Heart Tracks - Repentance

In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea 2 and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Matthew 3:1-2....."To move across from one sort of person to another is the essence of repentance." A.W. Tozer

Few words spoken in the church provide more of a knee-jerk response than "repentance." Our flesh hates it, and fuel has been added to the fire by so many who have preached and taught on it, attaching very a real message of fear and condemnation in connection to it. To be sure, there are dire and eternal consequences for living a finally unrepentant life, but that is not the heart of the Father in His call for it. The key to that message is seen in John's call to Israel, which is the call of the Father's heart to a people walking in opposition to Him. It is the heart cry of a Father to turn back from a way of life that leads ever further away from Him, to one that leads, through His Son, Jesus Christ, to Him. The Kingdom of Heaven was at hand in Christ, and now a choice was before them; receive Him and His Kingdom, or reject it. That choice lies before us all, and not just on a one time basis. Before us each day is the choice between continuing on in our way, or His. One leads away from Him, the other ever deeper into Him.

Nowhere is the heart of the Father seen more clearly than when Jesus stood above the city of Jerusalem and cried out, "Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets. How often I wanted to gather you to Myself....but you would not allow it." .....In Hebrew, repentance is defined as "changing one's direction," in Greek, as "changing one's thinking." Both are accomplished by the grace of God. We are born stubbornly assured of the rightness of our way. Only the grace of God, calling us to Himself can change this. Only His grace, as stated by Tozer, can change us from "one sort of person to another." His call to repentance by way of His grace takes us off the path of sure self-destruction, and puts us on the pathway to the fullness of His life. It is a transformation. We are born into the world totally disoriented from Him. We are at odds with Him on every level of life. His call to turn from our way and unto His, is a lifelong one, affecting us in every life area. Attitudes, thinking, actions, assumptions, how we view others, ourselves, and Him. We're wrong to some degree in them all, and His grace calls us to turn from that wrong direction and walk into His. The act of repentance leads to healing, wholeness, and abundance. The Father knows what we're doing to ourselves, and where it all leads. That's why His heart never ceases calling on us to turn back, turn away, and turn to Him. With so much good to be received in that, why then do we so often reject the call?

The answer is simple; pride...stubborn pride. We won't acknowledge that we're in the wrong. We won't acknowledge that we need to be changed. We are experts in justifying all we do, say, think, and are entrenched in our attitude of rebellion, though we don't see it as that at all. And such an attitude is not confined to those who have never received Him. We who profess to be His can be just as stubbornly resistant to Him as they. Often more so. And with each stubborn refusal, we take a step further away from Him, and nearer to the awful consequences of doing so. The finally and fully unrepentant will suffer eternal separation from Him. Darkness will be their end as it is already their present. Yet what of you and me, who say we are His, but walk against Him in certain areas of our lives? In those areas, darkness is our lot as well, and if we persist, we will give an account to Him for it all on that last day. Yet for both the former and latter, it doesn't have to be the case. The Kingdom of Heaven is near....in Jesus Christ. His heart calls to us to turn back, turn away from the road to destruction, and to Him and His pathway of life. With each step, we move either deeper into the darkness, or deeper into Him. In which direction are we going?.... In which direction are you going?

Blessings,
Pastor O