Repent – sounds like such an … old-fashioned word. And yet – all it really means, is to have a change of heart. A change of mind. To turn away from the muck that’s ruining our lives, back into the embrace of a God who loves us beyond words.   A Call to Repent Today is a big day on the programme; a huge day on the programme. We have been chatting so far over the past few weeks about the heart that Jesus has to be close to us. The reason He came; the reason He did all those miracles; the reason He blesses us; the reason He is knocking at that door right now. You and I, we are so often just – I don’t know – bumbling our way through life, kind of believing in Jesus, kind of believing in God but really, honestly, a bit lukewarm. You know, life is busy, things are okay and then Jesus comes along and says: Look, I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. But because you are lukewarm; you are neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth because you are saying to me, ‘Look, I am rich, I have prospered. I don’t need anything. But you don’t realise you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. So I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen and a salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love. So, be earnest and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and I will eat with you, and you with me. See, Jesus wants us to have real gold; real purity; real vision – He wants us to get real with ourselves; He wants us to admit that we are not well off, we are not prosperous, that we are poor and pitiable and naked and … Come on, let’s get real with ourselves. But as I can attest, repenting ain’t an easy thing to do. The reason is, it’s about pride. To repent – to have a change of heart; to turn our lives over to Jesus once and for all – we have to admit to ourselves that who we are, who we have become, how we are living our lives falls so way short of the mark. Now, is Jesus only looking for people who are failures? No! But there comes a point where despite any outward success we may have and lots of people have lots of successes – we need to admit to ourselves that, yes, there is a God and yes, some of the stuff we are into isn’t pleasing to Him and yes, if we want to lay hold of this amazing life He has for us, then it’s time to change our hearts and our minds and our lives and our ways. And that immediately brings up this prospect of, well, "If I have to change some things in my life, then I have to give things up for Jesus! Man! This God, I’m sure He doesn’t want me to have any fun in life." That’s how it felt for me way back when. And I look back on that now and think to myself, "Well, how could I have thought that; how could I have had that idea?" But that is knowing what I know now and I didn’t know those things back then. I didn’t have the benefit of walking with Jesus for the past twenty years and realising how much fun He does want me to have – even though sometimes the going gets tough. I mean, I can’t deny that. I didn’t realise back then how those few things that I was clinging on to – my pride, my selfishness, my anger (they were my big ones) – were robbing me of life. Now, I don’t care if you are someone who has never in their wildest dreams imagined giving their lives over to Jesus, or someone whose struggling with that and you are right at the moment, wondering whether that’s what you want to do, or someone who has been warming the pews of a church with your backside for the last half a century or more, we all have stuff. Listen – we all have stuff that we want to hang onto that is not pleasing to God. And here’s my favourite executive summary of that stuff. You may have heard me pull this one out before and the reason I pull it out from time to time is that this executive summary of stuff that God calls sin, kind of whacks you in the face and brings you to your senses. Here it is – it comes from the contemporary Message translation of the Bible. It is Galatians chapter 5, verses 19 to 21. Paul writes to the Galatians: Look, it is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalising everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, I’m kind of pretty sure you recognised one or two of those things in your own life – temper, loveless, competitiveness, de-personalisation … all that garbage. And if we are going to be honest with ourselves – as tightly as we hang onto those things; as much as we justify let’s say, our anger; as much as we have been duped into believing that those things are essential for our lives – actually, the things in that list are just ruining our lives. If we are overly competitive; if we always have to win, how many relationships are we going to have? How rich are our lives going to be? The bottom line is that God only asks us to give up the things; to repent of the things; to turn away from the things that are ruining our lives. Isn’t that a powerful insight? Sin is the stuff that ruins our lives – sin in the stuff that robs us of life and that’s what the devil wants for us: The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but Jesus came that we may have live and have it in all its abundance. So today, I believe Jesus wants a few of us to repent – to have a change of mind and a change heart and a change of life about some of the muck that we are hanging onto in our lives. Let me come back to the centrepiece of what we have been sharing together and talking together on the programme these last few weeks. Jesus is saying to us: Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you; I will eat with you, and you with me. And my prayer for each one of us today is that the Spirit of God is writing His truth and His love and His mercy and His grace on our hearts right now. I’m believing that there are a good few of us whom Jesus is calling right now to repent. You can feeling Him knocking at the door of your heart; you can hear His voice and His Word – you just know He is calling you to a place of giving up those few bits of muck that you have been hanging onto for dear life, duped by the devil into believing that they are essential for your existence, when all along … all along, like a cancer, they have been spreading throughout you, making you sicker and sicker. I believe there are men and women and children listening to this message right around the world today, whose hearts are fit to break as you have heard God’s Word. You have grieved at the realisation of the sin you have been clinging onto. Well, before we pray a prayer of repentance – a turning point prayer together – God wants you to know this from His Word – Second Corinthians chapter 7, verse 10:

Released on 14 Feb 2021