In John 14:16, Jesus said to His disciples “I will pray to My Father about you … ”

Can you imagine God and Jesus talking about you?

And then Jesus finishes his sentence with, “I am going to send you another Comforter.”

This is a restless age. We live in a world where people are under stress, tense, worried, and disturbed. But we have a Comforter! Jesus told us that He wants us to turn to Him for comfort. He wants to be the one to comfort us, so we should not seek our comfort from the world.

What is presently disturbing your peace? The truth is, something outside of you can change something inside of you. You have an emotional reaction to a circumstance in your life. When something happens you dislike, your heart beats a little faster, your hands get sweatier, your mind starts moving, your emotions start racing, and your muscles start tensing. That’s a warning!

Mixed up with these bodily changes are emotional changes: anger, bitterness, resentment, hate, rebellion, deception, and ill will. You now are experiencing a condition you must do something about, because you can’t exist like this!

When you are experiencing these ugly emotions, the Bible calls it the “works of the flesh,” or “sin.”

There isn’t any thing or any person in the world that can really help you when you are sinning. They may be able to calm you down, or prescribe medication, or give you some way of managing your circumstances. But the sin remains.

You need to repent of your sins. That repentance comes only through the power of God. It involves a transaction between you and God. You must enter into His presence. We are told in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

The Lord won’t ever turn you away! He’s there anytime you want to call on Him. So come to God and repent of your sin. It involves five steps:

1. “I’m wrong and I have sinned.”

2. “I’m sorry.”

3. “Please forgive me.”

4. “Cleanse me.”

5. “Lord, empower me.”

Repentance involves a dependence on the Lord for the rest of your life. It is a wonderful gift you have been given, and to accept that gift will keep you from repeating your sin.

Take a step . . .

Is there something in your life that you are struggling with? Does it involve sin? Take a few moments to talk with God using the five steps outlined above. Be specific.

You may want to put it into a prayer, something like this:

“Lord, I’m sorry for (be specific and name your sin). Please forgive me and cleanse me and restore Your joy and love and peace to my heart. For not only have I sinned, but unless You help me, I’m going to keep on doing it, and I don’t want that. I want Your way in my life. In Jesus precious Name, I come. Amen.”

This summary is from Dr. Brandt’s message Benefits of Repentance.

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One group of people believes that there is no God, no creator, and thus there is no concept of sin. To them God isn’t. These people believe that our personalities are formed by society and culture.  If a person is hostile, rebellious, selfish, dishonest, or angry it is because their needs have not been met by the world somewhere in their past or they’ve been hurt.

To help this first group of people you need to unravel their life like a tangled web of memories trying to find the root of when all the problems began. That process can take years. Because this group believes there is no God, they think there is no one to save them and they need to save themselves.

The second group of people believes that there is a God and He is the Creator of all things.  To them, God IS.  They agree with the first group that there is a dark side to human behavior.  What they disagree with is the origin of that dark behavior.  They use the Bible as their guidebook.  The Bible puts all the words used to describe the dark side of human behavior into one heading.  That heading is sin.

“What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘’unclean.’” Mark 7:20-23

In the Mark passage above, Jesus tells us that what comes out of a man is what makes him unclean. Paul describes what our sin nature looks like in Galatians 5:19-21 “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.”

The conclusion of the second group is that society only reveals what is already inside of us.  There is no human remedy for sin.  We need a Savior.  If what is inside of us is sin, and our undesirable behavior is sin, that’s good news!  Sin is the simplest thing in the world to deal with.  Jesus Christ is our Savior and died to cleanse us from all sin.

Where are you?  Do you believe that God is the Creator of all things or do you believe that He isn’t God at all?  You will need to decide for yourself.  Did everything just fall into place or is there a Person who is indescribable in human terms who made us and has the power to save us from our natural dark side?  What you decide will affect how you live.  Read Job Chapter 38 and listen to how God speaks of Himself as Creator.

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