I was listening at church the other day. It is not like I don’t normally it is just that I have become more accustomed to speaking in churches than listening. It has been a nice transition to be able to sit back and listen to some teaching in on a Sunday.

By the way, if you don’t like church on Sunday morning you can listen to guys all over this country any day of the week from your living room. They are not even TV evangelist kind if people!

Anyway, where was I? I was sitting in church listening to a message about repentance. It was not one of those fire and brimstone, you are going to hell if you don’t repent kind of messages—it was actually helpful. Here are a couple cool things I walked away with that I thought were worth sharing

1. True repentance starts when the blame shifting ends.

Have you ever taken halfhearted responsibility for an argument with your wife? This method works for a while but ultimately only builds long-term bitterness. The argument usually ends like this: “okay, whatever, fine, it was me, sorry.” Are you really sorry or are you just attempting to end the discussion without resolving the situation or truly taking responsibility for your actions? When we stop pointing fingers the opportunity for true repentance opens up.

Blame shifting is the most prevalent when we can’t seem to see past ourselves.

2. True repentance starts when you become aware of how your behavior is hurting someone else and you care.

I guess it is not only that you are aware your behavior is hurting someone else but more that you care about their pain more then your own. So many times we repent because of the pain we are experiencing in our own lives. Because of my decisions my life is not going well and so I need to get my life on track and repent so that my life will be better. How often is your motivation for repentance coming from the pain you experience verses the pain others are enduring because of you?

I love Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. The focus is on the genuine care and concern that followers of Jesus develop for others. The section refers to a man who is standing at the alter (offering a sacrifice to God – not a whole lot of more important practices than this in the ancient world). What could be more important than this commanded practice?

Jesus says, if you are at the alter in the temple and you realize that someone else is struggling because of something you have done or they think you have done against them, leave the temple without sacrificing and go make the relationship right. Is Jesus focused more on the man at the altar or the man who is struggling away from the altar? Jesus is saying that genuine care for others and how your life if impacting others is more important than this practice. The sacrifice is a picture of repentance and yet Jesus points out that true repentance has not really taken place if you don’t care about how your life is impacting others around you. The key to repentance is found in the depth of your heart for others who have been hurt by your behavior.

If you look at what the sin cost you it is self-pity but when you look at what my sin cost Christ it is repentance. When you look at what your sin cost those around you and you CARE enough to change and make it right– this is true repentance.

Let’s not follow our apology’s with a BUT YOU…instead let’s be more concerned about how our lives are impacting others. When we put others before ourselves and take responsibility for our harmful actions we will watch freedom open up in our lives.

Message: Marketplace Christianity, pt. 2

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.