What I’ve Learned About Repentance
by Perry Hall
When I review my life I have become convinced of three (among many) necessities for spiritual victory:
- True repentance is more than being sorry. It is peeling back, again and again, the layers of your sin, finding how many sins were involved even within "one" sin. Does one sin ever involve one sin?
- True repentance is more than one time of being convicted. Repentance has to be lived every day, not in guilt for past transgressions; but in awareness of how easy it is to slip back in. His subtleties are soft triggers. Does the enemy ever permanently leave after his one failure?
- True repentance gives me compassion for other sinners. Compassion isn't overlooking their sin, because it is understanding I am no better than them. Does my "little sin" in my eyes become a "greater sin" in God's eyes when in pride I make myself the lesser sinner?
If these observations help you, then that helps me to continuously be repenting as I stand watch, and watch out as Jesus warned.
"Stay awake (lit., keep watching) and pray, so that you won’t enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41 CSB'17)
