Repentance

In this 1st video of our discipleship series, I go over the importance of repentance, confessing, and forgiveness in our life as a disciple of Jesus. I use several key verses to back these truths up. It is all about a fundamental change of heart and mind from sin toward God. If you don't get these basic truths working in your life, you're not a true disciple of Jesus.

Transcript (Disclaimer, the transcript may not be perfect.)

Okay, I'm going to talk to you about one of the first things when we come to God that we need to carry on throughout the rest of our walk with Jesus, and that's repentance. But before we do, let's open with some prayer. Lord Jesus, we come to you, and I pray that you would bless everybody that's going to watch this, and that they can look at the Bible verses, and that they can use it, and that there will be fruit in their life. Lord, help me to speak that which you want me to speak. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.

Okay, so this idea of repentance, we know repentance is important because when John the Baptist and Jesus were first preaching or talking about God, they talked about repenting. And repentance really is this idea of a fundamental change of our heart and our mind. We're turning from sin and we're turning towards God. We're turning away from sin and we're turning towards God. So let's look at this some more. We're going to look at some different Bible verses that we can use.

So when we think of this idea of our relationship with God, God is not playing. Sometimes we think that, 'Oh, you know, God's just going to overlook this, God's going to overlook that, God kind of knows my heart.' Well, we've got to be careful because God is a holy God, God is a just God. Okay, Acts 17:30 says this: 'And the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.' It's this idea that, you know, God, God was working and what God, you know, kind of dealt with in a way before, now He's that much more serious about it. God is very serious, and we need to take our lives serious before God.

And now when we also think of repenting, we want to turn away from idols and abominations in our life. We can have different things that we placed above God. Maybe we say we think, 'Oh, I don't have anything that's above God,' but anything where you spend your time, your effort, your money on, and it's to a stronger degree than your relationship with God, that's a form of an idol. Almost anything can be an idol. We can also look to these idols and they, you know, might give us peace, temporary peace, or some sort of comfort, you know, but at some point, it's something contrary to God.

In my own life, that was a lot of photography, okay, a lot of photography, a lot of cameras, any lens, any camera I have, and I had all kinds of very expensive stuff too, was a form of an idol. It could be a sport, it could be your job, it could be something that seems like it's good, like some type of ministry or your family, but again, when we place that at such a high level above God, where we're spending all of our time and effort on it, it's an idol. And this is what God says in Ezekiel 14:6: 'Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God: Repent and turn yourselves from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations.' Anything that we turn to, to love, to care for, to a place where it's higher than God, God says that's an idol, and it's an abomination. So God is serious.

So when we think about repentance, we want to have godly sorrow. Godly sorrow is so important. This is what God says in Joel 2:12: 'Therefore also now saith the Lord, Turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning.' You know, it's not enough to just feel sad about something, it's not enough to just say, 'Oh, I'm sorry, God, please forgive me.' There has to be our whole heart turning to God. And you know, a lot of times we think of fasting where we're basically, you know, denying ourselves something, okay, as, you know, for a breakthrough. But, you know, God talks about fasting as in a way that we can show God that we can actually sincerely say, 'Lord, I'm sorry. I'm turning to you.' That's what they did in Nineveh when God said that He was going to destroy the whole city of Nineveh. They had a three-day fast, and even the animals were fasting. So that's because there was sorrow. They were like, 'God, I'm sorry. Have mercy.' And that's how we need to be with God. We need to really repent.

Forgiveness, forgiveness is so key. It's like something that has been totally overlooked as Christians. Many of us think that we forgive regularly. I thought I did too, growing up in the church. I thought I forgave people all the time, but I wasn't. I had hurts, anything that would just go deep and I couldn't pray for those people to be blessed or to have God work in their life, especially those that have wronged me. But let's look at this. It's key, it's important that we forgive others. And I'm going to kind of pray with you at the end to give you a sample of what that might look like.

But we're going to ask God to search our heart. So that's the first thing you can pray something like this with me right now. We're going to go through this, okay, and break it down, and you can use your own words, of course, but if you need something to kind of get you started or some ideas, you know, you can pray something like this. 'Lord Jesus, I come to you with all my heart, and I want to repent, Lord, but there's things that I don't even remember. I might not even know that I've sinned against you in areas. So, Lord, I pray that you would show me, show me what I need to repent of. Lord, search my heart. Search my heart right now. Thank you, Lord Jesus. I, Lord, I pray that as people are praying right now that you're helping them to see things that they need to repent of. Lord, search my heart right now.'

Let me know if you did this, okay? Let me know. I'm curious to see how God will bless other people through this. God bless you.