7006	Forums / Main Forum / Re: A Raw State of Repentance	on: November 08, 2007, 08:22:59 PM
We live a life of repentance. You are rite , it is an attitude of the heart.  Usually when God teaches us about repentance He is always dealing with some lust, greed, coveting, and pride. These sins of the heart make us  anxious and are the enemies of our faith. Gods design for us is to find in Him our all, so that when we have found Him , then we are at peace. He is going to come as the God who speaks and then the earth shakes.  Because He upholds all things by the word of His power, His will is being worked out in our lives by that upholding word. Its not necessarily the outward action that we focus on, but the struggle is in the mind, the thoughts, and then the will. The struggle is how we dwell on these thoughts and how we understand the nature or power of sin and our natural hardness of heart. When we repent we begin to understand more of Gods power that is in the inner man from the new birth. When we learn to understand the nature of that power, we become very desirous of the object of that power.  If repentance were a matter of changing behavior then we could have a manual of bad behaviors and good behaviors. We would 'nt need prayer, the doctrinal instruction, and promises. We would simply follow the rite behavior.  The truth is that Jesus alone provides the purity we need. He earned it by His death and resurrection. Our salvation is provided for us as an inheritance. Our cleansing can only come from Jesus work on the cross. And that work is finished, so that He sits at the right hand of God in heaven, declaring us not guilty by that cleansing. He is our only High Priest. When we repent, that act of repenting is His gracious gift to us. The transformation of the heart is His reminder that we cant clean the latrine by self washing. When Christ causes us to repent, we become very familiar with grace. The repentance that God offers is absolutely free, without human effort, and completely effective.  When we learn to repent, we learn to morn over our sins. We need to dig to get to the old root attitudes of the heart. If we focus on self effort we will only get the outward attitude. But we are to fix our eyes on Christ in His word. If we love Christ then we will love the nature of His work, the spiritual knowledge of His divine light, and His absolute rite to rule in everything. Loving Him is desiring Him in this way.  In repentance we learn that Christ is to be desired more than any other object of our love. The more we repent, that is acknowledging sin, the condition of a dull heart, and our inability to obey, we will build these longings so that we actually repent to see Christ and understand that His life is experienced in us by understanding the nature of His work on our behalf as completely of grace. We will learn to long in grace in His word. Fixing our eyes on Christ will solve our wrong focus of man. The Holy Spirit will bring new desires of our Fathers unfailing love, faithfulness, and forgiveness. Gods attributes will become all consuming in us, so that we see Christ as the radiance of Gods glory.