46 - Understanding Repentance

Beginning at the moment a child first recognizes right from wrong each of us enters into a lifetime of choices: choices whether or not to tell the truth when the truth will get me in trouble; choices to be generous or selfish; choices to indulge harmful bodily impulses or control them; choices to let my temper flare or control it; choices to play by the rules or break them; choices to promote myself or others. Over time, my choices in these and other areas fall into habitual patterns which deepen until my essential character is formed. If I choose to repeatedly violate my conscience I become a person lacking integrity and the personality God intended for me withers and distorts. If I choose to repeatedly obey my conscience I instead become a person of high integrity and my God-intended personality emerges. This conscience, when healthy, is my ability to hear the inner promptings and warnings from God. Its voice grows stronger or weaker, louder or quieter, more calloused or more sensitive with the passing of time.   The Christian life begins with the decision to stop resisting the voice of God which has been speaking to us through the promptings of our conscience. Awakened by the Holy Spirit to the wrongness of my previous course of life I choose instead to submit future decisions to God. I pledge to choose obedience over rebellion, and to repent as soon as I recognize I’ve failed.