Why don’t Christians seem to act like Christ so much any more?
Why do we brag about our sinfulness?
Why are we so proud of our past that we continue to glorify the devil with our words and actions?
Why aren’t we grasping the concepts of sanctification, consecration, and holiness?
I have come to a conclusion. In a word … repentance. It is all but gone from the conversion experience.
We love the part about believing and confessing that Jesus is Lord, but we seem to ‘forget’ the part about turning from our sins. We are only preaching half of the true gospel of salvation. Start looking up the scriptures that deal with conversion, and you will find the word repentance (or a variation thereof) in nearly every one of them.
We can say that we believe Jesus is the son of God and died for our sins. The devil believes the same thing. What separates our experience from his? Repentance.
When Jesus healed people, what did he say to them? “You are healed/forgiven/saved … now GO AND SIN NO MORE.”
It was two-fold. He was telling them that He was willing to save them, heal them, forgive them, and in response, their half of the equation was to repent of their sins.
Sadly, people have decided to believe that ‘I’m sorry’ is all they need to say in order to repent. That is SO far from true. We have to make a conscious decision to turn away from our sin. To leave it behind. To not practice it any more. To live differently. To ‘sin no more’. That is true repentance. Not just feeling sorry for doing it, or worse yet, feeling sorry for getting caught.
It grieves me to see how many ‘Christians’ are proud of their pet sin.
“I’m a Christian but, I still like to _____________________”
Insert your favorite sin.
They have somehow decided that their lying doesn’t count, their gossiping is okay (after all, I’m only sharing prayer requests), cussing isn’t that big of a deal, drinking, smoking, fornicating, etc … etc …
How have we missed the whole point of repentance in the church? God has clearly called us to be holy as He is holy. Would He command us to do that if He knew that we could not possibly be holy? Would Jesus have told us to go and ‘sin no more’ if that weren’t possible? Would Jesus call us to be like Him when we take on His name (CHRISTians) if He knew ahead of time that there was no way we could rise above our sinful nature? Of course not!
He has called us to be light in the midst of darkness, not darkness with a label of ‘Christian’ attached.
It is no wonder that people can barely tell the difference between the church and the world. We have denied the concept of repentance. It’s uncomfortable. It’s hard work sometimes. It’s painful. It’s messy. BUT, if we don’t grab ahold of it, we cannot possibly bring light into the darkness.
When is the last time you saw a moth that was attracted to a dark spot in your home? They aren’t. They are attracted to the light!
This morning in church we sang “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. Hide it under a bushel, NO, I’m gonna let it shine.” It made me think. A good majority of our churches here in America don’t have a light to even hide under a bushel. The adversary has done quite a job of convincing them that their candle holder is somehow putting out quite a positive light. The truth is that they have a candle with no wick because they haven’t repented of and turned away from their sins, thereby allowing God to clean them up and shine through them.
We, as the TRUE body of Christ, absolutely MUST begin to preach repentance. Right now, we look, act, and sound just like the world. Jesus did not look, act, nor sound like the others around Him. If He had, we would never have heard about Him. Those of us who take on His name (CHRISTians) have to be different, we have to be salt and light, we have to repent of our sins and turn away from them.
Imagine what the world would look like if there was an obvious and easily recognizable difference between the world and the church? I, for one, would LOVE to see that!
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