repentance

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

God's Grace is greater than all our sins. Repentance is one of the Christian's highest privileges. A repentant Christian focuses on God's mercy and God's grace. Any moment in our lives when we bask in God's mercy and grace is our highest moment. Higher than when we feel smug in our decent performance and cannot think of anything we need to confess... That is potentially a glorious moment. For we could at that moment accept God's abundant Mercy and Grace and go forth with nothing to boast of except Christ Himself, or else we struggle with our shame, focusing on that as well as our track record. We fail because we have shifted our attention from Grace and Mercy. One who draws on God's Mercy and Grace is quick to repent, but also slow to sin.

Those who believe they have pleased God by the quality of their devotion and moral goodness naturally feel that they and their group deserve deference and power over others. The God of Jesus and the prophets, however, saves completely by grace. He cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance--he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us.

There is only one thing to do when you meet the Living God; you must fall on your face and repent of your sins. Repentance is bittersweet business; Repentance is not just a conversion exercise -- it is the posture of the Christian, much like 'tree' or 'full lotus' is the posture of the Yogi. Repentance is our daily fruit, our hourly washing, our minute by minute wake-up call; our reminder of God's creation, Jesus' blood, and the Holy Spirit's comfort. Repentance is the only no shame solution to a renewed Christian conscience, because it only proves the obvious: God was right all along.

Every story of conversion is a story of blessed defeat.

Certainly we should be very active in seeking God, and Jesus himself called us to 'ask, seek, knock' in order to find him. Yet those who enter a relationship with God inevitably look back and recognize that God's grace had sought them out, breaking them open to new realities.

Repentance in Greek means something much closer to "thinking differently afterward" than it does "changing your cheating ways." Of course repentance can look like a prostitute becoming a librarian, but it can also look like a prostitute simply saying, "OK, I'm a sex worker and I don't know how to change that, but I can come here and receive bread and wine and I can hold onto the love of God without being deemed worthy of it by anyone but God.

The more deeply one enters into the experience of the sacred the more one is aware of one__ own personal evil and the destructive forces in society. The fact that one is alive to what is possible for humankind sharpens one__ sense that we are fallen people. The awareness of sin is the inevitable consequence of having met grace... This grace-judgment dynamic reveals that the center of Christian life is repentance. This does not mean that the distinguishing mark of the Christian is breast-beating. Feeling sorry, acknowledging guilt, and prolonging regret may be components of the human condition, but they are not what Jesus means by repentance. Repentance is the response to grace that overcomes the past and opens out to a new future. Repentance distinguishes Christian life as one of struggle and conversion and pervades it, not with remorse, but with hope. The message of Jesus is not __epent,_ but __epent for the Kingdom of God is near.

The deepness and consistency of your repenting will have a direct impact on the liveliness of your faith and the brightness of your confidence. This is not because you repent so well, but because in repenting you know the darkness and trouble of your own sin, and the great work of grace in Jesus that overcomes it all.

Conviction, then, is no part of a sinner__ salvation__ut the clear practical knowledge of the fact that he cannot save himself, and is entirely dependent on the saving grace of God.

If you are renewed by grace, and were to meet your old self, I am sure you would be very anxious to get out of his company.

Repentance is mentioned seventy times in the New Testament . . . the Bible says God commands repentance . . . it is a command . . .God says, __epent! Or perish!

You and I, God__ ambassadors, are called to sound the warning, to call sinners to repentance, to point the way to peace with God and the hope that is in Christ.

It is the Holy Spirit who brings about conviction [of sin] . . .repentance cannot take place unless first there is a movement of the Holy Spirit in the heart and mind.

The words 'believe' and 'repent' are now largely replaced by other terms such as "Give your life to Christ', 'Open your heart to Christ', 'Do it now', 'Surrender completely', 'Decide for Christ', etc., and in similar language those who profess conversion are sometimes represented as having 'given in'.

We cannot save ourselves. It is only Jesus Christ, who can set us free.

The man who sins but wants to purify it is no more a sinner than the man who doesn't sin but wants to sin.

There is no Christianity unless first there is repentance. And it is not just, __ell, I am guilty._ It is not just a conviction. It is a conviction plus a desire to turn away from those things.