The problem with repentance is it makes me feel bad about myself…

Someone speaks on the inside and convicts me about things I have said and done, thoughts, even…

“When he has come, he will convict the world about sin, about righteousness, and about judgment;”

John 16:8

This is one of the works of the Holy Spirit and it is a precious one. If He speaks in your life and makes you feel uncomfortable about your attitudes and thought processes, you are a blessed person, you are a Christian. If He leaves you alone and you never have the joy of knowing His dealings with you, you are in trouble, as you don’t really know Him at all.

When we go wrong we feel guilty, and the Spirit works with our conscience to bring us to repentance and reinstate our faith in the Lord and our position of walking with Him. He teaches us about righteousness, not our own ideas about that, but what God teaches us in His holy Word. As we read and meditate on the Word, the Spirit witnesses into our lives and speaks to us about our state before God. The Word has a purifying effect on our lives and the Spirit applies it’s meaning and applications to our thought processes and behaviour.

There is accounting, and we will all give account for the deeds done in the body. For the Christians it is not the judgment of eternal punishment, but to receive our rewards, and the rest of our works to see if they are gold and precious stones and not wood, hay and stubble. We can loose our reward by our personal carelessness about sin in our lives. It should cause us concern that we could have nothing to offer our Saviour on that great day of reckoning.

“Therefore, bring forth fruit worthy of repentance!”

Matthew 3:8

When God speaks to us we should act on it. The work of repentance always brings forward works of goodness and righteousness, because we are right with God and our attitudes are in line with Him. Our lives should show that we are repentant people, humble, kind and putting other peoples considerations before our own, or at least on a par with our own.

We bow our knees before the Lord of heaven and earth, and repent of the sins of the day and start fresh again to walk with Him. Keep short accounts with that, and it will mean deep fellowship with God and with Jesus, who has paid for the forgiveness for us. We should never forget what we owe and the cost of what we possess in Christ.

“Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours…”

1 Corinthians 3:21

We possess the forgiveness already, for we can never loose our salvation, but we easily loose the fellowship with the Father, because of our tendency to do the wrong thing. We are encouraged to know that all is ours already and we can enter into its reality each day, as we walk with the Lord.