Have you really repented?

Have you really repented? To know Jesus you must!                       Kelly Durant

Matthew 4:17

From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

2. Have you ever noticed how people when they don’t like someone they can find fault everything, even with the way the walk across the room? It is carnal, human nature to want to believe you are so much better than another. But people get tired of criticisms because it begs the question, what have you, the critic, done in the way of good for humanity apart from complain?

Today we see so many people obsessed with what other people say, everyone wants to comment, but do know how they are failing God? They have forgotten to focus on their own selves, on their own sins and pride! God didn’t call us to preach attention diversion, that other people are so bad, he called us to preach repentance starting with one’s own self which leads to salvation!

Today many people do not understand repentance. Instead of seeing their sins, shortcomings and failures, they only see the sins and faults in others. Friends, this is blatant self-righteousness and hypocrisy and it has become so common in our post Christian world that most people do not even recognize it anymore!

3. How do you know if you are focused correctly, to know if you are self-righteous or not? Ask yourself this question, can you name one of your sins that Jesus helped you to get the victory over? To be a Christian means you lived one way for a certain time but then Jesus came into you life and everything changed! Can you tell me when that date was? What did you repent of? What is your testimony?

I want to start calling some of you up here to hear your testimony? When do we start, next week? We all should hear how Jesus saved you from your evil self. Everyone needs to know your story how you were once lost but now you are found, how you were blind but now how you see. I love testimonies!

I can tell you I had a lot to repent of, but The worst of my sins was spiritual pride! I had to repent of speaking foul language, drinking alcohol, smoking pot and taking LSD, from hanging with low life friends who only wanted to party and be high, and from being promiscuous. It’s a pretty bad list, right? Well before I didn’t even consider those things wrong because everyone else was doing them and I had lost touch with God and His righteousness. No one called me out, but soon the Holy Spirit was going to do a convicting work in me.

4. So, what we are facing today is the sad reality that many Christians cannot even identify their sins! Holiness means you lose your desire to sin and it also implies that God is cleaning you layer by layer, exposing one thing then another thing, and for sure He is not done with His work on you yet!

James 1:4

But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.  Colossians 1:10

that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;

And to finish with my testimony, I started making an effort to get close to God my way at age 20 in college through yoga and following gurus, so I was able to leave behind many of the above named sins that year but I developed another one, that of spiritual pride. I was able to sit still an hour a day in the lotus position and I believed that my knowledge and discipline under a Hindu/universalism type religion made me superior to others; after all, they were carnal, not spiritual.

5. And then one day I met some missionaries that really knew their Bible (and no, they were not Mormon or JW), and they had the Holy Spirit glow about them and they confronted me in my erroneous beliefs. I told them God recycles us and improves each of us (reincarnation) and they showed me this:

Hebrews 9:27 

And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,

Colossians 2:6-8 New King James Version (NKJV)

6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding [a]in it with thanksgiving.

8 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ

Being confronted challenged me! No one else did that. I had to reevaluate everything I believed. I once believed in Jesus, so how did I get cheated or deceived to believe other things? It was because those philosophies and ideas were feeding my ego and pride. I did repent and asked God to remake me into a new creature, if not I would have become resistant to the Word of God and continued on with my false illusions of what God and life is supposed to be.

6. So take note of this, to confront someone, to correct them in their errors is not a bad thing! The society today seems to mark as a sinner anyone who would call out sin! But if the one correcting has their basis centered around the principles and Word of God, then this type of confrontation and calling out is to be praised.

The problem with the world today is too many Christians have never been corrected for their errors. Too many Christians have never sincerely repented for having spiritual pride along with many other sins! Due to this fact, they never have the authority and Holy Spirit conviction to correct the misguided.

So what happens when the pastor or a brother or sister says that something is not right in your life? It may happen as I have seen a few times that the one offended starts gathering a backup group (usually online) to defend their errors and everyone goes crazy as if the worst sin in the world has been committed to call them out! No, the sin is with the person rejecting correction!

7.  “The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.” 

― William Booth

Did you capture the depth of that quote? How powerful it is! How prophetic he was! This describes the state of many Christians in the world today! It is because people have been mentally conditioned by society in Hollywood, the government, the media, etc.,to defend sins, to resist the Holy Spirit, to eliminate Jesus from the public debate, to never repent, to never include God and then believe heaven will welcome them upon death! The truth of God’s Word is not being taught in many places but here we will preach it and it will live on bringing repentance and new life and salvation to all who obey and follow. 

 My wife and I get frustrated often because we have lived through the past decades where we witnessed many people, mostly young ones, repent from drugs and pride, get turned on to Jesus, and start a totally new life! That was the Holy Spirit working! But churches today have smothered the Holy Spirit and replaced it with the world’s degrading ideologies! These ancient resurgent beliefs and practices contradict the word of God and how too few Christians are contradicting them? We have the right to correct those in our own congregations.

8. A true Christian will speak the truth in love no matter who it offends. Those who obey Jesus Christ are not here to please, appease, or put at ease! Luke 7:23

“And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.” So the opposite is true, to be offended by Jesus and his followers eliminates any blessings you could gain.

Jesus said: Matthew 10

34 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. 35 For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; 36 and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ 37 He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

With this we understand that we can never have peace with the world! God’s children and Satan’s children will never agree! And the sad part is Satan has his children everywhere even in the churches and they are bringing big divisions by demanding you accept unrepentant sinful people!

9. We preach Jesus! What does that include? It means with Jesus you can be forgiven of your sins to start a new life, it means you will gain brothers and sisters that will love you as no one has ever loved you. It means you will have a desire to live in purity and holiness and please God 24/7 seeking ways to let your light shine serving Him doing good works. It means you become what we use to call a “Jesus freak”, one who is so in love with Jesus that He is all you want to talk about!

It means ‘imitating’ or ‘being’ like Jesus! We can be healers, lovers, comforters, and all of the good things of Jesus but we must have that element of doing all of what He did and that includes confronting people in their errors. We must warn people, the Kingdom of God is coming (which means He will overthrow this world’s powers…soon). “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Heaven can start in your heart right now if you get rid of all the world’s preprograming worthlessness filling your heart and head. I replaced all my thoughts and actions to be centered on the kingdom of God and it worked amazingly for me and it will work for you!

Most all of the world’s people’s souls are captive in a kingdom of hell! Satan has damaged them to think that sin is not sin so they are destroying their bodies and spirits. Only Jesus can free their spirit to have eternal life and heaven in His kingdom but how will they get there unless you and I warn them that they must repent and change everything about the direction of their lives? Have you changed everything about your life to be conformed to the Word of God? Have you read it to know what you should obey? Is the Holy Spirit calling you to repent of any sin right now? Come and confess to Jesus