Everyone defines repentance as a change of mind towards sin where you no longer want to do things not pleasing to God. I feel like I just can't achieve this mind frame.
What is at the bottom of what motivates you to repent of your life without God? Fear of hell? A sense of obligation or guilt? Maybe it's love? I ask because the way you approach repentance and how you feel about it has a great deal to do with how successfully you repent. The motive God tells us is the correct one is love. Love for Christ. When you love him, the repentance to which he calls you won't be a labor, but a joy.
On one hand, I feel God has delivered me from a lot of things. I am no longer involved in gang life, I have let go of the intense hatred and bitterness I felt towards some people, it has been 4 months since I last used drugs. On the other, I still struggle with addiction, even though im not using i feel cravings every day, to the point I went out and bought some meth the other day but found the strength to throw it away and not use it. I recently started smoking cigarettes again. I try not to listen to worldly music but its always in my head and I still enjoy it. Lust is a constant temptation and is always on my mind. I try and envision a future without sin but I just can't see it for myself to be honest. It seems so far out of my grasp and every time I try to envision it I see some generic image of a perpetually smiling church-goer and it seems so unlike me.
Well, one thing that stands out in all that you've written here is the focus you have upon yourself. Can I suggest to you that so long as you're focused upon you, your desires, your feelings, your struggles, the more of
you you'll produce? The Bible urges us to "look unto Jesus" (
Hebrews 12:2-3) and to "behold the glory of the Lord" (
2 Corinthians 3:18) and to meditate upon the revelation of God in Scripture (
Psalms 1; Matthew 4:4; Philippians 4:8). The more you are focused upon Christ, the more like him you'll end up being. This is because God has made us to be conformed to our focus. Advertising companies make billions every year on the basis of this fact. The more a thing occupies your thoughts, the greater the likelihood it will shape your thinking, desires and behaviour. This is as true in the spiritual realm as it is in the consumerist culture of North America. Part of the answer, then, to changing who you are involves looking away from yourself to that to which you wish to be conformed. In the case of the Christian person, it is to Christ that God intends they should be conformed (
Romans 8:29) and so it is unto him they ought to be constantly looking.
Of course, if you find Christ dull and uninteresting, if he is just some distant, heavenly figure far removed from your life, well, it will be hard to "look unto him" in any consistent way. But if you love him, if you have a strong desire to know him deeply, if you long to fellowship with him as your Saviour, Lord and Friend, all of the things Scripture tells you to do in being conformed to his likeness will be a joy, not an onerous, laborious duty. Turning away from drugs, knocking off the smoking, ditching the lifestyle you once lived centered upon you and your desires can be a delight when doing so leads you into deeper, fuller, more wonderful fellowship with Jesus. If, though, the goal is just to clean yourself up, to follow the rules, to be a "good person," you've missed the whole point of the Christian life. And having missed it, the Christian life becomes a useless and impossible life to live.
Matthew 22:35-38
35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying,
36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"
37 Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
38 This is the first and great commandment.
1 John 4:16
16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
Ive been reading the word daily and going to church weekly but what im looking for is that inward change and everyone says the holy spirit will work the change but its just not happening for me. Any advice would be very appreciated.
Every believer has become "a new creature in Christ" (
2 Corinthians 5:17), the Bible says, and in him, they have a spiritual "Promised Land" into which God wants to move them. The Israelites had an actual, physical Promised Land that God had given to them. They had to take it bit by bit, fighting against the inhabitants of the land for possession of it. It was theirs, but God didn't empty the land of enemies. No, the Israelites had to remain very dependent upon God, trusting Him at every turn, living under His authority, in order to possess the land that God had promised to them. The same is true of you as a Christian believer. You've got a spiritual inheritance in Christ that was given to you the moment you were saved. But you must take possession of it bit by bit, walking by faith in God's promises to you and in your new identity in Christ, in humble submission to God living according to His will and way, and in love centering your life around Him. As you do, you will come more and more to enjoy the abundant life in Christ that you have as a born again child of God.
So, do you know who you are in Christ, what your spiritual inheritance is in him? Do you know what it means to be "in Christ"?