from God's perspective--I needed to really understand how I was offending Him, hurting Him, displeasing Him. Then I would understand Him, and want to please Him.
I knew that I didn't have godly sorrow. I had never had any true agonizing moments over my past sins or currents sins other than "personal sorrow," --sorry for how I was hurting myself. (Poor me!)
I began praying fervent daily prayers to have godly sorrow. I prayed to see myself as God sees me--to see my sin as God sees it.
He answered that prayer. And oh--what freedom! When I saw my sins from God's perspective, they then became VILE to me and I wanted to flee from them, and separate myself from them as much as possible. I literally couldn't bring myself to do many of the things that before I couldn't stop doing. I was so offended and repelled! Bad, sinful habits stopped in a near instant.
But, repentance is not a one time thing.
The Road itself is called repentance. If you want to be on the road that follows Christ, repentance is the only road. You see, there is no way God can reveal all my sinfulness to me at once, and no way I could handle it if He did. At this moment, I still am a sinful being. I still have sins and selfish motives and do things that displease Him that I don't even realize-- I don't understand it all yet. But as I walk the road of repentance, God reveals things to me one at a time. And if I am truly repentant, I understand how I hurt Him, how I dishonor Him, how I displease Him, and I flee from that behavior. I can't bear to think of doing it again.
The repentance is continual. A way of living--the way to follow.
You have to pray for it. At least I did. I had to pray to have godly sorrow, because I knew I didn't have it. I had it in my head. I mustered up as much "sorriness" as I could--and sometimes I felt really sorry, but I realized that I was not truly grieved and heart broken at my sin. I mostly felt sorry for myself and my pain and the mess I had made of my life. I wasn't sorry because I had hurt God. I prayed daily for repentance and godly sorrow. And guess what, as always, if you ask anything in God's will (and boy--is repentance ever God's will), you will receive it!
And I keep growing in this area--and I keep asking to grow. This past year I read through the famous "Homeschool biograhies." You know the ones I'm talking about--the YWAM or other publisher books that chronicle the lives of Martin Luther, George Muller, Charles Spurgeon, Corrie Ten Boom, Hudson Taylor... Something really stood out to me, especially in the lives of Martin Luther and John Bunyan. They were so burdened with their sin! It was so painful to them! They agonized and agonized and could hardly bear their own sinfulness. Their repentance was so deep, so full. The grace of God was so beautiful and precious to them because they understood fully the weight of sin.
Reading those books last year really made me think. They opened my eyes to a new level of repentance. I asked God that if I needed more repentance, to give it to me. I gave Him permission to do whatever it takes to get me there--but I knew I wanted to please Him with my life, and how can we please Him if we don't fully know what hurts Him? And He has been dealing with me lately and growing me even more in this area. Just the other night, in the midst of a trial and storm, God brought me under this burden--the horrible weight of my sinful nature. It is an agonizing weight to feel. But then, after you feel it for a while--Oh how sweet is the grace of God that rescues! It is a wonderful place of understanding.
Just imagine, understanding how desperately you need God's grace so that you couldn't possibly take it for granted... I can't explain it.
But it is freedom.
As I am learning and growing in the Lord, I see now that salvation and being a Christian is not the neat little 3-point preschool prayer I prayed as a child. It's not the pretty little tract and tidy prayer that kept me convicted through my teen and young adult years. Being a Christian, following Christ, is an ongoing thing. Repentance is continual. It's a state of the heart, a way of living.
Repentance is the name of the road. |
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