TODAY’S PROPHETIC THOUGHT
When you wander away in your thoughts, repent. When you follow the wrong path in your relationships, work, attitudes, and actions, turn away from that path. Follow me and I will lead you out of captivity!
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND!
Many of us were brought up in very religious churches where “repent” meant feeling really, really bad and enduring guilt and shame for your mistakes. Here’s the good news: Jesus says you don’t need to do that.
“Pastor Troy, you mean I’ve been beating myself up with guilt and shame for years and I didn’t have to?” That’s exactly what I’m saying.
Repentance is simply turning 180 degrees from the way you’re going. Go the opposite way. Simply put, Jesus says you need to change how you think and act. If more people truly realized what repentance is, they’d be more apt to repent.
John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin and the Spirit-filled “second Elijah,” drew thousands to the wilderness with his challenge for people to repent and be baptized because the Kingdom of God is at hand. It still is!
Did you know John was the rightful high priest of Israel at that time? He was. His daddy, Zechariah, had been the high priest and these things are passed down through the bloodline. So, who was Caiaphas? He was a political figure who symbolized all that was wrong in that day.
When Jesus went to John to be baptized, he did not have to repent, but through the act of John dunking him, Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit and took his rightful place as High Priest in the order of Melchizedek, amen.
That was a cool rabbit trail, but what I really want to get to is this: repentance was the call in Jesus’ day and it’s still the call today. Turn away from what is eating you alive. Turn away from the sin that so easily entangles.
REPENT! Think new thoughts. Act a new way. Hang out with new friends who love Jesus and want to see you advance in the Kingdom. Leave the old behind and embrace the new. It comes with some major eternal benefits:
Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord… – Acts 3:19
FROM MY SERMON SERIES PRAY FOR RAIN – ALIGNMENT