A few days ago I had a conversation with a dear friend about struggling with and falling to sin day after day. Many folks I've talked with lately, not least myself, have experienced the sadness and regret of desiring to live a righteous life yet repeatedly fallen to old habits just the same. They don't say that old habits die hard for nothing.
We see throughout the Bible that repentance is the catalyst to any sort of meaningful life-change. That's sort of a given.
Before I go any further, let me first address my issue with this word, "repent." Having been misused as a verbal clobbering stick by evangelicals for decades, a word that was quite beautiful has been stripped of any relevant meaning at all. Even I would walk the other way on Auburn's campus when the renowned crazy white-suit preacher would stand on the concourse and throw out Biblically-backed insults at innocent passersby, telling Auburn's student body full of "prostitutes" and "drunkards" to "repent or burn in hell." (Side note: I am immensely curious to know what his success rate has been using that technique. I personally never saw anyone approach him and eagerly ask for more information about how s/he might go about leaving his/her lifestyle of overly indulgent sexual practices and irresponsible imbibery.)
Yes, quite unfortunately the word has gotten its share of bad publicity over the years.
Once we get past the unfair publicity, repentance emerges as the essence of Christian life and an exceptionally wonderful thing. Its etymology includes a Roman military command meaning "to turn," or "about-face." The meat of the word means to "change our hearts and lives," as the Common English Bible translates it. To stop doing one thing and start doing another. To stop heading east and start heading west.
Some of the best advice I've ever been given is to "give your prayers feet." A beloved friend of mine put it another way: "If you pray for potatoes, you better grab a hoe. You better think before you ask, 'cause the Lord is more than show. If you want the Lord to help you, be aware of what you say, 'cause he may walk in wearing overalls and need your help today." (If you weren't aware that I'm from Alabama, you are now.)
We cannot ask God for help with our sin if we do not intend to do our part to stop it. Telling God you'd like to be new without doing anything differently is not the way to succeed.
Living a repentant lifestyle means making the choice every day to be the new creation God is making us. Our success rate will probably not begin at 100%, because sin has a sneaky way of becoming habitual and habits don't go away with a cognitive decision. Just ask a person who decided to stop smoking yesterday.
What makes repentance an art and what is most important is the choice to keep going after we fail. When you've traveled east your whole life, beginning to head west is uncertain, unfamiliar and difficult. No doubt when we take the first wrong turn we'll yearn for the comfort and familiarity of the eastbound roads we've traveled our whole lives. The wrong turn is enough to make us yearn for our old way of life, having convinced us that we're not new creations, we're doomed to failure, and there's no way we could ever learn to be different.
Fortunately for us, once we've made the choice to live this lifestyle, our failures no longer define us. We are not graded on wrong turns and missed exits; we're graded on the direction we're headed.
Little choices to keep going short-term mean big success long-term.
Repentance gets us closer to
what we have the grace and power to become
each day, and it is worth
every struggle,
every heartbreak,
every mistake,
every victory,
and every failure.
"There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind,” wrote C.S. Lewis.
That's something to keep heading west for.
m
