Repentance

Out of all my posts I think I have only mentioned the word "Repent" maybe once or twice. When it should be mentioned in a lot more of my posts. More like every single one that mentions Christ's gift of forgiveness. But what is true repentance? Why do we have to repent? How often do we have to repent? Here is why.

Without repentance, the Gift of Christ does not matter. Why is that? The dictionary defines repentance as feeling sorrow for having done wrong. The Bible supports this meaning in James 4:9-10 and 2 Peter 3:9. They read:

Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Repentance means to not laugh, but to recognize what we've done, and that is sin. And everyone from the dawn of time till now, and for the rest of time has sinned except for Jesus Christ. For Proverbs 20:9 says:

Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"?

And because we all have sinned we must all repent. By mourning for our lives that we have put to death. By humbling ourselves before the Lord, through our mourning, we ask Him to forgive us for our sins by accepting Jesus into our hearts. But, if we are forgiven anyways, why do we have to repent? Because only through repentance can we receive the Gift. You can not be forgiven if you do not say you're sorry first. You must recognize that you have sentenced yourself to death first. That is why the verse from 2 Peter says that He is patient and wants everyone to come to repentance. Because only through repentance can we be forgiven.

But there is a mistake we all make. It is the thought that if we repent once when we accept Jesus into our hearts, we don't have to do it again. We soon learn that this is not the case. After a while we begin to sin repeatedly, and at this point God flips our world upside down to show us what we're doing. And after we see it, we repent and beg for forgiveness. However, this is the wrong way to live. The Israelites did this repeatedly. Judges 2:16-23 says:

Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. Unlike their fathers, they quickly turned from the way in which their fathers had walked, the way of obedience to the Lord's commands. Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord had compassion on them as they groaned under those who oppressed and afflicted them. But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their fathers, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.
Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and said, "Because this nation has violated the covenant that I laid down for their forefathers and has not listened to me, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died. I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the Lord and walk in it as their forefathers did." The Lord had allowed those nations to remain; he did not drive them out at once by giving them into the hands of Joshua.

This was right after the death of Joshua, who had led the Israelites. But after all the people who followed closely the ways of God had died, the new more sinful generation took over. They did not repent, and because of it, they were oppressed by the other nations. And then they began to groan and asked God for deliverance from their bondage, to forgive them. So God sent a Judge to deliver them. But after the judge died they turned to worse way than before. The Israelites repeated this 12 times with 12 judges.
The time of Joshua can represent the time we accept Jesus into our hearts, and the amount of time we act like a Christian should. The moments when the Israelite start to do wrong and get put into bondage represent when we commit sin over and over, and when God flips our world because of it. The time of the judge is the time we repent and act like we should again. However, just like the Israelites, we repeat the pattern over and over again. Way more times than the Israelites.

This is the wrong way to repent, and to live. How then should we live and repent? For this we look to Paul as our example. Before I explain we must observe Acts 22:4 and 1 Timothy 1:12-17. They say:

I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison.

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service. Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundently, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners-of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and recieve eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen

Paul knew what he did, and he repented for his sins every moment of his Christian life. From speaking in public, to a letter, to his speaking with God. He humbled himself before God every moment because he knew just what the gift God gave him was. Forgiveness. Paul called himself the worst of sinners. He killed people of our same faith. If we lived in that time, and Paul was in front of usas a persecutor, he would have arrested or killed us on the spot. He did this to many Christians. And because of it, he repented all his life after Jesus came into his heart and he was forgiven. But do not think that he was the worst for killing Christians, for all wages of sin is death. You and I are just as deserving of the fate Paul would have recieved if he had not turned to Christ Jesus. He repented for his sins of past and present. Because of his constant repentance, he kept himself "in-check". He lived a righteous life of serving God, and God blessed him.
We must take the example of Paul and repent at all times. Constantly asking God for forgiveness for our sins. More than everytime He flips our world, more than weekly, more than daily. No we must do it constantly! Every chance we get we must mourn for our souls and beg God for forgiveness. And we can trust that God will forgive us for our sins. For God will never leave us. Job 16:20-21 says:

My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as a man pleads for his friend.

Your friends of this world, not just the people but your family and the things that are in this world that you have trusted in, may scourn you; but God is your eternal friend who accepts you with open arms and forgives you. He will listen to your cries, and catch your tears. Why then would you turn to the world and commit sin? Instead, turn to God and repent. For when you repent, God forgives you and lifts the burden the sin creates off of your shoulders.

Repentance is recognizing what we have done by humbling ourselves in front of and apologizing to God, and asking Him to forgive our sins. And because we know that God forgives us every time, we take joy in this forgiveness. For joy comes from knowing that we have a place in Heaven after death. But we cannot recieve that place in Heaven if we have not repented and asked for the forgiveness God offers first. So when you repent and have that joy, no matter who you are, you feel the want to serve God and live a righteous life. Only through repentance can we truly accept God's Gift of freedom from our sin, and go to Heaven to spend an etenitly with Him.

Thank You For Reading
Long Live Jesus Christ
Amen

God's Mind and Love

I have spoken on both God's Love and God's Mind, but this time I speak on something that ties them together and shows what I think to be a deeper look into the Fatherly nature of God.

I was wondering what to read in the Bible and decided to read one of the Prophets. When I opened it to the part of the Bible with the Prophets, it opened to Jonah. I thought I already know this story, but God always teaches you something new every time you read the Bible. So I read the book of Jonah. But when I read the last couple of chapters, I noticed that I did not remember it. It was after Jonah had been spat out by the great fish, and told the people of Nineveh about what God would do. Jonah 3:1-10 says:

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you."
Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very important city-a visit required three days. On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: Forty more days and the city of Nineveh will be overturned." The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his thrown, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh:

"By the decree of the king and his nobles:

Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion on them and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

When Jonah finally came and told the people of Nineveh the words of the Lord, they listened to it right away and stopped their evil ways. And because of this, God took compassion on them and spared them. But Jonah became angry at the Lord for this. He felt that the Lord made Him go through all of what he went through for no reason. Because God sent him to tell the people that He would destroy them. But when they heard the Words of the Lord they accepted them right away, and repented for their evil ways. And were saved instead of being destroyed. Jonah 4:1-11 says:

But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the Lord, "O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents fro sending calamity. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."
But the Lord replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"
Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head and ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."
But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?"
"I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."
But the Lord said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

I have had to think about this from the moment I read it till a few minutes before I started writing this post. First, do not think the vine represents the people of Nineveh. It is an example of Jonah's needless anger. He did not tend or grow the vine, it was not his own posession. It was only there for a day, and yet he grew angry about it. However, he also grew angry about God putting him through all He did, and end up not killing the people of Nineveh. How ridiculous does his anger seem. But Jonah did not realize something. If he had not gone to tell them of what God had said, a whole people who God cared for and who would have so readily loved God, would have been destroyed. And even if he had realized this, he probably would have said, "Why couldn't God send someone else in my stead?"

The truth, is that we are all a big bunch of Jonahs. We are all commanded to go and tell people in our lives (our Nineveh) about God's saving Grace. Many of whom are ready to accept it, but may never hear of it, and instead be destroyed. We say, "Why does it have to be me only? Why does God not just take care of it with someone else, or on His own?" As I thought about that question, another question came into my head that I have had so many people say to me. "Why does God not just remove all evil from the world and make it so that we all already love Him?" I thought about it for a long time. And my answer was ultimately, We do not know. For who can know what God's plan is? Romans 11:33-34 says:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?"

We cannot know what God wants us to do, for it is His plan. I was given a piece of logic that states, "It is impossible to know the mind of the Lord, because to know the mind of the Lord means to be equal on that plain with the Lord. This is impossible, for man can in no way, be equal to God." We do not know why God does the things He does. Why sin is still in the world?, Why we do not already know of God's greatness when we are born?, Why it is up to us to tell others of God's Son Jesus? But, we can have Faith in God, just like we have faith that He sent His Holy Son to die on the cross to save us from our sins, that whatever He does, it is done for a greater purpose.

As I was talking to a friend from church about what I was going to be talking about in this post, I thought of a theory, as to why He lets us choose to sin or love Him. I ended up asking the question:
"Why do mothers and fathers choose to have children, even though they know that they could turn around and hate them?"
I feel that the answer to this question, is also the same answer to why God does what he does. The answer is that they wanted something that they could love, and who would Choose to love them. Not be forced to love them. For if that was the case, we would be nothing more than an animal with an instinct to love God. If this is the right answer, then it just goes that much farther to show the Fatherly nature of God. For He created us, so that He could love us. And that is proven all the more with the sacrifice of His one and only Perfect Son on the cross, so that we might be saved and go spend an eternity with Him in Heaven.

I do not know if my theory is true or not, for no one knows the mind of the Lord our God. However, it is what I believe to be the reason. But even if it is or if it isn't, I know that I will always have a Father, who will do anything for me, till the day I die, and beyond that. And that He wants me, and all of you, to Love Him and others with all our hearts, and to share God's life saving Word with all of the people in this World. Praise be to the Father!

Thank You For Reading
Long Live Jesus Christ
Amen