Repentance is work.

We are shaped by our experiences in this life. Our environment, our parents, our siblings, extended family, friends, and strangers, all shape the way we may see ourselves. We are also “who’ we are according to the DNA that formed us in our mother’s womb. Our personality is ‘who’ we are.

Thinking patterns develop at a very young age, and all the factors I mentioned come into play. Our perception of ‘Self’ generates our thinking patterns about ‘Self”.

What are your thinking patterns concerning yourself?

If you are not sure ‘who’ you are, unsure of your identity, there will always be an angst in your thinking patterns, a striving to be ‘someone’ among everyone else striving to be ‘someone’.

Why do we give people titles like, Sports Stars, Hollywood Stars, The Bomb? The elite?

Why do we place such value on dress and appearance?

Why is ‘who’ you know so very important?

Why is there a social pecking order beginning when we are very young in the playground through the rest of our lives?

Most are striving for identity and worth.

This pattern of thinking is what Paul the Apostle terms, this present Evil Age. For it is out of this pattern of thinking that atrocities have been birthed killing, enslaving, raping and demeaning human beings since the Fall.

It is the very dark energy of the Lie and the Liar.

The truth is that we have an identity! We are designed in the image and likeness of the Living God! Notice I stated, ‘Living God’. Not the gods birthed from the imaginations of fallen angels and humans.

As we discover our true identity, worth begins its healing work in the core of our being!

Our patterns of thinking are more difficult to change. Let me give you a preview. You will be triggered by a person or an event or a memory, it is in the crucible of that moment that you identify, with the aid of the Spirit of God who is for you and with you, the thinking pattern that is a product of a lie that you have believed about yourself for most of your life. It is here that you take your first step of obedience and guidance: you repent!

Repentance means to stop going in the wrong direction, turn and go in the right direction. you crucify that thought with Christ, and you embrace ‘who’ he says you are and begin to embrace new thoughts concerning yourself.

Warning: This will happen again and again until the pattern is broken. It is not a magic pill. The process is a strengthening process of exerting your will to overcome. The stronger your will becomes, the quicker toxic thought patterns will break!

A friend of mine told me that most folks think repentance is merely being sorry for sins and then doing the best you can not to sin again. This is shallow. Repentance is work, a good work, that will yield life giving fruit in your life.