Repentance
Sometimes I feel remorse for something I said or did, and I try to articulate my mistake as I ask for forgiveness, but I don’t always take my reaction to the level of repentance. Repentance means not only looking at something that you did that you regret and feeling badly about it, but also the essential additional step of committing to doing better. That pivoting and turning away from the sin and changing my direction to a healthier way of living by choosing more wisely requires the power of God as it’s human nature to feel remorse, but supernatural to consciously take a different path the next time the situation occurs.
Tish Harrison Warren describes what repentance should be: “a steady drumbeat of life in Christ” (57). As I analyze my own habits and patterns, I am aware that when I am confronted with a situation where I might choose the wrong path, my wheelbarrow tends to follow the rut in the path and do what I usually do. There are times when I may not even process the fact that I should not choose that road again or that I even had a choice to begin with because that habit is so ingrained within me.
As you probably would agree, this is not an easy topic. In fact, my first draft of this post came across as someone mounting a soapbox and preaching. Google informs me that: The soapbox metaphor refers to giving passionate or self-important speeches, often about a personal cause or topic, and implies an informal, impromptu platform used by street speakers to gain visibility.
Dare I preach this message without truly diving into the darkness of my own soul and sin? How hypocritical of me! So I revise and edit knowing that, to use another common analogy, this is where the rubber hits the road. So here I go stepping down from my soapbox to get real in the muddiness of my soul with you: I personally struggle with one of Jesus’ most important commandments that you can find in I John 4:21: “And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.”
True confession: I find it very difficult to love my brother sometimes, in word and deed. My brother is two years (and a day) older than me, and he is creative, innovative, intelligent, energetic, smart, generous, and extremely passionate about what’s important to him. All those adjectives are true. What’s not to love? And yet. He drives me crazy, the root being that we are so incredibly different from one another, and the way that each of us thinks is a whole different orbit from the other’s thinking. I want to love him, and in theory, I do, particularly when I’m not around him. But I am intensely challenged by demonstrating my love for him regularly or even using one of the above descriptions to compliment him. If I were to share a different set of honest adjectives here to describe him that often cross my mind, I think I would only be pouring fuel on the fire, so I’m doing my best to use self-restraint and not give too many specific examples or descriptions. But I will detail one quality that perhaps you can recognize in your relationship with someone in your own life. My brother knows EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. I, in comparison, know virtually nothing about anything. He may not use those words, but it’s written in his countenance and reactions when you talk with him. (Well, at least when I do!) Those two years (and a day) he has on me in beginning life before I did have elevated his understanding and perception of the world so drastically that I could not possibly converse in the same sphere as him. That’s the vibe I get when we interact, anyway.
My reaction to this inevitably leads me to another sin: pride. I find myself thinking back to all the accolades I got growing up about how bright I was, how athletic and musical I was, and what stunning report cards I brought home. My brother’s type of intelligence (think outside the box type of thinking) didn’t necessarily fit well into a school setting, and his experience going through the educational system had its struggles. Perhaps part of his bravado now comes back to this inner desire to prove himself and to redeem those struggles somehow. Yet my perception only perceives the egotistical flaunting (except in rare reflective moments like this where I make attempts to psychanalyze our relationship).
Regardless, we do not bring out the best in one another, and rather than encouraging him or complimenting him on a recent success, my wheelbarrow inevitably finds itself stuck in the easier path of refusing to feed his ego by acknowledging that he has some amazing qualities and abilities. I ought to let him know that parts of the person that I have become admire parts of the person that he has become, but my pride or sin or stubbornness (or a lethal combination of all three) refuses to do this on a regular basis. For this, I am called to repent - to change, to be better - and yet. Again. Stuck there. I repeatedly get caught in my own ugly web of tangled thoughts and feelings.
The Bible tells us God’s words:
“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)
Notice all of the steps involved:
Humble ourselves.
Pray.
Seek God’s face.
Turn from our wicked ways.
God created us with the ability to know right from wrong, and that churning in the pit of our stomach that we get sometimes when considering our choices provides us with a good clue as to whether something reeks of a bad idea or whether God would be pleased with us picking that path.
Satan would like to erase this word “repentance” from our vocabulary. He takes great delight in watching us fall into our same patterns over and over again. Just like faith, though, repentance is something we need to choose to embrace each and every day of our lives. The more aware we are of our choices, the more we can feel when we fall out of rhythm. We can break free from our tendencies and become more like Christ and encounter freedom and beauty in that beautiful new untrod pathway of our new healthy rhythm.
