Repentance Part 1: Is it really a gift?

In this episode:

Jim closes with a great prayer. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Let me uh open with a quick word of prayer and let's let's get into it. There's so much I want to share. Father, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for being our Lord. Thank you for the sending of your son and us being able to know that you see us in his righteousness, and we thank you, and we could never have done it without him. And we just owe everything to you, Father, everything and help us to each of us today build our relationship with you to even a newer level. And to that end, lead us, guide us in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, guys. I would say of I was just thinking earlier this morning that if uh if I knew I were going to die in another week or two, what would be the last thing I would want to share with you in our Bible study? And this is it. So now if I die in a week or two, you have to unpack that.

SPEAKER_06 1:15

Starting off warm and glowy.

SPEAKER_05 1:18

I just told Levon earlier this week, I'm tired of him saying that because I oh I'm running out of time.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Okay, here we go. Hey, uh I passed out to you all of the things last night, so you have it. And I because of the nature of it, it's highly personal. Uh highly it's the most personal thing I've ever taught with all of you, so uh beware of that. But there's no way to other to teach the subject than to be personal, so you you do what you have to do, and so I have done that. The second thing is when I use the word repentance, when I say to you it's all about repentance, what is the first thing you feel, and what is the first thing you think? The first thing, and not the whole diatribe. What is it you feel when you hear, hey, Levon's gonna be talking about repentance today? What what feelings do you have? Go ahead, Tim, start us off.

SPEAKER_06 2:39

I mean, I always think um Yeah, I think about the turning from of repentance and the uh the requirement.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

Um I want to know the feelings.

SPEAKER_06 2:51

Feelings um I I guess I always I when I read the document this morning, I was thinking about not doing it enough. I felt like I may be remiss in my level of repentance. So that's not the answer to the question you're looking for, but you did say remiss. You felt remiss. Remissed. Remiss, I felt remiss lacking. How about that? I'll go there.

SPEAKER_03 3:24

What do you think, Trey? What was your feeling when you heard I'm talking about repentance today?

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Um, I felt uh freedom. I felt um I don't know how to say the second thing exactly, but like some combination of like um a way through, progress, breakthroughs. Something like that. I felt those two things when you were talking about repentance. Like almost like bondage breaking, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 4:11

What do you think? What do you feel, Carl?

SPEAKER_05 4:17

Um, so repentance requires uh some level of wrongdoing or sin. Um don't give me a don't give me a sermon, I want to know what you feel. No, no, I'm saying I it means that thanks, Lavon. Uh I've done something wrong or sinned, I've identified that I've done something wrong or sinned, and I'm choosing to turn away from that wrong thing because of my love for Jesus.

SPEAKER_03 4:49

So what do you feel? You notice how hard it is for people to answer that simple question? We always go to We always go to the knowledge. What are what is you f what's your first feeling? What's your what's going on in your not what you're thinking? What are you feeling?

SPEAKER_05 5:20

Maybe disappointed.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Yeah, I mean I I saw the words, I haven't looked at your document yet. Um but sadness or a genuine like sorrow, right? A realization that sorrow, yeah, that's a common there's a reason for this or a desire to go towards repentance, and it's it leads with a genuine, like Carl said, right? You've you've done something wrong, you've sinned, you've offended God, and there's a genuine sorrow in order to get to the next to get to a repentant mindset. I think you have to deal with that sorrow in a way. Or you're dealing with that sorrow through repentance.

SPEAKER_04 6:20

I have like a big feeling of joy that I I ha I can re I can repent. Otherwise I'd have to live with it all the time.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Wonderful. Okay. We're into it, man. So here it is. Hey, when's the last time you repented? There's a reason I'm asking that question. You'll know about it. As I said, this is gonna be uh very personal, the most personal thing I've ever shared with you. But uh, if you're gonna talk about repentance, you have to you have to be personal. So I've taken the step. I want you to share back with me. We all feel that in my view of a Bible study is a mini beggars convention, a bunch of beggars getting together, sharing where they found some bread. And I gotta tell you, I found a whole boatload of bread in this. So we're gonna taste it, we're gonna pass it around. I'm gonna ask you continuously today, what's it taste like to you? What does repentance taste like to you? And it's the only way to get to where we're going. We are the church has the thing I learned most about being in the underground church is that it's not a knowledge builder, it is a life builder, and the western culture preaches good sermons, better sermons, and better, more sermons and more sermons, and we keep building people's knowledge base, but we're not building people's life base, and you can't do that in the way that we do the church. Now, in the underground church, we had no time limits, and we were pretty much like I'm doing this series with you. I'll stay with it as long as we need to stay with it. I will stay on repentance as long as we need to be repentance. I'm still in Ecclesiastes 3:11. I will stay with it until it runs dry, until it is clear that there's no more gas in the tank for that. And here we are on repentance, which is an offshoot of it's what we do. When I said that that eternity that is planted in our heart is our spiritual headquarters of the soul, it's what goes on in that, and we're right in the heart of it right now with this subject of repentance. So I'm asking the question when is the last time you repented? That's a question that needs to be answered. Notice the scripture I put in. And by the way, I I probably came close to putting too many scriptures in. Um if that's possible, I've probably done it this time. And the reason that it is possible is that I go too broad with too many scriptures and don't go deep enough. And on the other hand, I err in going too deep and not going broad enough, and then Trey will tell me about what's the context. So it's I'm in a situation where I'll never win, but I'll always keep trying. So notice the verse I put at the top of the page. Repent, then, turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, and here it is, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord. This is uh, you know, I've never done this. I should, I should just take a second to it. This is amplified version that I I put in. And let me just this is kind of an aside, but it's really important, and I've never shared it with you. That there are three ways of translating takes place. And when you look when you use different translations, you got to be mindful of this. The top two translations that are word-to-word, so that you translate one word at a time. That's the top two are ESV and IV, International Standard Version and English Standard Version. Those are the word-for-word translators. I love them. I have a bias towards I International Standard Version because I was a personal friend of Dr. Lewis Foster, who was the lead translator and responsible for the ISV. So I tend to go that only for personal reasons. But both of those are very good. ESV, ISV are word for word. This is it doesn't get any better, any more succinct than that, taking one word at a time. Then the next area of translators, and there's a bunch of them, it's uh thought to thought and amplified version. The the first amplified version, that's theirs. And so I go there often. There are others that that do it well as well. And but it's not as exact as word for word, it is thought for thought, and so that the it expands a little, like this verse that I just read to you. They expand the thinking a little more because they grab a hold of a thought and they and they go into it a little more. So thought by thought translators, and you may have yours as well. And then you have paragraph by paragraph, which is like messenger, and these people take a whole chunk of scripture and sermonize it and put it into a translation mode. Those are the three different approaches to translation. Now, behind that, there's some other things too that you gotta realize. Who are the translators? For instance, if all of the translators working on a project are all from a Southern Baptist church, well, then you're now gonna have a Southern Baptist church, you know, doctrinal, laced into it. So you got to be mindful of those things as well. Uh Trey, you want to say anything on top of what I just said?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Oh, I thought that was good.

SPEAKER_03 12:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

I use the ESV.

SPEAKER_03 12:57

All right. And I think you know, the church that I go is ESV, so I end up doing that, but my personal when I when I do studies like preparing for you, it's always grounded in ISV.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

I used to use the NASB before the ESV.

SPEAKER_03 13:13

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, here we go. Opening comments, and this is going to go deep today. Be with me. And I want to say some things that will be controversial. And just remember, we're a bunch of beggars. We're in a mini beggars convention. We're telling each other where we found some bread. And so we'll never, there's no perfect. And I that's the one thing I about the Western church that I worry about is that so much, so much dependence upon a single pastor is given, and that kind of destroys the beggar convention. And the beggars is that each of us have discovered, and I found a whole boatload full of bread that I'm dumping on you today, and I'm excited about it. But you will have bread, and I want to hear that because that's how my errors are corrected by you, and I have biases that need to be corralled by you, and I I welcome that, and actually I'm dependent upon it. Here we go. Opening comment. By the way, when I wrote this one, I took the time to write it more personal, so it's not an outline, it is because the subject is so important. I wanted you to have uh very much worded so that if you wanted to go over it with your children or with somebody that you're mentoring, that you have it all. I wanted so I I put extra thing and I wrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it until we finally got this thing. So repentance is a very common term. Way too often it is misunderstood. Most people, if you're in church, do not have a good definition of repentance, and nor do they repent very much. We're trying to correct that. The biggest thing we did in the underground church is that we repented every time we got together. There was repentance, verbal uh repentance and open and confession was taking place. We we don't do that in the Western church, everybody stays to themselves. And we talk about concepts, we don't talk about us. But the opposite is too true for many of Christian colleagues who are living a low humdrum lifestyle. And what I'm saying is that if you want to be excited, this notice up above there, seasons of refreshing will come. If you want an exciting, if you want a hope-filled, joyful-filled lifestyle, you cannot get there without going through repentance. And so a lot of people living a blase life is because they haven't yet discovered the beauty of repentance and what it can do. In fact, they still have oh, repentance. Oh, I don't want to talk about that. Oh, that's gloomy, that's sorrowful, and they don't talk about what God does. There's two parts of repentance is what we do and what God does because of what we do. And what God does because of what we do is darn exciting. It's the things that when we get to it, you're gonna just, oh my goodness, it's drop dead wonderful. Okay, and so we have different views of repentance, and I put a few of them. These are the ones that I've heard you could add to it. Here are just a few samples of joy smothering, misunderstandings pertaining to repentance, how people got the wrong notion about this wonderful world of repentance. I repented way back when I became a Christian. I've been there, done that. One and done. I don't need to do it more. I've done it. Or I've heard this one many times. The very word repentance makes me feel despondent and loss of joy. I don't want to go there. I don't want to go there. Or this one. Jesus died for me, so I don't have to ever repent again. That's just a false understanding, but a lot of people are there. How about this one? Most people think repentance just means saying sorry. But biblically, there's so much more than that. So if I said I'm sorry to God, did I just repent? How about this one? Repentance isn't punishment, it's an invitation. Many people see the word repentance and what is involved as punishment for us being bad boys. God isn't trying to shame us, He wants to do something wonderful for us. We've got to take repentance from the negative word list and put it in the positive word list. I pray and hope. By the time you finish this study on repentance, and I don't care if it takes a year, I will not go on. God has me locked in on this. That you will be excited about continuously deploying it throughout all your days and re almost all of your friends that you know are not repenting enough. Are you aware of that? Almost all of your friends that you know are not repenting enough. How do you put that subject on the table? How do you give them time to refreshment? I've conveniently divided repentance into two parts, and I'm going to teach the first part now, and hopefully we get to the second part today, but if we don't, we don't. Repentance always leads to the restoration of your relationship with God. Now, catch this. Get that, think about it, just think about it for a second. Good repentance will bring an end to guilt and shame, but it brings a beginning to the most wonderful world of grace and peace. You've got to turn that corner. Okay, I'll spend the rest of my time explaining how that's done. And because of trade's existence in my life, I cannot teach a subject without getting to the original language. So there will always be that, and I will always do it. Now, I'm not good at it. I've taken two years of Greek, my worst class in my all of my study, and I never got above a C C plus, I guess, one time. But it's it's hard for me. But I'm so I'm not an expert, but I still read all the right things about it and get them. So, what does the word repent mean? So I'm gonna take the Greek word first, and it means simply change of mind. It describes a 180-degree turnaround where you stop walking in one direction and you turn and walk in the direction toward and with God. Change of mind leads to a change of direction. It's not just about feeling bad, it's about turning away from sin and turning towards God. Change of mind is the literal translation in the Greek. It's the baseline concept, it's an about face, uh-uh, headed in the wrong direction in our own thinking and heart and allegiance. And now, when you get to the Hebrew, and the word repentance is used a ton. I mean, I I've spent most of my time just reading about repentance in the Old Testament because I was so dumb in that area. I had to I had to get back into it. Here's here's something most People don't know that in the Hebrew the word repentance, which means to return, it paints a picture of someone walking the wrong way, then realizing they need to go back home and back to the Heavenly Father's arms. Oops, I got on the wrong path. Oops, I'm headed in the wrong direction. So those are the two base words in both Hebrew and in Greek. You want to add anything to that, Trey, or no?

SPEAKER_02 22:36

Uh no. I think you uh I think you nailed it. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

Okay, so I'm gonna break uh repentance into three things that we do on our side. I'm gonna share a whole boatload of stuff that God does on his side. And we're being unfair to God. We do these three things, and he does a ton of stuff for us because we repented. Can't wait to get to that because that's a positive. But right here, here are the three things that you have not repented unless you've done these three things. These are my words, so you can put your own words in. One recognition recognition of sin. Uh-oh. What I just did was wrong. That's number one. Number two, renunciation of our sin. Uh-oh. I do not want to continue doing that. I must change. This was wrong, and I must make a correction. Number three, returning to God. I want to recreate my relationship with Him so there's nothing, nothing between me and God. Nothing exists between me and Jesus. Those are the three things that my way of saying our role in repentance are recognition of our sin, renunciation of our sin, and returning to God.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Can I add one more? Yes. I know I know we like lists of three and five, and lists of four are verboten. However, I know we like usually we like lists of three things or five things, but not four things. So I know this is a problem. But I would say in my own experience, uh the fourth thing is um fruits of repentance.

SPEAKER_03 24:52

Well, yeah, and we I and the reason I have not put it in here and put it on God's side is because some people try to do repentance and make it earn and make it illegalistic. No, yeah, and it says the Bible and the verse we're going to get to later is bear the fruits of repentance.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Right. So I would take the sort of James, James's equivalence of faith without works is dead. Repentance without fruits of repentance probably wasn't repentance.

SPEAKER_04 25:24

Yeah. What's a fruit of repentance?

SPEAKER_02 25:29

So, like, if if I have harmed Tim, and I'm going to I've repented of that. I'm going to try, I'm going to do my best to not do that anymore. Part of my restoration or recognition or uh turning is to go to Tim and say, I wronged you in this way. Would you please forgive me for that? I realize that I did XYZ. I realize that put you in ABC. I don't want to do that again. That's a fruit of repentance. It's kind of the full cycle. I've fully internalized it. Or it could be, you know, any number. It's sort of the sort of closing of the account with the person or people or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

Those are sins of commission. I would just add to it. If you're going to talk about fruit, you did talk about sins of omission as well.

SPEAKER_06 26:31

For sure. Yeah. Can I ask a question? I don't know where to ask this question, but it can keep coming back in my mind. Can can it truly be called repentance if you're not specific about the thing you're repenting? Like I understand that I'm generally a sinner by nature, and therefore I repent of my status or my sin nature, and try you know, try to improve on that without calling out a specific sin. Is that true repentance? Or can that be true repentance?

SPEAKER_03 27:10

Go ahead, Pray.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

I knew you were gonna do that. Um I think anytime we are mindful of our general bent towards sinfulness and trying to be away from it is a good thing. I think I would also say I don't think you can repent of generalities. I think you need to be as specific as you can be as you process that through, own it through, and confess and turn from it. If I'm sort of turning from everything, I'm not really turning from anything. But if I'm turning from this thing, now I'm I'm dealing with the matter at hand, is what I would say. Tactical. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:54

I think the beauty of all this is we need to remember, at least this is my opinion. Um, we have known sin and we have unknown sin. Um, fortunately, Christ covers it all. Um that's the the beauty of all of this. Um but when we are when we're made aware of sin or a a pattern in our lives, and and by the way, sin is built off of the lies of the enemy, so he convinces us to do something that pulls us away from God. When we become aware of that lie that we've participated with, um, then we can repent and move back into truth.

SPEAKER_06 28:34

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

Now, when Kim takes that answer home that we have to be specific for repentance to be repentance, he's going to then do a circle. Now, if Trey with if Derek were here, he would say he he he's so hard on himself, he says, but yeah, I I've sinned, but I didn't, I don't remember them all. I didn't get them all. Now, what do I do? So let me just handle that because I spent a lot of time just on that. I haven't been put in here because it was a whole course by itself. In first John 1, that whole chapter and it reaches a climax when it gets to verse 9, and it says that and if we confess our sins, he will forgive us of our sins. But on two occasions before verse 9, he says, and all of your sins will be forgiven. You don't name them all right because you don't know them all to name them. You're sinning and don't even know that you're sinning, especially in the world of sins of omission. Most people only think of sin as sins of commission. I wrote a whole poem on that. I did not put it in. See, I was I was I I can be um self-disciplined. I think I'll just send it to you when we're done. So, yeah, these sins are very important. Okay, so the three things, and that takes us to where Trey took us. But first, knowing if you have successfully repented, and right here's the trade word you can recognize successful repentance by its fruit. The visible changes in your life that begin automatically. You don't do them for God to forgive you, you do them because God has forgiven you.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Right.

SPEAKER_03 30:45

The visible change, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

I was just gonna say one uh, sorry, I'm right in the middle of a little tenuous situation, and so it's fresh in my brain. Um, when I said the fruits of repentance thing, I did an action, like a specific go do this thing. But the other thing that I've really found personally and observed beautifully in other people is when someone is truly repentant, their defensiveness about the whole thing is gone. There's no fighting about it, there's no arguing over it. They're they're in, I would say in the most beautiful cases I've seen, they actually take more blame than they're actually like than they should, quote unquote. Because they're so tuned into trying to restore their relationship with the Lord, like it doesn't matter. I don't care if that was like an eight out of ten, I'll take the ten just to make sure I'm as tuned into the Lord as I can be. So there is a demeanor in which repentant people carry themselves while they're doing the actions of the fruit, that the combination of those is the fruit of repentance, I would say. Because otherwise you're into your thing where you're like, you're just checking boxes, it's a performance. And you can tell, like you can totally tell in the person.

SPEAKER_03 32:10

I would only add to that that that's true if they're a Christian. Yeah. Yeah, and I think implied that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:22

Yeah, okay. Okay, so here we go. But first, knowing if you successfully repented. And I and I'm saying from what you know Artrea said also is that there's evidence that you've repented because of the fruit that happens. I just want to say this the way I worded it is really important. The visible changes in your life that begin automatically, automatically following your internal decision to repent. They include the following things. I broke them down. I'm experiencing a change in direction. If that happened, that's a sign that repentance has been good. I'm no longer pursuing the sin. I once defended, instead, I'm actively walking toward and with God. That's a proof that repentance happened. Here's the second one: I'm experiencing an attitude shift towards the sin of which I'm repented. I've begun to see sin as God sees it. That's a big step, man. As sometimes offensive and dangerous rather than something to toy with. Here's the third thing. You know if you repented, if with God's help, I'm committed to change. I've taken intentional steps to avoid the sin in the future, such as breaking toxic associations or removing material items that lead me to temptation. Real temptation, repentance immediately initiates real change. So those are the three things. I think there probably could be more. Those are the three that I came up with in writing that I can prove that I did repent or I didn't repent.

SPEAKER_04 34:18

Move on. Yeah. I think the word help is too soft. If I want, I think the word help in that line is too soft. Oh, okay. It's because it's help seems it's like without God, I can't commit to the change. With you know, there to me, there's something I think you I think you're on to something. It's it's for me, it's much stronger. He can't help me. He has to, he has to do. He has to do. I have to like just stay focused on him. So without him being the center, it's easy to slip back.

SPEAKER_03 34:59

So help. So so I should say on that, instead of saying with God's help, I should say with after surrendering totally to God and depending only on his help, I'm committed to change, something of that nature. Gotcha. Yeah. I just want to say more about repentance after becoming a Christian because many people discard repentance once they become a Christian. They did that, and they're not doing it on a daily basis, and sometimes and this maybe just more reflective of my life, I have to repent several times during a day. So especially when I I'm getting in touch more and more with sins of omission, and I and because it's so easy just to shove them aside because you didn't do anything. Yeah, I know. We should have done something. Okay, so repentance after becoming a Christian. Yes, repentance is just is not just for salvation, it is a lifelong process, a gift for every believer who is immediately experiencing a life upgrade. That's what repentance does. So here are the things. If you would just get them, tell me what you think. Frequency, it should be a daily habit. As the Holy Spirit convicts me of specific sins like pride, greed, selfishness, or impatience, driving the car and honking. We must continuously repent and turn back to God. Again, both the Greek word and the Hebrew word. We must change and turn back to God. Purpose. While initial repentance brings salvation, ongoing repentance maintains our interpersonal fellowship connection and close communion with God. The two words that uh Trey is fond of saying at this point is just as repentance and baptism triggers, Acts 238, put them together, let read it, the facilitation of salvation, repentance and confession sustain and accelerate the facilitation of sanctification. So you repent to be saved, you repent to be sanctified. I think it's important to have both of those things in full vow. You want to say more on that?

SPEAKER_06 37:45

anybody like the close communion concept. That's good.

SPEAKER_03 37:59

Next question that I asked myself: what does good repentance feel like? This is where I tried to start with you, and most of us don't like to talk about our feelings. That's personal disclosure. We talk about our knowledge because AI today builds our knowledge. Biblically good or genuine repentance most often begins with godly sorrow. If you want to look up the scripture at 2 Corinthians, a deep grief over having wronged God. I feel bad, God. I really, really blew it. I've wronged you. Rather than just being sad about getting caught or facing uncomfortable or embarrassing consequences. You didn't repent, you got caught. Repenting happens without being caught. It's being convicted by the Holy Spirit. You blew it, man. I blew it, man. Uh best way to put it is this way repentance is not just an emotion. It doesn't always require tears, but it always requires a firm decision to serve, restore, and reestablish our close relationship with God. So it's not just an emotion, but it starts there. The result, true repentance, leads to a sense of refreshing relief and freedom rather than a heavy, hopeless feeling of worldly remorse, of guilt and shame.

SPEAKER_04 39:48

Go. So when you use the word caught, what what I hear you saying is caught by another human. But in fact, aren't you always caught by the Holy Spirit?

SPEAKER_03 40:05

Yes, to the latter. So you're always caught. Well, if you're in, if you have not driven the Holy Spirit out of your life, if and we'll get back to these two subjects of quenching and grieving the Holy Spirit. If you have quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit is going to not be able to. Yeah. Next question that comes up if you're studying repentance. Difference between confession and repentance. While they often go together, they are distinct steps in our walk with God. Confession, this is verbal or mental acknowledgement. It means agreeing with God that we have sinned and naming that sin to Him. That's confession. Repentance is volitional. I want you to see the difference between the two. Volitional. It is the actual art of turning away from sin toward God. And we can confess a sin, admit it's wrong without repenting, actually deciding to turn from it. So we didn't repent. Okay. I'm turning the corner now. I've said what I've said about repentance. If somebody else wants to say something, bring it on. I want to turn my attention now to I've talked about what we did and are doing, but we haven't talked about what God wants to do. So I want to talk about the blessings of repentance. And I am now shifting into sales mode. I want to sell you on repent as much as you can repent, as often as you need to repent, repent for both sins of commission and sins of omission. That you repent because the more you do, the more you're going to get the stuff I'm going to be laying out. I'll start with the first one. Repentance allows me to be and feel brand new again. Again, forgive me for getting personal, but that's the only way I can teach this is that I have to I have to go there. You have to be personal if you're going to experience it. You have to be personal. There's no other way. I used to feel unworthy of God's forgiveness when I repeatedly fell into sin. I'd think I'm already a Christian, and yet I'm still disappointing and failing God in this way. How can I still expect Him to forgive me again and again and again? Unrepentant sin always results in messing up our lives. Thankfully, God assured me by reminding me if we confess the sins, he is faithful, just, and will forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Yep. He's promised to do that. I take you up on that, God. I'm making it a point to confess my sins before God, no matter how unworthy I might feel, or how often I sin, knowing that he will forgive me of my sins, purify me, and I will be righteous before him once again. Only God can do that for me. Just as God reached out to us before, for God so loved the world. That he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Just as God reached out to us to come to know him, he is still reaching out to us, calling us to return to him today. And here are some wonderful verses from the old testament the return to me and I will return to you. Wow. Or how about this one? If you repent, I will restore you. That you may serve me. If you repent, if you repent, I will restore you that you may serve me. I can't say enough about those verses. So the first thing that I have found that repentance allows me to feel brand new again. I'm giving you my personal testimony. What yours is yours. I'd love to hear what does what happens to you when you repent. I wrote a poem on repentance is on like taking a bath. When you work outside and you sweat and you stink and you're dirty, you take a bath. That's what repentance is spiritually. When you get mixed up with the glum of the world, you take a bath, you repent, you pull yourself aside, you take a bath, you get clean. You know why a lot of people are not asking about your joy is because you haven't repented enough. Therefore, joy hasn't come. Those seasons of refreshing hasn't coming back to you. You would be so happy, so joyful if you repented more. My joy level is directly dependent upon my repentance level. If I'm having a blah day, I know where I need to go. I need to go into repentance.

SPEAKER_06 46:44

I guess can I ask another question here just for selfish reasons? So I'm sold on your your reasons to repent, uh, although you've only gone through one. I'll I'll I'll accept the rest of them as you know positive. Tactically, how do you guys fold this into your uh daily, weekly, monthly kind of thinking? Is it is it the same approach every day, every time, or or how do you because I'm I'm just back to the my basic initial comment is am I doing this enough? What is that what are the tactics to be more cognizant of that?

SPEAKER_03 47:23

I am going to get into all of those tactics, and I will also give you a test that you can measure yourself which tactics you are missing out on and which ones that will build that up. I will go deep into those areas because I don't want to give you at the end of our time today your question is so important, it is the guts of what I'm wanting to do with the study on repentance. I so I'm gonna I'm gonna stop here and pick up here next week and then go even deeper and deeper and deeper. And by the by the time next week comes around, I will have given you a new uh working sheet because there will be a lot of changes between now and the next week, based upon some of the comments that were said today. I am going to turn it over to you, uh, and and Jim, you may have some things you want to say as well. So Jason, is Jason still here? Nope. Okay. So I'm gonna turn it over to you, Jim, and anybody else who wants to share in, but Jim, you go first.

SPEAKER_04 48:47

So what struck me today is are you a Christian if you're not repenting regularly? If we're in such a big fight with the devil, which we are, and he he he will win regularly, which he does. Are you uh you know what is what are you as a Christian if you're not repenting every day?

SPEAKER_03 49:13

Well, and you want to take that, Trey?

SPEAKER_02 49:16

Well, I mean I can, but I feel like I talk a lot, so go ahead and answer if you want. Okay, Carl, Carl can take a swing at it if he wants.

SPEAKER_03 49:25

Do you Carl want to take a swing at it? We're just sharing what our takeaways are, right? The first thing I would say, Jim, uh, it's such an important question. I would call your attention to go to the end of 1 Peter and chapter 2, the last four or five verses, that will give you an uh a biblical question. By the way, I didn't ask that question.

SPEAKER_04 49:49

I didn't I didn't do that very well. I didn't ask that for me. If I'm not repenting, I feel like I'm not a cre I'm not as strong a Christian as I should be. I I wasn't really asking, I believe that if I'm not repenting, maybe just me in this group, I feel like I'm sins of commission, sins of omission, but mainly omission are occurring in my life a lot, and I'm not getting caught. So I feel like if I'm not taking action, that's that was really good, you know, confessing and repentance. That that that little definitional part right there was the best part of this morning for me, for me. So it wasn't really like it was a question, it was more rhetorical. How are you can you be a Christian if you're not repenting? Because I feel like I'm repenting all the time.

SPEAKER_03 50:49

With that clarification, and thank you for doing that. Uh, I thought you were asking a salvation question. You were really you were asking a sanctification process, and that that and that's and sanctification is that we inch forward with every right, and that's what we're doing, and we'll spend all of our life inching forward, right?

SPEAKER_05 51:11

I for me, I lived in addiction to pornography for years, um, and it was this constant like um and the thing is is I didn't know how to, I didn't I didn't know why I was struggling with it. I didn't know it was like heart wounds inside of me that I that were from my childhood that God never healed. Um, and and it's not that he didn't want to heal them, I needed to understand what they were in order for me to actually be able to heal from them. And so he took me on this process, but it took 15 years, and looking back on that, does that mean I wasn't a Christian because I still kept going back to my sin? I don't I don't think so. I I'd like to believe that if I had died then I would still be saved.

SPEAKER_04 51:56

Um, but that's again that that's different than what I mean. So I'm doing a terrible job of explaining, but uh keep going.

SPEAKER_05 52:04

I just want you to know that you're not like but I was not living in repentance because I would I I would go and repent, and then I'd go right back into it. So repentance is actually change, but I had to walk that journey of finding out how to create that change or how God could create that change.

SPEAKER_03 52:23

Okay, I need to say something too because we we don't want to let a misunderstanding uh end our time. That just because you sin doesn't mean you've lost your salvation. That's very important. It's you when you reject God. No longer, if you're not feeling guilty, you're you're not rejecting God, God's very much a part of your life, Holy Spirit's very much convicting you, so it is securing your salvation. So, yeah, just make that differentiate. Go ahead and anything else. That was a good one, Jim, and I like the conversation around it. I I have another one, okay.

SPEAKER_04 53:04

I'm going off the Christian bit for a second, but if Tim asks, can I ask a question again? Because that's a question. So you've already given up your one question, so quit asking that. Just ask the doggone question.

SPEAKER_06 53:25

I feel like I have a limit.

SPEAKER_04 53:27

No, we have no limits here. Just ask the question. Every time I hear you say that, it drives me away from God. It's like, stop asking that question.

SPEAKER_06 53:41

Note taken. Note taken.

SPEAKER_04 53:43

Thank you. It's very stressful. I apologize. I had to do that.

SPEAKER_02 53:51

Anyway, anyone else have anything that's I feel like Jim had a breakthrough right there. That's good. That was good.

SPEAKER_04 54:00

I have sinned against you, Tim, and I apologize. No, and I want you to know this because every time you do that, but if you would stop doing that, it would help me to quit sinning against you.

SPEAKER_06 54:12

I'm here for you, buddy. I'm here for you.

SPEAKER_04 54:14

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 54:19

I gotta go, guys. Take care of it. See ya.

SPEAKER_03 54:22

God bless.

SPEAKER_01 54:24

See you, see you guys. All right, have a good weekend, gentlemen.

SPEAKER_04 54:29

You too. Tim left. I had to tell him something. Hey, Levon, I have a question. I'm gonna I'm calling Tim today. I think I'm switching. First of all, the Bible study was great. I'll just pray you and me out since uh just the two of us left. I I'm calling Tim today and say, Tim, I got the sense from your email that because the way she talked and you had till 2030, you weren't gonna do anything about it. And I think the invitation's even more open and more big now to do something about it. I have to I have this gnawing feeling in my gut that I got I read that email and took it to mean I don't need to do anything about it now. Did you get the same feeling when you read that the text?

SPEAKER_03 55:22

I that thought did go through my mind, but I flushed it just saying that's Tim being Tim. Does flush it mean you think he'll still still do something?

SPEAKER_04 55:35

Or did you I still I still think he's gonna do something? Yeah, I hope so. Oh, I I okay, so you and I are both in the same position. Yeah, I'm hopeful he does. I'm I'm fearful, not fearful, like scared for Tim. I'm not scared for you, I'm not scared for me, but fearful, God places opportunities in front of you all the time. Yeah, and what I've noticed a lot is if you don't have Christian brothers, it's easy to miss the opportunity because you get stuck in something where Christian brothers will remind you that you have an opportunity. Um, but what's your thought on that?

SPEAKER_03 56:22

I believe, or am I being too pushy? No, I believe uh I I'm wrestling with this. I believe that in our culture, the Western culture, again, this goes back to my work with the underground church. That that had a I still don't know how deeply that has affected me, but I believe in the Western culture we live too much as individually as individuals in China and Pakistan, in these areas, I find they talk much more and share each other's burdens much more, they are much more open, we're much more private in our western culture, self-sufficient. We tend to act self-sufficiently in other cultures. That's not true, and so they they they have accountability that we do not have.

SPEAKER_04 57:22

Okay, so thank you for all that. Now I'm gonna go back to my question. Sort of like when you were asking what you were feeling and you couldn't get an answer. I'm gonna ask my question again, and maybe I can get an answer this time. Do you think you think I'm being too pushy if I call him and ask about it? Or is it that if I have to call him, he doesn't have the desire to it's just it's I I just I got these weird things, they're all love. Don't you worry. They I I just love everybody in this group, but I just it's just weird to me. I don't understand. And then I look back in my life at how many times God opened the door and I walked right by it. It's like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 58:08

I I think we miss the opportunity to go to the next level of living because we're not looking for those open doors that he's putting ahead of us. Yeah, I also believe that not only open doors, but I also believe that he brings people across our paths that he wants us to work with that we I believe in that wholeheartedly.

SPEAKER_04 58:34

How did I get to Fort Lauderdale? You cannot believe that I didn't even think I was gonna go to Fort Lauderdale. I don't I had to be pushed to go to Fort Lauderdale by my boss to go to that meeting that you were in, and then I reflect on that. It's so funny. My life would be so different. Yeah, isn't that weird? Okay, enough with all that. All right, Lord, thank you for this time together. Thank you for all the folks that were there, thank you for the people who weren't there this time, and and keep your hand on all of us, keep keep your focus on us. I do totally believe that without repentance, my level of Christianity is not as strong. Was it sanctification? Is that the word, Levan? Sanctification. Yeah. Without repentance, I am not continuing my journey of sanctification, and I appreciate the opportunities. I I will continue to move towards less sin, but thank you for giving us your son, knowing that we will always sin until the day we meet you. In Jesus' name. Amen.