John K. Jenkins Sr - Acts of Repentance

Father, we humble ourselves before You and stand in desperate need of Your love, mercy, and compassion. We worship You for waking us up and giving us the activities of our limbs. We thank You and bless You for giving us a mind to be in the house of worship. We pray and thank You not only for being able to be here but also for our online campus all over the world. We are grateful for those who have connected with us. We pray that You hear our hearts today as we pray for the unsaved, the backslidden, the unsure, the unchurched, and the uncommitted. Draw them to Your kingdom, Almighty God. Open their eyes so that they may recognize the need to be part of Your family. Father, we pray in the name of the Lord Jesus that You put a shield around this place and a shield around every home and every location where this message is being received. Allow our hearts to be open, God. Open our eyes to see the revelatory nature of this message and enable it to apply to our lives. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen and amen.

Alright, you can be seated. Open your Bibles to the Book of James, chapter 4. James, chapter 4. Last week, I talked about the seven signals, evidences, and indicators that you might be in a backslidden condition. By the way, I think I said, if I didn’t, I’m going to say it again today: you don’t need all seven to be backslidden. All it takes is an inclination to be in one, and you can be in that posture. So, I gave all seven last Sunday. Today, I want to talk about seven actions that reveal you have repented. Oh my, oh my! Let me talk about it because what some people call repentance is not truly repentance. Can I talk about repentance for a moment? I’m going to talk about it whether you give me permission or not. I want to address the fact that repentance is not a 360-degree turn. If you make a 360-degree turn, you turn around and end up right back where you started-that’s 360. Repentance is a 180-degree turn; it means you make a turn and go in the opposite direction of where you were headed. Amen! Thank all five of you for that amen to that very revelatory point! That 's what repentance is; it is the definition of repentance. The desire for God is for us to make a 180-degree turn. Repentance is not just being sorry you got caught; it is godly sorrow for what you have done to the point of change. There was a phrase that became a song some years ago that says, «Until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change, you won’t change.» That went over your heads! Let me back it up and give it to you again: «Until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change, you won’t change.» In other words, as long as the pain of what you’re doing isn’t as bad, until it gets worse, you keep walking the same path. So, the call of God to our lives is to live a life of repentance. As a matter of fact, jot this down. I’m not going to turn to it, but in Hebrews chapter 6, those first few verses give us the foundational truths of what believers should learn. As a matter of fact, we want people to learn those six foundational truths in Hebrews chapter 6, and the first two are a life of faith and a life of repentance. Now that’s important. I want you to write those down: we are people of faith. Somebody say, «We are people of faith.» We are people of faith! We believe God. That 's why we live the way we live, we walk the way we walk, and we serve the way we serve because we are people of faith. We believe God; we know that God is a miracle worker. We have faith, but the second point in Hebrews 6-the second element of foundational truths-is repentance. Repentance is a lifestyle. Write that down: it’s a lifestyle. It’s not a one-time act; it’s a lifestyle. I’ve discovered that the closer I get to God, He is constantly pointing out the raggedness of my life. He’s constantly showing me the things I need to change, what I need to adjust, because we often equate repentance just with physical actions. I’m trying to help you understand that repentance also includes the condition of your heart. You can be doing all the right things physically, but your heart can be so stray and so backed up. It also includes the way you think, because some of you have some stinking thinking. Look at the person next to you and see if you can tell they have some stinking thinking. Hebrews 6 refers to these elements as elementary principles. This is the beginning, and it’s important for us to understand that the Lord has called us to live a life of repentance. We never arrive; you never get to the place where you don’t need to change. Look at your neighbor and say, «You need to change, bro.» You need to change, girlfriend, with your jacked-up self. Go ahead and tell them they’re jacked up; they’re nasty, rude, selfish, independent, and proud. Go ahead and preach!