Did you know that repentance is more about being than doing. Most of us, if we repent at all, it will be about cleaning up a short list of our shortcomings, but Biblical Repentance is more about transformation of our foundational character than enumerating our forced and unforced errors.
The way people responded positively to this past Sunday’s sermon, “Recalculating: Rethinking Repentance,” caught me by surprise. Honestly, I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about the subject but last Thursday I was reading through a file of quotes I collect and I ran across a Tweet by a fiery Englishman named Joshua Jones which said, “Pharisees prayed but they didn’t repent.” That sentence stopped me in my tracks. I recalled that for years pollsters have reported that the majority of Americans pray, so I thought, but how many Americans repent. I can’t prove it but I am confident that the answer is few. In fact in the last twenty-four hours I have this growing conviction that as a culture we have lost the knowledge of what repentance is or how to do it. I think people responded so well because for decades now the down side of well psychologized culture is that we have often become blamers rather than becomers, after all most psychoanalysis seeks to find out why we are the way we are rather than evaluate character and subsequent behavior.
As the Holy Spirit would have it I started a new reading plan at YouVersion this morning with Craig Groeshel on leadership and wouldn’t you know it, he gave me the postscript to my sermon yesterday, by talking about this matter of being over doing. It blew my mind as I read Craigs words and realized that transformation occurs when we let God address those ways that sin has warped the very character of being in all of us. Now keep in mind Craigs theme is goal setting not repentance, but if repentance is anything it’s goal setting at the most critical level; our very nature.
Here’s what Craig writes, “most people fill their development plans with do goals: “I want to do more with my kids, I will do random acts of kindness for my wife, I will do more to empower the people I lead.” However, the most influential people make who goals: “I will be a patient mom who loves deeply, I will be a husband who supports my wife and loves her well, I will be a manager who leads by example.” The most influential people start with the who and let the do flow from there. Even by secular standards, Jesus is arguably the most influential leader to have ever lived. He only worked in the public space for three years and in that time gained tens of thousands of followers. Two thousand years later, the best-selling book of all time tells the story of His life, and billions of people from every part of the world have committed their entire lives to following Him. Seven times in the book of John, Jesus declared powerful who statements. As you read them today, you’ll notice each statement flows perfectly into what He did and still does in our world. When you know who you are, you’ll know what to do. More specifically, you might ask yourself, “what would the person who I want be, do?” Craig Groeshel
I went back again and reread the story of the Pharisee and the sinner that Jesus overheard praying in the Synagogue and juxtaposed Craigs words I could clearly see that the Pharisee improperly addressed his being while the “sinner” got right to the point and didn’t address his deeds at all.
Luke 18:9-14 Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else: “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else. For I don’t cheat, I don’t sin, and I don’t commit adultery. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
So as I work on my 2020 goals, which I am pressing into for the next twenty-four hours, I’m still going have a to do list. For example I am writing down the twenty books I want to read in 2020, the podcast I want to start listening too, the gym schedule I plan to keep. my nutritional goals, my payer and fasting goals and my Bible reading goals. Now, I know that, more importantly I need another list of becoming goals. I need to become a more generous person, and while I don’t believe I’m a lazy person, I want to become a more diligent person. I definitely want to become a more courageous person. And oh yeah, I’m I’m thinking about, perhaps, maybe and hopefully becoming a more decisive person. I’m not kidding, those are really areas of higher level of becoming for me. Another thing I’m going to do is, I am going to share these becoming goals with some accountability partners, who will pray for me and even ask me how it’s going.
The Bible says in John 1:8 “To as many as received him, to them gave he power to BECOME the children of God.” May you discover in Jesus, the ability to do comes from the POWER to BECOME.
