Change Your Direction!!
Webster’s definition of repentance is true, but it falls short of the Biblical Mandate given to each of us who need to repent. There is one more step. Turning the other way and walking off, never to come back again. When I completed the Luge I continued to watch others come down having a great time and I it lessened the affect of the scare I got when I went on it because I saw others having a great time because they were not fearful of it. Had I turned and walked down the hill with my fear still frozen in my heart, it would have gone a long way toward nixing the next thrill event. The part Webster’s leaves out is walking away. Change your direction. It’s the same way for Christians as we have the thrill of the moment many times drawing us into doing something that is not right or dangerous for our faith and the whole time we know it’s wrong but we attempt it anyway. When conviction comes we repent by making a comment to not do it again, but we should also be walking away or changing direction. Let me put it in easy terms, if satan tempts you to go north, you go south. If satan tempts you to do something from your former nature, you turn to God for something from your new nature. When I accepted Christ I turned from my old way of living and walked into a new way of living and I am headed in that same direction today. I am tempted regularly to turn back the other way, but that is not who I am and it is scarey and unfamiliar now to me because Christ is in my life now and all things have changed. Repentance is real and lasting if we actually do the whole thing. Turn and walk away. Change Your Direction. Too many Christians still want to do the thrill seeking thing in life by living on the edge, but the edge you are living on is already on the wrong side of where you should be. You know it’s scarey, but you think you can handle it, but you can’t. Time to Change Your Direction and go the opposite way. Paul wrote to the church in Pilippi about some who lived on the edge and what that caused. Phlippians 3: 18 There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them. I’ve warned you of them many times; sadly, I’m having to do it again. All they want is easy street. They hate Christ’s Cross. 19 But easy street is a dead-end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites. 20 But there’s far more to life for us. We’re citizens of high heaven! We’re waiting the arrival of the Savior, the Master, Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our earthy bodies into glorious bodies like his own. He’ll make us beautiful and whole with the same powerful skill by which he is putting everything as it should be, under and around him.
The questionable life of those who are living their life on the edge is a life that experiences weak repentance at best and fall back into doing the same wrong thing again and again. But you do the right thing. Don’t straddle the fence in your commitment to the Lord. Strive for Godliness, not Worldliness and see the wonderful plans God has for a live going in the right direction.
The Pilgrimage continues…..
David Warren