What Do We Do When We Repent?

Repentance is one of the two essentials to being saved.  The second essential is faith.  But today I want us to examine repentance.

The word repentance means "to change one's mind."  There can be no salvation without it.  We must have an afterthought about our sinfulness.

First, we cannot hide from our sins.  We cannot bury ourselves in activities.  We cannot ignore our sins.  We can't jump to faith and neglect repentance.  We just must face our sinfulness and admit we have sinned before God.  There should be, as Pendleton said, "a deep sense of shame."  If there is no shame, there is no repentance.  Repentance shames self.

There should be a hatred for sin.  We see ourselves as we really are: sinners before a holy God. 

Then in repentance we should feel sorrow for our sins.  We need to regret that we have sinned.  This can be different in different people.  No one can feel the same about one's sins.  But we must have some degree of shame.

Then we agree within ourselves that we want to forsake our sins.  We see our sins as God sees them.  We want to rid ourselves of them.  We confess to God that we have sinned and ask God to forgive us of them all.  And he does!

That's repentance of our sins!

Have you repented?