Let’s give God some Praise!
What a wonderful time we had last week praising and worshipping God. There is just something about shake yourself loose praise. Amen
We have some scriptures to cover today.
John the Baptist spent a lifetime preaching the same sermon over and over again, and that was repent for the kingdom of the lord is at hand. As simple as it may seem it is a challenging act for a lot to do because they know not how to repent.
Acts 28:26 Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive:
Acts 3:19 Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;
Rev 2:5-7 remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.
The focus today is on repent and sin. We have been trying to learn just what it is that God requires of us, why we want to know that, because we have invested ourselves unto God, and in understanding that we have made a conscious decision to allow God to become the ruler of our lives, we need to know how to please him.
One of the key elements involved with obedience is the repentance and separation of sin. Repentance is the activity of reviewing one’s actions and feeling contrition (is sincere and complete remorse for sins one has committed.) or regret for past wrongs. Repentance is a change of mind and heart and includes turning away from sin and turning to God for forgiveness. It generally involves a commitment to personal change.
One of the key reasons why some of fail to advance in God is due to our lack of repentance. We say I am sorry, we ask for forgiveness, but in our hearts and minds, we have not truly repented of anything. Because there is no remorse there can be no repentance.
You see if you are not sorry and remorseful for what you use to do and maybe still do, then how you can change your ways. Let me begin to break this down. You do something, somebody tells you it is bad that you are doing this, so you stop doing it, but you do not feel any remorse about you doing it to begin with, you are not a contrite person, only one that said hey I did, forgive me lets go on.
I need to shatter your thinking and educate you right now. Sin should bring a distasteful feeling to your body. It should make you sick and uncomfortable. It is like something you seen and makes you want to run to the bathroom.
You may not be paying attention but I need you to understand that your spiritual man hates sin with a passion. So your physical man needs to get on board with your spiritual man hate sin just as much. When you realize that the thought of sin makes you want to regurgitate, then you can begin to understand the feeling that you should have towards it.
So when you think about your past sins regardless of how big or how little they were, you need to feel sincere remorse, you need to feel like I never want to experience that again, you need to hear something deep inside of you telling you never again will I make that mistake again. When you begin to feel this way about what you use to, then you won’t have a desire to do these things again.
And it is at this point that the true act that the Christian faith is based upon takes place within you. The true act of repentance, you immediately turn from whatever it was, and you literally run from this. There is something inside of you that begins to demand change, not later but right now.
You see I need to tell somebody when you keep putting off change, it’s because you are not working with a repented heart, you have no true desire to change and you are not sorry for the sins you have committed or the sins you are about to commit.
We fall back to the previous scripture reading of hearing but not understanding, seeing and not perceiving, you are a rebellious generation. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.
The day has comes when those that call on the Lord need to stand for the Lord, there walk needs to be about the Lord, their talk needs to be about the Lord, their business needs to be about the Lord.
And if they by chance should sin, then they need to repent and fill the distaste for their actions, they should be crying out to the Lord, please wash away and blot this out from me, for I did not mean to bring this burden upon my soul.
Let me close with this last scripture
2 Chronicles 7:14 if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
In case you did not know it, you are called by his name, you are the children of God. God is saying it is time that you turn from your sinful ways. Be remorseful about any sin that is still in your life, hate it with a passion. Know this in your mind and in your heart that sin is liking eating a bowl of cancer each and every day. It is killing you inside and it is hard for you to see the results of it outside.
May God bless us, keep us, and forgive us.