help me please!

[Thomas222]

I am 18 years old and very much a sinner, and of need of whatever this thing called repentance is.

I have reached a spiritual predicament and need advice. I have been told that I need to ‘repent’, in order for my sins to be pardoned by God or whatever. However I am bewildered over the meaning of ‘repent’, no Christian has ever been able to actually give me a definite answer of what It means. I have two interpretations of the meaning of repent:

1. To complete rid oneself of all sin, somehow through the magical power of Jesus.
2. To feel sorry before God, recognise the sin I have committed as evil, and to believe in Christ.

I continue to sin, as a Christian every minute of my life, as I believe, do you. The first and most important commandment being “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. Christ specifies, that we must love God will ‘All” our heart, which must not some of the time, but all of the time. I have never encountered a Christian who is able to do this, every minute, of every day. God is not in the Christians’ heart, mind, or maybe even soul, all the time, because we have other things to worry about in daily life. Therefore every day, each Christian breaks the first and most important commandment. On top of this it is said, James 2:10 "To break the least commandment was to break them all", yet we are breaking the greatest. So I can only conclude that on an hourly basis a faithful Christian breaks every commandment.

The first option, "To complete rid oneself of all sin” is laughably impossible. So the question I ask is how do I repent? is it just a feeling of guilty, or a physical act

Forgive me if my tone sounds conceited or indignant, I just become annoyed at Christians. I feel that Christians now days, put too much emphasis on the law, not the new convent. They hold their heads up, believing they are God’s chosen ones, yet the only reason they are charitable is because they hope for riches in heaven, not out of kindness. They forget about God’s divine love and forgiveness. they seem to hold a barbarian view, that any Christian that does not refrain from or touching yourself or drinking with friends is deserving of an eternity of torture that makes Guantanamo bay look like a resort beach. This is my experience with Christians.


Thank you!

 

[wayfaring man]

The root meaning of repentance is to "think differently" having a "changed mind".

This cannot happen by our own efforts alone. Yet if we are not in agreement with the "gift" of repentance, it won't take very well either.

So it kinda comes down to whether or not we're willing to hand our life over to The Lord or not ?

However much we entrust Him is reflected in the degree with which He works within.

And believing we believe isn't necessarily the same as simply believing.

Remember Jesus' saying, except we receive God's Kingdom as a little child we cannot enter therein. ( Mark 10:15 & Luke 18:17 )

Search within for a seed of faith - something Jesus said/taught/demonstrated that appears relatively easy to believe, and focus on having that applied to your life. And as good fruit emerges encouragement will also arise. Then search again for an offshoot of that living growing faith of Christ within, and repeat until fully cleansed and transformed. To the Glory of God and Jesus Christ. Amen.

wm

 

[jikky]

Stop worrying about what you think other people should and shouldn't do via their lives and concentrate on what you believe is whole-heartedly correct and live by those rules. Interprate the bible in your own way, and if you don't understand something just ask other christians that know more than you.

Look, there is no bible blue-print, only you can decide how to truly interprate the bible and as I said above - If you don't understand something just ask someone that does know and be prepared to learn and live among God's words "with an open heart and mind"

Try not to critiscize the views of other christians as you are judging. Only God has the right to judge, and he surely WILL judge those people that are doing wrong when that time comes.

Continue reading the bible with an open heart, if you are having trouble (take baby steps) write down questions and ask.


You will grow wiser over time, just keep at it

 

[Glas Ridire]

Run your own race, but race like you mean to win. The Christian walk is more like SCCA Autocross and less like NASCAR.

Read more of what Paul has to say . . . and maybe some Isaiah 40.

 

[lutherangerman]

Repentance means to turn away from going into the wrong direction, and stepping on a path that leads in the right direction.

Jesus likes humans to sheep. A sheep herd follows its shepherd, and when the shepherd is good, anything is well. But if a sheep looses its shepherd it cannot survive. In nature, the sheep just goes forward stubbornly if it has no lead, just going forward and forward without ever changing direction. This happens with humans too if they have no shepherd, they just continue stubbornly without caring if they are going in the right direction.

So if we have sinned and faltered, we stop going into the wrong direction and look for our shepherd again. Jesus is everywhere because He is omnipresent. We can ask other sheep who stayed on the path and if we follow sound advice we can return to Jesus.

About the law things you wrote about, I would offer a lutheran perspective. The teachings of Jesus are divided in two main parts, Law and Gospel. The law sums up the commandments of God which are all about love. They tell us moral goals and objectives. However, the law also contains the wrath of God against sin, and how He deems sin to be met with the punishment of death. And so though the law demands the good and the love, it does us in because we are sinners. But that's where the Gospel part of the teachings of Jesus come in. The Gospel proclaims grace - we are asked to live in God's grace whereby God recognizes our sin nature and does away with the law so our sin isn't met with the punishment of death anymore. We are given the Holy Spirit and also Jesus Himself dwells with us. These presences help with our sanctification - which is the process of becoming holy. Salvation is given solely by Jesus and we play no part of it except for being thankful, it's only God's work. But sanctification requires our cooperation. We basically seek the guidance of Jesus, the grace of the Father and the lead of the Holy Spirit, by which we grow the fruits of the Spirit which are very beloved by God, ie we become gentle, humble, kind, patient, disciplined and persevering even in suffering and affliction. We learn to deny ourselves to enjoy and follow Jesus more singularly and purely.

The law is more of a didactic (educational) tool than the ultimate teacher of good life. Basically, the law leads us to our limits, we cannot love God as fully and as completely as the law demands, and the same goes for neighborly love. But Jesus can do that and He offers us to fulfill the law for us. So Jesus fulfilled all of the law through His advent, incarnation, ministry and crucifixion. His goal now is to make us like Him - and although we try to imitate Jesus the main part of realizing this goal is done by Jesus infusing us with Him sacramentally, through blessings, through Communion, through forgiveness and through prayer. Our goal is never fully achieved in this life, but it will be realized in the perfection that awaits us after death and in the Eschaton, where we will be resurrected into a new body. Until then we have to expected various hindrances and difficulties, from the flesh, from the devil, from the world.

Don't try to become righteous by your own effort. You will not be able to become righteous anyway, going this road only leads to frustration and eventually to self righteousness. Just be part of a good church where you learn to be a disciple of Christ and where you learn how to depend on Jesus.

God bless you! Relax! Focus on grace and love! Make small steps but make these steps well! To live in grace means that God completely understands your inclination to sin and that you can't always help it. God isn't wrathful to us and isn't angry with us. You don't have to do away with the world's sin, you just stop doing them and turn to God and He makes things well again. Have patience! Trust our Jesus, He means it well. He only wants your best, and you are worth a lot to Him! So much that He made you along with all of us His children in Jesus, who even died to make that all possible!

 

[iamjcs]

most common Definition of REPENT:

intransitive verb
1: to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one's life


Repent - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

 

[ezeric]

I am 18 years old and very much a sinner, and of need of whatever this thing called repentance is.

Repentance is a gift. So, you receive it, but I think you know all that already.
Acts 11:18 (otherwise, we can boast and brag in our own repenting abilities). Also 2 Timothy 2:25


I have reached a spiritual predicament and need advice. I have been told that I need to ‘repent’, in order for my sins to be pardoned by God or whatever. However I am bewildered over the meaning of ‘repent’, no Christian has ever been able to actually give me a definite answer of what It means. I have two interpretations of the meaning of repent:

Repent means to turn around or change your mind. If you read the story of JESUS searching for the 'lost sheep', you will find that HE picks it up and turns himself around (carrying the sheep) and brings it home. That is Repentance.

1. To complete rid oneself of all sin, somehow through the magical power of Jesus.
2. To feel sorry before God, recognise the sin I have committed as evil, and to believe in Christ.

I continue to sin, as a Christian every minute of my life, as I believe, do you. The first and most important commandment being “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. Christ specifies, that we must love God will ‘All” our heart, which must not some of the time, but all of the time. I have never encountered a Christian who is able to do this, every minute, of every day. God is not in the Christians’ heart, mind, or maybe even soul, all the time, because we have other things to worry about in daily life. Therefore every day, each Christian breaks the first and most important commandment. On top of this it is said, James 2:10 "To break the least commandment was to break them all", yet we are breaking the greatest. So I can only conclude that on an hourly basis a faithful Christian breaks every commandment.

There is only ONE that can fulfill every command and every law and every requirement. There really is only 1 true CHRISTIAN, (in that sense) and its not you or me. JESUS ONLY! So, everything is either based on your effort or HIS!

The first option, "To complete rid oneself of all sin” is laughably impossible. So the question I ask is how do I repent? is it just a feeling of guilty, or a physical act.

Again, its a gift or repentance - you receive, and rest as JESUS fixes you.

Forgive me if my tone sounds conceited or indignant, I just become annoyed at Christians. I feel that Christians now days, put too much emphasis on the law, not the new convent. They hold their heads up, believing they are God’s chosen ones, yet the only reason they are charitable is because they hope for riches in heaven, not out of kindness. They forget about God’s divine love and forgiveness. they seem to hold a barbarian view, that any Christian that does not refrain from or touching yourself or drinking with friends is deserving of an eternity of torture that makes Guantanamo bay look like a resort beach. This is my experience with Christians.

Its all about GRACE (which is the New Covenant, or the Kingdom). With HIS LOVE, everything changes! Everyone Changes too!

Thank you!

As for judging those 'in the church', of course you HAVE to do that, otherwise anything goes...
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 1 Corinthians 5:12


-eric

The Exchanged Life

 

[Kaitlin08]

I continue to sin, as a Christian every minute of my life, as I believe, do you. The first and most important commandment being “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. Christ specifies, that we must love God will ‘All” our heart, which must not some of the time, but all of the time. I have never encountered a Christian who is able to do this, every minute, of every day.

It's important for you to understand that you are not sinning every minute. Existing is not a sin.

Take pride in yourself as a person that God loves.

 

[Johnnz]

This is an extract from theologically sound article I came across. I can send you the whole article if you want to read it. Just PM me.

The first mistake in trying to understand what it means is to go to an English dictionary for a definition of the word repent. Contemporary dictionaries tell us how words have come to be understood at the time the dictionary was compiled. But a modern English dictionary does not tell us what was in the mind of a person who was writing 2,000 years ago in Greek about things that were first spoken in Aramaic, for example. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary says this of the word repent: 1) to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one’s life; 2a) to feel regret or contrition; 2b) to change one’s mind.
Webster’s first definition is exactly what most religious people believe Jesus was talking about when he said, "Repent and believe." They believe that Jesus means that only people who repent, that is, stop sinning and change their ways, will be in the kingdom of God. But the fact is, that is precisely what Jesus was not saying.

It is a common mistake for Christians to think of repentance as ceasing to sin. "If you had really repented, you wouldn’t have done it again" is a refrain many tormented souls have heard from well-meaning, law-upholding spiritual counselors. We are told that repentance is to "turn around and go the other way," and it is explained in the context of turning away from sin and turning toward a life of obedience to God’s law. With that idea firmly in mind, Christians set out with the best of intentions to change their ways. But along the way, some ways change, and some ways seem to stick like super-glue. And even the ways that change have a nasty way of cropping up again.

Is God satisfied with such mediocrity, such hit-and-miss obedience? "No, he is not!" the preacher exhorts, and the vicious, gospel-crippling cycle of commitment, failure and despair takes another spin around the going-nowhere rat-racetrack of futility.
And just when we are feeling frustrated and depressed about our failure to measure up to the high standards of God, we hear another sermon or read another article about "real repentance" and "deep repentance" and how such repentance results in a complete turning away from sin. So, we crank up the commitment jalopy and go at it again, with the same, miserable, predictable results. And our frustration and despair deepens, because we realize that our turning away from sin is anything but "complete." We can only assume we have not "really repented." Our repentance was not "deep" enough, or "heartfelt" enough or "true" enough. And if we have not really repented, then we must not really have faith. Which means we must not really have the Holy Spirit. Which means we must not really be saved.

Finally, we either get used to living like that, or, as many have done, we finally throw in the towel and walk away from the whole medicine show people call Christianity.

John
NZ

 

[JackBauer]

I remember feeling exactly the same way a couple years ago when I was your age. It is a very valid question, what it really means to repent of something. After all, most of the sins we commit are the ones we do over and over again. After thinking on such things, I eventually went down a very slippery slope in my Christianity.

All I can say is, I guess you just have to look at the heart of the sin, whatever it is, and just try and do the right thing. In the process, though, don't forget the whole purpose of repentance. It's to humble ourselves and make us right, not only with God, but also with people. Don't forget the whole entire point of everything, which is to love everyone.