Archives For repentance

How to find God

samuel kee —  October 21, 2012 — Leave a comment

I recently spent the evening with the chaplain of the Chicago Bears, Ray McElroy.  He told this autobiographical story.  There were two boys, I think ages 6 and 8, who were the trouble of the town.  If anything went wrong in the neighborhood, everyone knew who must have done it: one (or both) of these two boys.  They got into a ton of trouble, to the point that their mom was exasperated.  She didn’t know what to do.  So, she decided to bring them to church so that the senior pastor could talk some sense into them.

She started with the six year old.  There the little guy was, sitting the senior pastor’s office, all by himself.  The senior pastor, who was a big guy, met eyes with this little trouble maker.  The pastor, with cringed brow and an ominous voice, said to the boy, “Son, where is God?”  The boy was so afraid that he didn’t answer.  The pastor straightened up in his chair, as the boy slunk lower in his, and repeated, “Young man, where is God?”  The six year old was really afraid now.  He was eyeing the door.  The senior pastor stood up on his feet behind his desk and said forcefully to the boy, “I said, Where is God?”

At this, the boy jumped out of his chair, scurried out of the office, ran out of the church, headed down the street, into his home, up the stairs, and plunged into his bedroom closet.  He shut the closet door.  His older brother heard him run in, so he went to his brother’s closet and knocked.  He asked, “Tell me, what happened?  What did he do to you?”  The six year old cracked open the closet door and fearfully whispered, “Oh, brother, we really did it now!  We are in a load of trouble!  God is missing, and they think we did it!”

Where is God?  Funny stories aside, God’s people often ask the same question.  In the book of 1 Samuel, God’s people were reeling with the same question and confusion.  God didn’t make sense to them.  Can you relate?  In 1 Samuel 4, Israel fought against their enemy, the Philistines, and lost 4,000 men.  Israel concludes that the loss was due to the fact that they did not bring the ark of the Lord into battle.  So, they procured the ark of the Lord and carted it into battle with them.  Maybe having “God” with them will guarantee a victory.  However, they ended up losing 30,000 men in battle!  On top of that, they lost the ark of the Lord, too!

When the ark was in “exile” with the Philistines, it began to do amazing things on its own.  We learn in 1 Samuel 5 that the ark defeated the Philistines and their god, Dagon (whom he decapitated and mutilated).  All by itself, without the help of the army of Israel, the ark of the Lord defeated the Philistines, doing what Israel could not do.  The Philistines were so overwhelmed by the unaided power of the ark, that they sent it away on an ox cart, back to Israel (1 Samuel 6).  Upon arrival, the Israelites were so overjoyed to see the ark, that they rushed out to greet it.  However, 70 of them—God’s chosen people—looked directly at the ark, and God struck them dead on the spot.  Really, that’s what God did.

Where is God?  After reading these chapters, we’re to understand that God is wherever he wants to be, doing whatever he wants to be doing.  God cannot be manipulated by us.  He is not under our control, to cart out into our battles, whenever we feel like it.  He cannot be tamed or domesticated by us.  He gives life and can take away life, whenever he feels like it.  He does not owe us any explanations, much like the king does not owe the smallest mouse in the poorest peasant’s home an explanation for his decisions in his kingdom.  We are made in God’s image and God will not be remade into humankind’s image.

Once we understand this, we are prepared for the jaw-dropping reality described in 1 Samuel 7.  Though God cannot be controlled by us and will never be controlled by us, he does put himself within our reach.  He is just a turn away.

The quickest way between two points is a straight line.  The quickest way between you and God is 180 degrees.

The uncontrollable, omnipotent God of the Bible, has put himself within our reach.  We just need to turn around to find him.  This is the great biblical doctrine of repentance.  In order to find God, turn away from the course that leads away from God, and turn to God.  To repent is to turn away from sin and to turn toward God.

Repentance is a form of grace, for through repentance, we fall into the embrace of a God who can save us.  As Samuel said to the Israelites, “If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines” (1 Samuel 7:3).

C. S. Lewis wrote (Mere Christianity) that if a man is on a road that’s taking him in the wrong direction, then the way to move forward is to turn around and go the other way, so that he can get on the right road.  The most progressive person is the one who turns around in order to move ahead.  The quicker you can turn around, the more forward you’ll go.

Where is God?  Turn around and you’ll find him.  To move you to repentance, consider the suffering love of Christ.  Few can stand unmoved when they learn about the One who loved us until his last breath.  Turn around and fall into his loving arms.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

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How do I make permanent change?

samuel kee —  October 3, 2012 — 1 Comment

Here’s a question that someone wrote to me, followed by my response:

“How do I restore my purity?  I know that you’re supposed to pray for God to restore it, but that doesn’t seem to be a permanent solution.  It’ll keep me pure for a couple of weeks, but I slip back into impurity.  I don’t want to keep hurting people.  How do I make a permanent change?”  

I love, feel, and understand your question.  It seems that you’re really struggling to move forward, but you keep getting knocked backward.  And, sometimes, it feels like we’re taking one step forward and two steps backward, as the saying goes.  You want your purity to be restored and you know that you can’t restore it yourself.  You’re on the right track, as that’s essential for us to understand.  There is nothing that we can do to restore our own purity.  You also say that you’re praying to God and depending on God to restore your purity.  Again, bravo.  Nonetheless, this doesn’t seem to be working, nor does it seem to be a permanent solution.  You’ll be pure for a little while, but then you’ll slip back into impurity.  Do you know why?  It’s not a permanent solution!  You’re exactly right!

God never meant us to set our hopes on being pure as a way to achieve purity.  Purity is not our goal—you need to hear that.  Let me ask you this, If you only climb to the third rung on a ladder, how far up will you go?  That’s right, to the third rung!  If you only set your hopes on the third rung, you’ll only get that high.  You’ll never make it to the top of the ladder, past the third rung.  You’ve got a misguided goal, which is keeping you down.

You need to learn what true repentance is; you also need to repent of your false repentance.  To repent is to turn away from the direction you were headed, toward God.  To repent is to pursue God, turning away from all other pursuits.  It doesn’t mean that you have no other goals in life, but that God is your ultimate pursuit, the main objective in your life, the hill you’re willing to die on.  You want God so badly, that, when push comes to shove, you’ll drop other good goals in order to have him.  You won’t settle until you have him.

When it comes to regaining our purity, regaining our purity must not be our goal.  Purity is like the third rung on the ladder.  “But,” you say, “I want to repent of my sin and regain my purity!  What’s wrong with that?”  Just listen to what you’re saying: you’re saying that purity is your goal.  You’re repenting of sin and turning toward purity.  You’ve set your eyes on only the third rung.  True repentance is not turning from sin and turning toward purity; true repentance is turning from sin and turning toward God.  God is the goal, not purity.  God is the top rung of the ladder, where our eyes should be focused.

This is a lesson that we all must learn.  So much of the time, I want a clear conscience more than I want God.  I want to be pure more than I want God.  I act like the bratty kid who only wants his father’s gifts, but he doesn’t really want his father.  So what happens after a couple of weeks?  He wants more gifts!  Because the kid’s heart is set only on the gifts, he is never satisfied.  If only he set his heart on his father, then he would be free from this lethal cycle.

Setting your eyes only on the gift of purity is not a permanent solution.  If you or I are doing that, we need to repent of our dysfunctional repentance.  Listen to what Thomas Boston wrote in the early 1700’s:

Men may have a repentance for their sin, gnawing their consciences, and tormenting their hearts, which they will carry on in hell through eternity: being only the first movings of the worm in the soul that never dies: as Judas’s repentance seems to have been, Simon Magnus’s and Pharaoh’s.  They may bitterly rue their sin, as Esau (Gen. 27:34), who never truly repent of it (Heb. 12:17); and the stony heart may be broken in a thousand pieces, while yet every piece remains a stone.  They may have superficial sorrow for sin, and a light joy succeeding it, whose hearts were never pierced to the quick; and therefore the joy goes, as the effects of a send of rain on the parched ground (Matt. 13:20-21).  But true repentance is a repentance never repented of, kindly working in the soul (italics mine).

Do you see what he is saying?  When we fall into sin, we’ll no doubt experience great emotional pain.  We will feel awful about ourselves and what we did.  We’ll feel dirty.  In an effort to get rid of the guilt that is “gnawing our consciences,” we’ll repent.  But, we’ll only repent to the third rung of the ladder, just enough to get rid of our sorrow.  Just enough to get us out of the mud beneath the ladder.  So our hearts will be broken for our sins, even “broken in a thousand pieces” as Boston says.  But “every piece remains a stone.”  We still have hard hearts because we never climbed high enough on the ladder to be close to God so that he could melt them.

In other words, we only wanted the gift of joy, the gift of purity, the gift of the removal of guilt.  We never actually wanted God, we never actually turned to God, we never actually made God the goal of our repentance.  After reaching the third rung, gathering all of the goodies in our hands like a greedy boy, we jumped off the ladder, back into the mud.  There we stand at the bottom of the ladder, getting dirty, knowing we only have to climb so high to feel good again.  This is no permanent solution.

Or as Boston said, “true repentance is a repentance never repented of.”  The process of repentance is not our goal, neither is purity.  Our goal is not to go part way up and down the ladder, over and over, but to fight for the top.  We set our shoulder to the gale and march into the storm of sin, until we make it home to God.  God is our goal, our aim, our pursuit, our destiny.  We need to stop setting our sites on just joy or just the feeling of forgiveness.  As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Joyful Christian, “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither.”  We could say, “Aim at God and you will get purity ‘thrown in’: aim at purity and you will get neither.”

How do we make a permanent change?  Beg God for him to give you more of him; ask God to help you pursue him.  Soak yourself in God’s word and prayer, growing in your knowledge of the gospel, until you can feel it in every part of your being.  Understand that God is pursuing you, chasing you, cherishing you.  Allow his grace to melt your heart.  Our goal must neither be perfection nor purity, but God.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4).

© Samuel Kee, 2012

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Size doesn’t matter

samuel kee —  May 4, 2012 — Leave a comment
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Don’t wait until you feel better about yourself.

“Be your sins ever so great, if you repent of them, and turn from them, they will never be your ruin.”  (Thomas Boston in Repentance)

What a profound idea!  For some reason, we think that our sins will surely be our ruin, whether they’re big or small.  That’s what I hear from my friends, over and over again.  They think that God could never forgive them and that they have sinned too much to be accepted.  But according to Boston (and according to Scripture), the size of our sin does not matter.  All you have to do is turn from your sin.

Does your sin rise up large on the horizon of your life, like a monster or tidal wave?  Just turn from it and walk the other way.  Is your sin ruining your life right now?  Turn from it and it will not have the last say.  Are your sins so great, that you feel there is no escape?  Simply drop them, turn the other way, and follow God.  Sins do not have the ability to destroy those who live in repentance and chase after God.  I don’t care how big your sin problem is.  Size doesn’t matter.

Trouble comes when we hold onto our sins.  That’s like placing yourself in a lifeboat filled with holes and shoving out into the storm.  Holding on to your sin is holding onto a death sentence.  Deep down, we all know that sin is the worst thing that we could do to our lives.

Living a life of repentance means constantly turning to Jesus, in every moment and decision of life.  Given a choice, you turn to Jesus.  By doing so, you’re placing yourself into a safe and sound lifeboat, which truly can save you.

Don’t let your sorrow over the size of your sin keep you from changing.  Don’t wait until you feel better about yourself before you turn to God.  Turn to him when you’re at your worst, when you feel hideous, when you are hideous.  God loves to heal the grieving.

Here’s how Scripture puts it, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret” (2 Corinthians 7:10).  On the other hand, Jesus says, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5).

The size of your sin doesn’t matter; the size of your repentance does.

Step 1: Turn to God.  Step 2: Turn to God.  Step 3: Turn to God.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

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Two Common Mistakes

samuel kee —  March 19, 2012 — 2 Comments
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Jesus is our life.

There are two common spiritual mistakes when it comes to Jesus.  And both involve where you put Jesus.  By dealing with these two common mistakes, you’ll be able to solve a lot of your own spiritual struggles.

The first mistake happens when we do not make Jesus the goal of our life.  We put him somewhere in the middle of our life’s trajectory, rather than at the end of it.  We fail to recognize him as the only God.  This is not good.  We place something else at the end of our life; we make something/one else the goal of our lives.  This confusion causes us to live for something other than Jesus.  He is not the goal of our life/he is not the God of our life.  What are examples of these other goals?  Comfort, control, significance, pleasures, and possessions.  Think about your own life, your goals and desires.  What are you truly living for?  Are you living for Jesus?  Is he the goal of your life, what you most want to get out of it?

Here’s one way I’ve seen this mistake work out.  Sometimes, well meaning Christians assume that they can continue to sin, because Jesus will just forgive them.  Those who have this deadly mentality are confused.  They are not really living for Jesus.  Instead, they are living for the sin they love to commit and merely using Jesus’ grace as a means to get it.  Jesus becomes the means to another end, not the end, himself.  Jesus is trampled on while in hot pursuit of something else.

Seriously, so many of our problems, issues, and struggles would be solved if we kept Jesus as the goal of our life.  Were I to keep Jesus in his rightful place on the throne of my life, then I would not have the opportunity to place myself on the throne and mess things up.

The second mistake is more subtle, but just as deadly.  In this second mistake, we rightly put Jesus as the goal of our life and make him our purpose; however, we use some other means to get to him.  For instance, we might use religious regulations or laws to get to him.  “If I do _________________ (fill in the blank), then I’ll gain Jesus.”  If I pray, then I will get Jesus.  If I avoid this sin, then I will get Jesus.  If I repent, then I will get Jesus.  If I take communion, then I will get Jesus.  If I read Scripture, then I will get Jesus.  If I serve the poor, then I will get Jesus.  Do you get the idea?  Sure, you’ve made Jesus the goal of your life, but, you are attempting to earn your salvation.  Jesus doesn’t want to be just the goal of your life, he wants to be the means, as well.

My friend Colin Smith gives a helpful illustration.  He says it’s like telling a drowning man “If you swim to shore, I will send you a lifeboat.”  Do you see the trouble?  A drowning man cannot swim to shore.  He does not need a lifeboat when he gets to the shore, he needs the lifeboat as he’s struggling in the water.  In the same way, you do not need Jesus just at the end of your life, but in the middle, when you’re desperate and drowning.  Jesus is our lifeboat.  He is the one who saves us and then carries us to the shore.  We cannot save ourselves by keeping religious rules.  We cannot get to Jesus by our own moral/religious efforts.  We will perish.

Do you see?  Jesus must be both the goal of our life and the means of our life.  He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.  Jesus is our life.  Before trying to solve your problems, come to Jesus.  Before trying to get rid of a bad habit, come to Jesus.  Before trying to repent, come to Jesus.  Then after you go to Jesus, keep going to him.  Don’t run to pleasures, run to Jesus.  Don’t run to more possessions, run to Jesus.  Don’t run to power, run to Jesus.  Don’t run to comfort, run to Jesus.

You will be utterly astounded at what Jesus can do with a person that entrusts herself to him.  He will change you and you will forever, never be the same.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

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Water Ski

samuel kee —  January 17, 2011 — 1 Comment

It feels far better to be skiing.

There are two sides of repentance and we need to have both.  The first is the intentional act of turning away from the things that keep us from God.  This looks a lot like grief and sorrow, as we ache over our sin.  We are upset with ourselves and we do not want to love other things more than we love God.  The second side of repentance is turning toward Jesus and grabbing hold of him by faith.  We tie our life to his.

It makes me think of waterskiing.  When you water ski, you first dive down into the water and wait.  The water is often dark and cool, as you bob up and down with your feet awkwardly attached to the skis.  Now, just because you are wearing a life vest and skis, this does not mean that you are waterskiing.  So long as you’re still in the water, you haven’t skied yet.

You need to grab hold of the rope and allow the boat to pull you out. 

Sometimes we think that repentance is just going down into the cool waters of sorrow.  This line of thinking has us believe that just feeling bad for ourselves is true repentance.  And the worse you feel about your sin, the better a job you’re doing at repenting.  Perhaps even the best at repentance are those who really beat themselves up, who constantly feel the weight of their sin on their lives. 

But just because you’re in the water does not mean that you’re skiing.

True repentance means both getting into the chilly water and allowing Jesus to pull you out.  There comes a point in your repentance when enough is enough and you have to allow the strong motor of Jesus to pull you out.  We don’t exercise true faith if we do not believe that Jesus can pull us out of our sin.  In other words, if you don’t think that Jesus can change your sinful habits, then you’ve given up and are willing to become a human buoy.  You’re not skiing and you’re not exercising true faith. 

There comes a point in your sorrow when you have to say enough is enough, and allow Jesus to pull you to the surface.  There comes a point in your faith when you have to experience the joy and thrill of racing over the surface of the water, as God pulls you to places you’d never thought possible. 

Repentance is not just being honest about your sin; that’s not enough.  Repentance is also being honest about the power of Jesus to help you.  He can pull you out if you grab hold of him. 

I know it feels pretty good and pretty religious to put on a glum face and feel really bad about how you’ve really messed up; yes, that indicates a high level of spiritual awareness.  But it’s only half of the story, for it feels far better to be skiing. 

© 2010 by Samuel Kee

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