Repentance: Part 3 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. I want to help you start your day right, and we do this every weekday morning at this time. We open the Bible and just listen to God. God speaks into our lives, and you know, when we build our lives around God and what He has designed for us, life just seems to come into focus, and it comes into shape, it comes into balance.

When you live life without God, you always seem to be struggling and battling against life.

Well, let’s see what God has to say. All this week we’re talking about repentance, and repentance just means turning around and going the other way, making things right with God when you realize you’re walking away from Him.

You know, when there’s someone in your life who’s really struggling, really hurting. The thing you need to do in their life so often is just to be there for them, right? And to encourage them, to build them up, to strengthen them.

That’s the most important thing you can do.

There are also times in your friend’s life when you can see that they are starting to do some self-destructive things and building some destructive habits, maybe even some addictions that you know are going to take them down a very bad road.

In times like that, you need to talk to your friend and help them see where their choices are taking them, where this road will take them if they keep making these choices and going down this path.

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What you’re doing is calling them to repent. That’s just what the Bible word repent means. Calling someone to turn around and go in a healthy direction instead of a self-destructive direction.

And the fact is, usually that person doesn’t see that until you help them to see it. Well, so often that’s what God does in the Bible. He’s just getting our attention and saying, I want you to know you’re going down a self-destructive path.

And a path that has consequences to your relationship with me, God says, and if you don’t turn around, you are going to experience the consequences in your life.

Because your life is going to start falling apart, and not only that, but when you die, you’re gonna face my judgment, and I don’t want either of those things to happen. God is reaching out to you. Maybe even right now this morning. He’s reaching out to you and saying, Don’t ignore where your life is headed. Think about it. What is happening in your life? Is your way of life that you’re living right now working? Is it taking you in the right direction?

And God is calling to you and saying – Your life will only come back into order if you build it around me.

Well, if God is saying that to you, don’t ignore it. Let me read you a few verses out of Matthew chapter 4.

It says: now when Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been taken into custody, he withdrew into Galilee, and leaving Nazareth, he came and settled in Capernaum, which is by the sea in the region of Zebulon and Naftali. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, who said: Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. From that time Jesus began to preach and say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Well, I wonder, is God shining a light today on your life? Do you sense God reaching out to you right now, challenging you to change directions, to make things right with Him? Don’t put it off.

I’m John North.

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