Sacrifices that God does not despise

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
-- Psalm 51:17

How to connect to God: Part 1/2 - Repentance

New York City is filled with people who were raised and baptised in various churches but who abandoned their faith in their teens and college and have not thought much about it for years. Then something brings them up short and they find themselves in spiritual search mode. They work through the basics of the Christian faith and it seems to them they had never really understood it before. Their question to me as a pastor is “I don’t really know if I am a Christian or not. Am I returning to my faith or finding it for the first time?” The answer is simple - I can’t tell, and it doesn’t matter. If you want to either connect to God or reconnect to God, you have to do the same two things. What are those two things?

The first thing you have to do is repent. That’s not a very elegant sounding word but there is no getting around it. The repentance that begins a new relationship with God is not primarily a matter of drawing up lists of specific sins you are sorry for and want to change. Don’t get me wrong: If you are gouging the poor or cheating on your spouse, and you want to put your faith in Christ, then by all means stop doing those things. A Christian should love the poor and be faithful to his or her marriage vows. But those behavioural changes alone will not make you a Christian. Lots of people in the world are socially and personally ethical but do not have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Repentance is not less than being sorry for individual sins, but it means much more.

The repentance that really changes your heart and your relationship with God begins when you recognise that your main sin, the sin under the rest of your sins, is your self-salvation project. ... in both our bad deeds and in our good deeds we are seeking to be our own Saviours and Lords. We have alternative trusts and “gods,” even though we do not call them that. We try to prove ourselves by our moral goodness or through achievement or family or career. Even diligent involvement in church and religion may need to be repented of once we understand that it was all a way to put God and others in our debt.

Repentance, then, is confessing the things besides God himself that you have been relying on for your hope, significance, and security. That means we should repent not only for things we have done wrong (like cheating or lying), but also for the motivations beneath our good works.


from p232 - 233 The Reason For God by Timothy Keller

You can get "The Reason For God" from bookdepository.com, koorong.com.au, or amazon.com

A sermon series on repentance

I heard a sermon series on the topic of Repentance. It's by Matt Chandler.
Very good.
The best sermon series on repentance I ever heard so far. I highly recommend you to go over there, download them, and listen to them.

Gospel remorse

“Legalistic remorse says, ‘I broke God’s rules,’ while real repentance says, ‘I broke God’s heart.’ Legalistic repentance takes sin to Mt. Sinai, gospel repentance to Mt. Calvary. Legalistic repentance is convicted by punishment, gospel repentance becomes convicted by mercy.”
-- Tim Keller, from Church Planting Manuals

I thought I'd simply re-iterate what was on the blog called "Of First Importance" today. Pause and think, pray and thank God.

(HT: Of First Importance)

Gospel: forgiveness, acceptance, repentance, faith... complicated? Well, what does the Bible say?

This is another MatthiasMedia related post.

A few days ago, I posted in response to Tim Challies' blog post titled, "Is forgiveness conditional or unconditional?" My response was a very short and brief one, mainly because I didn't know how to articulate my understanding of such themes as forgiveness and repentance clearly.

A week later, a CHN article caught my attention. It was not referring to Tim's post, in fact, it was totally unrelated as the CHN article was a response to the Newcastle bishop Brian Farran's public statement regarding GAFCON. Now, I don't really know about GAFCON, but that wasn't what interested me. The Wollongong bishop Sandy Grant's open letter included an explanation of the relationship between repentance and forgiveness/acceptance by God. It reminded me of the prior post by Tim, and I thought Grant's open letter was helpful, even though, it was too short and brief to satisfy me yet. But it wasn't intended as a thesis on the topic anyways.

Read it at The Briefing:Couldn't Help Noticing.

links to share - 18-Feb-2008

• "The God of the second chance" - sometimes -- Repentance preached. REPENT, yes, I'm talking to YOU!
• Tim Challies reviews the Reason for God by Tim Keller -- Sounds like a good book to read and pass on to a friend.
• Reflections of a Computer Scientist -- Warning: This is not for a faint-hearted or bitter bigots, but only for those missional Christians who are willing to engage the unbelievers wherever they are.

Tim Challies asks, "Is forgiveness conditional or unconditional?"

Tim Challies asked an important question, "Is forgiveness conditional or unconditional?"
This kind of questions are often used to start off a discussion which helps us think through some of the difficult/obscure theological arguments, and it often requires defining the terms and contexts.

I think it's worth while reading his post, but I found that this time his post left me a little unsatisfied (as he predicted in the conclusion). I think he did not expand the idea far enough nor defined the terms used in his post tightly enough that some people will read into it too much and make a wrong conclusion about the Christian faith, or Tim himself.

I left a little comment on it in an attempt to express my view on "repentance" but I think I missed the point of the post as whole...

Repentance

I'm reading a book by Eugene Peterson, Life At Its Best. Actually this book contains three books that have been published before by the same author. I may not agree with some views Mr. Peterson holds to, but I am very much thankful for his service I received through the books he's written.

Here's a quote from what I read today, regarding repentance.

The usual biblical word describing the no we say to the world's lies and the yes we say to God's truth is repentance. It is always and everywhere the first word in the Christian life. John the Baptist's preaching was, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand' (Mt. 3:2). Jesus' first preaching was the same: 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand' (Mt 4:17). Peter concluded his first sermon with 'Repent, and be baptized' (Acts 2:38). In the last book of the Bible the message to the seventh church is 'be zealous and repent' (Rev 3:19).
Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding that you wee wrong in thinking that you had, or could get, the strength, education and training to make it on your own; it is deciding that you have been told a pack of lies about yourself and your neighbours and your world. And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth. Repentance is a realization that what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts. Repentance is a decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace.

- pp. 25-26, Life At Its Best by Eugene Peterson

I think I'll be posting up more quotes from him.