…and (if) My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

          2 Chronicles 7:14

Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord…

  Acts 3:19

There are really two types of repentance…one that we undergo to receive salvation. This repentance happens at conversion. But the Christian life is also a life of repentance. Despite what the world thinks about the Christian life, it’s not “being religious” rather it is a relationship with God in which we walk with Him everyday. We can use the analogy of marriage. When a man and a woman are married, they enter into a covenant relationship with each other. Likemindedness, a commonality of goals and desires, and good communication are vital for a healthy marriage. And if both individuals take their marriage seriously and desire to be faithful to the other for life, things can work out very well. But because this marriage is a relationship, not just a theoretical arrangement, it is necessary for each party to pay attention to the day to day happenings. And when one party wrongs the other in some way, it is the responsibility of the offending party to go and seek forgiveness from the offended. When disagreements happen, it is important that both individuals recognize their role in it and, if any mistakes are made, that there is a willingness to confess and repent (in the truest sense of the word), longing for restoration of the relationship. And in difficult times, it’s not necessary for the couple to get remarried each time this happens. They remain married through it all yet the relationship requires an attentiveness and a fostering everyday. 

Our walk with Christ is very similar with one key difference. God is perfect, holy, and righteous. He will never “wake up on the wrong side of the bed” or get moody. He is perfectly consistent, faithful, and trustworthy even when we are not. So when we enter into this relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ at conversion (John 3:3), we move from spiritual death to spiritual life. Just like the married couple celebrates an anniversary every year designating the day in which they were married, we, too, celebrate the day that we were converted and began our life with Christ, receiving the Holy Spirit as a downpayment on our eternal home. But when we stray from God and find ourselves making decisions not conducive to the Christian life, it’s not necessary for us to be saved again, over and over. We remain in Christ even when we sin and make mistakes common to everyone. But like a healthy marriage, as Christians, we should desire for nothing to come between the Lord and us. So when we sin, we take our relationship with Christ seriously and must be ready to confess our mistakes, being willing to repent (turning from the sin) and long for restoration of the relationship. 

This daily confession and repentance is the “repentance for life” that we see in the Old and the New Testament. Consider God’s instructions to the people of Israel, still applicable to the New Testament church today:

…and (if) My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

          2 Chronicles 7:14

Notice that God mentions four (4) things directly tied to repentance: humility, prayer, seeking His face, and turning from wicked ways.

Humbling Ourselves

Unlike what the world often promotes, humility is the key to walking in fellowship with God. After all, He is God and we are not. We would do well to heed the words of James:

Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

      James 4:5-10

If we truly desire to have a relationship with God, this instruction doesn’t offend us rather it should be music to our ears. When we humble ourselves before the Lord, the Bible says that God will exalt us. This is because God is “opposed to the proud” but is very willing to “give grace to the humble.” This is primarily why we don’t see the world pursuing the Lord…it requires humility. The world screams for us to be prideful, self-seeking, and to live on our own terms yet God invites us to humble ourselves and to experience a kind of “exalting” that human effort can never achieve. 

Prayer

Prayer is simply talking to God. As Christians, we have a mediator between God and ourselves, the Person of Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5, Hebrews 4:14-16). This is why, when we are converted and brought into salvation by faith through Christ’s work on the cross, we now have the amazing privilege of approaching the throne of God anytime, about anything. Our talking to God through prayer should be a constant in our lives. Every moment of every day, we need the presence and guidance of the Lord and we can experience this when we make prayer a priority. Consider Jesus’ instructions on prayer:

But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Matthew 6:6

Reward is ours when we make time with the Lord a priority. When we humble ourselves and pray, we are positioning ourselves to experience the fullness of God’s presence in our lives (Ephesians 3:19). 

Seeking God’s Face

This instruction has everything to do with desire. As Christians, living godly lives in an ungodly world, we should long for the presence of God. It’s what separates us from the rest of the world. More than any temporal thing or worldly party, we should long to be in the presence of God. This is the essence of seeking His face. Consider this promise:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

      Matthew 5:6

Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? Consider these words of David from the Old Testament:

O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; my soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

      Psalm 63:1

Is that your experience in following Christ? If we have truly been converted, this should be our greatest desire of our very heart’s cry. 

Turning From Our Wicked Ways

This is at the heart of repentance and it is exactly what James was talking about in the previous passage. “Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you” (James 4:8b-10). The world says “don’t worry about any of that.” “Party on, have a good time, pursue your dreams, and live life on your own terms.” Contrast that to the word of God. We should take sin seriously. “Double-minded” describes a person that can’t seem to make up their mind when it comes to following Jesus. They want to hold onto salvation like a “get out of jail free” card yet they want to live like the world at the same time. Tragically, there are even philosophical beliefs, completely contrary to the truth, that echo these sentiments, giving the sinner permission to sin carte blanch, leaving them with a false sense of security when it comes to eternity. Tragically, many will fall for this pseudo-gospel, having never been truly converted. 

So what did God promise the people of Israel if they would simply follow His directives on repentance? He promised to hear from heaven, forgive their sins, and heal their land. Guess what? This same invitation goes out to anyone…to families, to communities, and to nations. And as Christians, repentance should be a regular part of our lives!

Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord…

  Acts 3:19