Who Are We Repenting For

Are we repenting for us or are we repenting for God? Are we repenting out of love for ourselves or out of love for God?

What does repenting mean? When we repent, we are sorrowful of our sin(s) and turn from our acts of sin that come from our selfish nature and at the same time turn to God in total obedience to eradicate those sins by the power of His Spirit.

There is mainly two ways in which we repent. One is out of a selfish fear and the other is out of the love we have for our Father in heaven. Almost all people come to God initially out of frustration and fear for themselves. They come to a breaking point where they realize their sins and have no way of healing themselves. They also come to believe that if they continue in these sins, they will go to hell instead of heaven. When God calls these people, most people come to God out of desperation. This desperation is motivated out of a fear of God and a fear for themselves. Fear is a big motivator and even though fear is not from the Lord, but from our own selfishness, God will use it to fulfill His purposes.

Proverbs 1:7 - The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge

So how do we repent in a way most pleasing to God? This is where most people run into trouble. Most of this message will concentrate on repenting in a way that is most pleasing to God. We must remember when it comes to righteousness, there is only one way to do things, and that is God’s way.

What is the right way to repent after our initial coming to the Lord? To find out let’s dig a little deeper. Sin can only come from selfishness and pride and cannot come out of love. Every time we sin, we are acting out of our own selfishness or pride and we cannot be loving God or others. Jesus came to conquer all sin in believers. What was the main weapon He sent through the Holy Spirit to do this? Love - pure love. When we are born again, God gives us a new heart. God does this by removing the sinful selfish nature and replacing it with His love. Since sin cannot come out of a heart filled with love, the sinful nature is eradicated with the over powering love of God.

So, should we repent because we want to be saved or continue in our salvation state, or do we repent because we love God? There is a big difference and what way is acceptable to God after our justification experience. To help us understand, I want to look at the parable of the prodigal son in the Bible.

When the prodigal son came to himself and started the journey back to his fathers land, this represented the initial turning back to his father out of fear for himself. He had run out of his inheritance money and was hungry. He knew there was plenty of food back at his father’s home. (This was the motivating fear for self preservation). But he also wanted to return to be under his fathers love and protection again. (This was the wanting to be saved from his worldly life). This fear of self preservation and wanting to be saved from himself drove him to be humbled and willing to be one of his father’s servants. This initial repentance was all about the prodigal son benefit and not about the father. This repentance was still all generated out of love and fear for himself.

After the son returned to his father and the father loved him and accepted him fully back into the family. Do you think that son continued repenting out of fear for himself, or out of love for his father? After we come to our Father through Jesus Christ and realize the love He showed and shows us, do we continue in our repenting and try to be obedient to God commandments so He won’t throw us back from where we came, or do we repent and be obedient to His will because we want to please Him alone in everything we do. We might initially repent from fear, but our repenting should not continue out of fear, it should continue out of love for our Father.

When our reason for repenting is to hopefully be good enough to stay saved, we are trying to turn from our sin out of our own selfishness. When we repent in this way, we are still trying to save ourselves.

Mark 8:35 - For whoever wants to save his life will lose it

When we repent because we think we might not have eternal life if we don’t, we are still only repenting out of our own selfishness and fear. Since this kind of repenting is self centered, you are actually sinning while you are trying to repent. Also, unless you repent in a way pleasing to God, which is out of love for the Father, the turning from the sin will not usually take hold and you will find yourself repenting over and over for the same sins.

So what does repenting out of love look like? Remember repenting is turning away from the sin and turning to God. When we repent out of selfishness in order to try to save ourselves, we are trying to abstain from sin, but not turning to God. We must turn to God at the same time or else it won’t work.

What does turning to God mean? It is all about growing in love with God.

James 4:8 - Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

When we are self centered we only love ourselves. You know, just like the devil loved only himself. This is maybe how we start out with God, but it can’t be how we stay in relationship with God. After justification we start being sanctified if we let God’s Spirit work in our lives. Sanctification is a process of becoming holy as God is holy. Almost all of us have to go through this process. The key to understanding sanctification is that it is not really a process of getting rid of our sins; it is a process in which we are transferring our love from ourselves to loving God only. In doing this we end up giving our whole life over to him.

Mark 8:35 - For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.

John 14:24 - He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

The key to repenting is repenting out of love for God and His glory; it has nothing to do with us. It is all about Him. When we repent out of love for our Father in Heaven, we want to repent of all our sins because we want to truly please Him, not us. This is totally opposite to repenting for us. When we repent for us, we don’t want to repent, but we do it because we think we need to. When we repent out of love, it is like my son being obedient to me because he loves me, not because he fears me. When my son is obedient out of love, he is obedient because he wants to be obedient. If my son is being obedient out of fear, he is not being obedient because he wants to; he is being obedient because of the consequences he might receive if he isn’t obedient. If the obedience is out of fear, he will quit being obedient as soon as he is away from me.

John 14:15 - If you love Me, keep My commandments.

So start loving God by getting to know Him through His word and Spirit. If you are trying to save yourself, STOP IT. Repent out of love for our Father in heaven and for His Glory.

God Bless,
Mike Reid

Sanctification - What Is It Really

When we first come to the Lord and He starts changing us from the inside out, some of us don’t really know how he does this miracle. We talk about this as the sanctification process. Most of us think God’s Spirit is sanctifying us by ridding us of our sins. It is true He needs us to become people totally living for Him and living a righteous life for Him and in site of others. But getting rid of the sins is really a byproduct of something else that is really happening within our hearts.

The sanctification process is really all about changing who we love. When we first come to Christ, most of us are still absorbed in loving ourselves and only thinking of our self preservation and needs. The sanctification process changes this process from loving self to loving Him. This is done by getting to know and trust in God with an ever increasing love and dependence on God. The sanctification process in not really about purifying us from our sins, it is all about a transformation of our heart, it is all about transferring our love from loving ourselves to loving God alone.

What determines whether we sin or not, depends only on who we love the most. If we love the sin more than God, we will be disobedient to God and perform the sin. If we love God more than the sin, we will abstain from that sin for the glory of God. It is just like having a son who is obedient to his earthly father. If the son loves the father, he will try to please his father in everything he does, because the obedience is out of love for the father. But, if the son decides to be disobedient even though that son might have some love for the father, the love for himself over rules the love for the father and then the disobedience happens against the father.
It is all about who you love and who you are trying to please. Sin, disobedience, or righteousness is just the result of where your love lies.

God bless - Michael Reid

Love Has To Be A Choice

Most of us have asked ourselves - why are we here, what is our purpose? This basic question is a question that has to be answered to have a full understanding of who we are and how God relates to us. We must know why we were created to be able to fulfill our full potential that God intended for us.

The only reason for every man or woman's existence since the beginning of time is for each one of us to choose who/what will be the lord of our life and then glorify that lord we have chosen to follow and worship. The only reason God created man is to have a loving relationship with Him and for God to glorify Himself thru us. We are God's creation and with the Holy Spirits unrestricted working in our life, we have the full potential of glorifying God as He intended. But, we can also choose to have ourselves, things, or money be our lord. What ever we decide to be our lord, that lord is what we will worship. If we trust in anything other than the true God, we will not be able to have a joy filled life as God intended. All true love and joy can only come from God. We have to consider ourselves dead anytime we are separated from the Lord, since life is only in the Lord. If we don't have Christ in us, we don't have life. This is why a loving God can let people go to hell, since they are only empty shells with no life in them. The only value in us is Christ's life, which is from God alone. The good news is that He wants all to come and trust in His son Jesus to receive this life.

Love has to be a choice, otherwise it is worthless. What makes love so valuable? It’s what makes the world go around. It is what makes a life worth living. God's word says, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love , I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love , I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love , I gain nothing." (NIV 1 Cor 13:1-3). What makes the love of our spouse so special? It is the spouses choice to love us as we are and the sacrificing of his/her life for us. Why is it so special when our kids listen and do what we say? It is the love they are showing us by making the choice of respecting and being obedient to our wishes. Why is it so important to be obedient to God's word, His will, and the Holy Spirits leading? Our choice to be obedient shows our love for our Lord, no matter how much a sacrifice that obedience requires. The more sacrifice required, the more love is shown back to our Lord thru our obedience. What makes the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our redemption so valuable? It is that He (God), made the choice to sacrifice Himself out of love for us, so we could once again have the choice to love God and others.

From the very beginning of time, love had to be a choice. In the beginning, God had a loving and close relationship with His creation, Adam and Eve. The only instruction He commanded Adam that he could not do, was to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We all know what happened with the fall of man when Adam did eat of that tree. But why did God have that tree in the garden at all? Since God is in control of everything, it must of been serving a purpose for God. The requirement of love having to be a choice has everything to do with it. God wanted to feel true love coming from Adam, not some kind of forced love. If we could create a robot and program it to only love us, what value would that love from that robot have in our hearts. If we could make our children love us by placing a pre-programmed chip in them to make them love us, what value would that love have to us. It would have no value at all. God created us to have free will so we could make the choice to love Him and willingly be obedient to His commandments out of that love.

Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. (NIV Jos 24:15)

With God's love and Spirit, I bring you this message.
Michael W. Reid