Reverse Repentance
12/6/19
Has anyone heard of this phrase before? I do not believe many have thought about it
but just as many or even more have experienced it sometime in their lives. The concept of returning to a place or to
another point in our lives usually reflects on a better condition or situation
but what if that return is reversed for the worse and people find themselves in
an uglier position. It is this condition
that God wants to talk to us about today, for it is a more common practice than
we believe, so serious that it is causing many Christians to lose their faith
and go back to their sinful ways of their birth. Jesus has triumphed over this sinful
condition and if we are not prepared to defend ourselves against this lie, then
we shall easily fall into this same growing category. Church, it is up to us to preach the truth
about life and who is the eternal Author of life itself, but it is easy to see
that something is terribly wrong with our settings and we need to not reverse
repent but continue in eternal repentance and restoration.
It is no secret that each of our lives presents new
challenges that tire our bodies out in every sense of our being. Most of us try our best to put in a full
day’s work, an honest day’s work so that we can come back to our house and
regenerate with our loved ones before the next workday arrives. There are not many so-called “cush” jobs any
longer for almost every opportunity and position is under some type of demand
for applied results that give way to services rendered. There is absolutely nothing wrong with
working such a day and then laying your head down for your rest period and then
waking up at a later appointed time to repeat the next workday. Yes, all of us become beaten down with such a
pattern but we continue to strive for the desired results that everyone
involved wants, so why do we become so revolted as such a process, and why do
we refuse to let go of something of this sort until we completely walk away
never to return again?
I have been in my current working field now for over 30
years and I must admit there have been times where I wanted to clock myself out
from the establishment and never return again.
I know all of us have had such dreams of performing such end-state
duties with our place of work, yet most of us do not end our day in finality
but arise the next day and plug along in the same environment in order to
provide services to another. See, our
hearts drive us in such a way that we cannot just give up something without a
major fight and result coming from that fight.
If we did not allow our hearts to be subject to ethical work conditions,
our morals and standards would not stay stable and would eventually return to a
previous state that we lived under some time before. This usually means a drastic lifestyle change
with a corresponding attitude change as well.
A type of change such as this can only mean one thing, a step backward
and resorting to a loss of status we currently know. Now put this into a biblical sense and place
our spiritual hearts into the position of worker for a moment and even though
one may not be successful as they hoped to be in their Christian walk they must
understand that the attitude and appearance they show to others does have
bearing on them. It is this pattern that
God wants us to understand and to think about because when one comprehends the
Truth about repentance and restoration we cannot forget that one can reverse
this course and to return to their previous lives; returning into their sinful
birth condition if you please.
Previously in an article, God referred us to the
Scripture passage of Jeremiah 8:4 and wanted us to think about what our
position was in just allowing the world to punch our lives without us standing
back up and defending ourselves as God taught us to do. So, in this article, He is going to use that
same Scripture verse again but this time we are going to focus on the last half
of the verse and will be showing us what occurs when we just fall down and do
nothing to get back up, and exactly what we are doing when we act in this
manner. The passage reads like this,
first the King James Version and secondly the actual Hebrew origin:
Jeremiah 8:4
“Moreover thou
shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord, Shall they fall, and not arise? shall he turn away, and not return?”
“So you are to
tell them this is what the Lord says: Do [men] fall and not get up again? Does one turn away and not return?”
We all can see the picture that has been painted here
concerning the issues and the heart of Israel.
Israel has decided to walk away from God further as each day passes with
no cause to pause and think about what their actions entail. It is evident that Israel has made up her
mind over a specific period of time to make such a decision to follow the world
and to leave the confines of the Ways of their origins which God established
alone. The world must have had a pretty
good scheme going on to entice not just certain individuals of Israel to want
to live without God but continually increasing that number until a group became
disconcerted with God and eventually, the majority of people had made this
decision as well. The wiles of the world
do have a way of beguiling humans into believing that its ways are not really
that bad and that it would be okay if one stray away from protection long
enough to have a little bit of fun. It
is this enticement that cost Adam and Eve their home and it is the same type of
condition that we read about here that led to the destruction of Israel and
Judah. The ignorance of the people
toward the warnings from God through Jeremiah came at a heavy price because the
people chose to ignore those words of warning and to water them down by
limiting the ability of God to perform such acts against His beloved people.
Through these acts of denial and liquidation of the Ways
of God in their lives, they performed a redundant process that many knew about
and were taught to avoid again yet discounted the Truth when it was told to
them before devastation occurred.
Remember, that only Adam and Eve were born in pure and holy conditions
and were the only humans to understand and know this type of living. The remainder of humanity is born into sin
and we will continue to be born into sin as long as births occur, with all of
us not being left out of this status. It
is here that God wants to set our hearts into the reminder mode through these
actions of Israel for it is almost identical to what we are running toward
today with our own actions and where the title of this article comes into
motion.
Way back in Genesis, God established His Covenant with
the people of Israel through the life of Abraham and that Covenant has not
diminished or changed in any way, shape, or form for it continues to grow and
flourish today. It is through this
Covenant that God set the foundation for an eternal Covenant with His people,
both Jew and Gentile by giving us His Son as the eternal Sacrifice. When God first made the Covenant with Abraham
He set into motion separation of those who wanted to be linked to God and His
Ways, these folks eventually became a nation and formed Israel. At this time, anyone who blessed this nation
was protected by the blessings of God and those who cursed Israel followed suit
with the curses of God. So, what happens
when a person, group, or nation that has chosen to be separated and protected
from the world by God (Covenant) decides to go back to the ways of the world
instead? It is called reverse repentance
and it is the message of this article and what Israel did that sealed their
fate in destruction.
We are born into sin, this is a given. We choose God and His Ways and are thus
separated from the world according to the Laws of God and through the choice of
Covenant with God. This process comes
from the heart and its growth is determined how much we see and continue
separating ourselves from the world’s plan.
This choosing to follow God and to live under His Covenant is called
repentance and this allows God to restore what our enemy has been allowed to
take from us ever since the Garden of Eden.
What Israel began to entertain was the ways of the world again which
means she decided to go back to the ways that she was in after Adam and Eve
were kicked out of the Garden of Eden before God made Covenant with mankind. This is the act of reverse repentance because
Israel chose to leave God and to return to their worldly ways. They actually repented against God to the
world and pledged their heart to the world with this action which explains why
God asks the question in the second half of this verse about why mankind doesn’t
return to Him. Only an individual, group
of people or nation that has given their hearts to God can do such an act for
if one has never chosen God before they in truth have never left the world in
the first place; in other words, they are still living in their born into sin
origin.
We cannot forget that what is not of God is not an
original status for our lives and that the world can only provide what is
unnatural to us on all levels. We have
many outlets and true information about what Israel did in order to arrive at this
wanted unnatural condition of their hearts.
The entire Old Testament is filled with reference after reference of
such acts all accumulating up to the formal leaving from God which led to their
destruction. The pattern here is clear,
if we choose to live for God and accept and willingly follow His Ways our lives
and places of residence shall remain fruitful and abundant but if we ever
decide to leave God and to go it alone our lives and land shall see destruction
and devastation like never before.
Just a simple question remains: are we turning against
God and leaving His presence and Covenant behind to seek the ways of the
world? The answer is just as simple and
clear as the question: yes. Over the
past thirty or forty years or so we have accelerated this distancing ourselves
from God at a rapid pace, almost seeing if we can beat our own time in this
process as each year passes. Ironically,
we have become so obsessed with this movement away from God that we no longer
are able to see the damage ongoing in/to our land as a warning sign of things
greater to come. Oh, we see the physical
aspects but we are blinded to the spiritual aspects which are eternal in nature
and do not represent the immediate. What
is more frightening is that the Church has fallen into this blinded category as
well and she fails to see what is happening around us even though she states
she is a committed believer in God and in His Word. In short, and in hard terms, this returning
to the world from being under God’s Covenant is the origin and foundation of
the word and condition of adultery.
Some people deny the fact that this nation was founded on
the principles of God which is their blindness both in spirit and in
truth. Yes, there are many aspects of
this nation that have nothing to do with God but every origin of this nation
was idealized by the wisdom of God and the desire to please Him to make the
world a greater place for all. It was and
still strictly is our choice to include God in the decisions of this nation and
when we do He is faithful to heal our land and our hearts to make us a true
shining light to the dying world.
However, when we shun God and go about our own way and pervert the truth
as it has been given to us, our land shall not be healed and our lives shall
methodically become diseased from the inside out. We cannot deny that this death process is
rampantly becoming more visible each day we wake yet we have no true plan of
stoppage. It is this decaying process
that gives way to the painful symptoms of a reversed repentance offers and
until we go back to the appropriate Physician our symptoms, pain, and decay
shall continue. See, even if God did not
ordain this land as a ground of safe haven for those who wanted to worship Him
freely, what lies within our hearts would determine His presence anyway, or
lack of presence too.
The message of Israel became warped and self-centered
which led them to a place of sinful demise that could not be stopped because of
their blinded spiritual hearts. Over and
over, Jeremiah told the people of Israel of the warnings from God but they did
not properly listen to one single warning or word. God told them that they were returning to and
restoring themselves to sin and they snubbed their noses at Him and went along
their merry ways. They had come to the
point where they had no intentions of living under or following God and His Ways
which placed them into an automatic mode of reversal that cost many their lives
through disobedience and a nation its identity for countless generations. God gives us the Book of Jeremiah to
illustrate just how important it is to make sure our hearts and lives are in
tip-top spiritual shape when it comes to life and that when we have the urge to
fall away or to go on our own that we need to stop and to quickly repent before
that foothold becomes a stronghold.
Church, what do you say about this passage and what God
is saying to us today? What is your
message to the dying world and to God?
See, we do have a message to God and it is through our lives and how we
witness to those who are lost because if we do not witness to those who need
God, then we have no message to God. If
we allow the world to penetrate our hearts and to allow its presence to begin
to rot our hearts then we cannot have a message to God. This is another small point of Truth that we
need to understand how we are to live for God and to keep ALL aspects of the
world away from our lives. Repent,
Church! Allow God to take over completely
so that our message to God will be one of eternal repentance to His Ways and to
Him at all times. In no manner can we
live under the ways of the world and not be in True repentance to God, but only
the kingdom principle of reversed repentance which will not only cost you your
life but those who you were destined to share the Gospel with as well. So every time you try and voluntarily preach
and teach that a portion of the world inside your life is okay, think again and
repent yourself before you find that you have incorporated a reversed
repentance too.
DLB
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