Skip to main content

Sorry Enough?


            Wednesday, February 22, is Ash Wednesday.  It marks the beginning of the season of Lent, which will climax on Easter Sunday.  Lent is comprised of the forty days (minus Sundays) before Easter. During this time the church fathers suggest believers prepare themselves for Easter in a way similar to Hebrew preparation for Passover.  It is suggested that Christians take on a Lenten fast.  The church colors change to purple which signifies repentance.
            What does it mean to repent?  God blessed me on my recent trip to Israel by seating me beside a religious Jewish woman who taught me a lot about my faith by sharing about hers.  She explained how she had been instructed about repentance.  She said there are three levels of confession before you experience true repentance. 
1.       Confess your sin.  She confesses her sins against God to God and her sins against people to people.  What if after brainstorming a list of your sins, you identify the sins against people and then call these same people to confess how you sinned?  She said that when we sin against another person we are sinning against God because people bear the image of God.
2.       Feel regret for your sin.  I easily do the first two levels of confession—except the confessing of my sins against my brother—I’m weaker on that point in level one of confession.  I do feel bad for the effect of my sin on others.  I don’t like this feeling.  I want to feel God’s forgiveness.  I’m eager for that.  This is often why I miss true repentance.  I don’t go to the third level of confession that leads to true repentance.
3.       Promise not to do it again.  Ok, well, I feel bad about my sin, but not to do it again?  Is that really necessary?  After all, I’ve got my sins narrowed down to the reasonably accepted by most Christians these days list.  And by the way, most of my repeat sins are against my husband, and really, can you expect me not to get mad at him again? 
TRUE REPENTANCE:  When God gives you the same situation or similar situation and you do not do it again—then you have experienced true repentance.
True repentance, that’s the place I rarely get to, but what repentance is actually about.  I do feel sorry for my sins, yet that is not enough.  I can feel as sorry as sorry can be but not really repent. 
As I enter into a new Lenten season, I want to bring my deeper understanding of the three levels of confession with me.  I want to move to that spiritual breakthrough of true repentance.  I want to realize what a spiritual victory it is to actually be empowered by God to not only confess my sin, not only feel sorry for my sin, not only promise not to do it again, but also to actually not do it again and praise and glorify God for that experience!

Copyright © 2012.  Deborah R. Newman www.teatimeforyoursoul.com   All Rights Reserved.   

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

                Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years?   Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me.   For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side.   I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind.   When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are cr...

The Effects of the Holy Spirit

The Effects of the Holy Spirit               Can you imagine that the very Spirit of God is given to humans who believe in God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ’s death, burial and resurrection?  Just thinking about the Holy Spirit makes me realize that I can do better.  I am not left to my own resources when it comes to praying, having faith, obeying God, doing what He asks me to do.                 No one understands the depth of sin’s effect on a soul better than God.  Every action He takes has been to reduce the effect of evil that was unleashed into our world when sin was merged into His perfect universe.  We never saw it coming. Even Adam and Eve did not see what hit them.  God has counteracted with the effect of faith after sin by enabling sinners to be affected by His ho...

One Year

            One week, one month, and now one year has passed since my world was turned up-side-down.   At first time felt like an eternity, each day the reality that my beloved husband was no longer with me here on earth drug on and felt like it would never resolve.   Now that a significant amount of time has passed, it doesn’t seem possible that we have lived through one whole year without him.   How did we get here?   Where have we been?   How did the earth revolve completely around the sun?   We are surviving.   We are grateful.   We have had a lot of help from heaven and from earth.             I have discovered more intimately how death is a major spiritual formation in our lives.   Whether we are deeply spiritual or not, facing death forces us to consider spiritual realities.   Our souIs are opened to a deeper u...