Repentance: Part 4 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. I want to help you start your day the best way possible. That’s by hearing from God, letting Him shape your life. God is the most important thing in your life. I wonder if you realize that not other people in your life, not your occupation, not your hobbies – not even your food that you eat. God is the most important thing in your life. You are a spiritual being who happens to live in a body right now. One day you’ll die. You’ll leave your body behind, your spirit will continue.

God is the one who you will relate to.

God is the one who made you as a spiritual being, and He’s the only one who can make your life function the way He designed it to function. When you are not in a good relationship with God, life just falls apart.

And I wonder if you recognize maybe that that’s where you are right now. Maybe you’re not all the way fallen apart, but you can see that things are not headed in the right direction. You might be putting on a good surface act for the people around you. They may not realize what’s going on inside you, but on the inside, you know that things are getting worse and you need God.

You may think that you need a certain person in your life. Well, people in your life are a great blessing, but at the heart, your life will never be right unless you’re right with God.

In the book of Acts, soon after Jesus had been crucified and risen from the dead, the apostle Peter speaks to the people in Jerusalem, the people who had been there when Jesus was actually crucified, and he challenges them about how they had rejected God in what they did with Jesus. Here’s their response in Acts chapter 2, verse 37. Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart.

And said to Peter and the rest of the apostles: Brethren, what shall we do?

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OK, we recognize things are really bad between us and God right now. We don’t want to face God’s judgment. We need God in our lives right now. What can we do? Peter said to them, repent.

And each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord will call to Himself.

And with many other words he solemnly testified to them and kept on encouraging them, saying be saved from this perverse generation.

So then those who had received his word were baptized, and that day there were added about 3000 souls who turned to God.

Well, what I want you to see in this is that when you recognize you need God in your life, that things aren’t right between you and God, sometimes you can think, oh, well things are so bad between me and God, I can’t talk to God. I can’t ask God for forgiveness even. God would not want to forgive me.

But recognize even these people who were involved in the crucifixion of Jesus. God comes through Peter and says to them, You can get right with me. Repent.

Turn around. Stop going the direction you’re going. Make things right with me, and I want you to know this is why Jesus died on the cross, so that He took the frustration and anger and judgment that God feels about the things that maybe you’ve been doing in your life or the things that have offended Him. Jesus has taken all of that so that now God is satisfied in His justice, and He can come to you and say – there’s nothing standing between you and me. I can forgive you.

Peter says, repent, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you, and you might think, oh, there’s nothing for me from God but judgment. But God is saying to you, there’s a promise for you if you’ll repent, if you’ll get things right between you and me.

And you might think, well, this is kind of a weird thing for you to talk to us about in the morning this week, repentance. Shouldn’t you be giving us some practical help for our day, some advice? I want to tell you there’s nothing more practical for you when there’s a problem between you and God than repenting, cause that starts your good relationship with God. And when God gets involved in your life in a positive way, there’s nothing else that can make your life good more than that.

I encourage you to get right with God today.

I’m John North.

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