Repentence

What is repentence? If you've been in church for more than ten minutes, you likely know that that repentence is to turn around, to change your thinking. But in what way does our thinking change in repentence? Usually, when we are doing something wrong, we know and think it is wrong and do it anyway. We say in our heart, "Yep, God, this is wrong. Here I go again!" So how does repentence differ than this helpless or rebellious stance?

We need to go back to the nature of our original repentence as our example. When we first came to God, we came to Him because we realized that we couldn't make our life work, that we were broken and needed to be saved. We start walking with God as we believed his word that he would take us, save us, and be with us to live his life through us. It was, at its foundation, a laying down of trust in ourselves and a placing of trust in Him instead.

All repentence is of this same nature. Sin, at its core, is faithlessness: an action that declares our committment to meeting our own needs rather than trusting God to act on our behalf. We are lonely or craving comfort so we turn to sexual sin, rather than stay in the suffering and wait on God. We resent our stingy boss and compensate by helping ourselves to office resources, rather than believe God is taking care of us. We are hurt by our spouse's careless words, and steel our hearts against futher injury, rather than rest in the declared love of God--a position of strength even in vulnerability. If you want to fruitfully repent--to see change that makes it natural to not sin, Believe in the rest God has provided.

We don't have to produce a perfect life. We aren't going to--but the blood of Jesus has that covered. It is no longer our problem to make something of ourselves. We are the subjects of our Maker, and we have entered a covenant of trust and submission to his leading Spirit within us. We remove all human-applied labels: "Successful," "Loser," "Smart," "Slow," "Worthless," "Talented," etc, and we wear only one: "His." As His child, we abandon self-definition. He will make us what he desires as we submit in the moments, and in the end, we will be something beautiful, and entirely of his making. That's repentence.

Repentence is resting in the finished work of Christ, the Spirit's abiding presence, and in the hope of his physical return to set up a perfect kingdom on earth. When we act to meet our own needs for significance, comfort, or whatever, we let go of the much better thing he has offered. If you want to stop sinning, find the point of faith: what is God calling you to believe? Because it is as you embrace what is true and put your feet in the path that follows logically, that you will find youself walking in faith and the resulting righteousness.