Repentance

Repentance

First Step Toward New Life
Quite a few years ago, Governor Neff of the State of Texas received an invitation to speak at one of the penitentiaries in that state. He spoke to the assembled prisoners, and afterward said that he would be around for a while to listen to anything any of the convicts might wish to tell him. He would take as much time as they wanted, and anything they would tell him would be kept in confidence.
The convicts began to come, one at a time. One after another told him a story of how they had been unjustly sentenced, were innocent, and wished to get out. Finally one man came through who said to him, "Governor Neff, I do not want to take much of your time. I only want to say that I really did what they convicted me of. But I have been here a number of years. I believe I have paid my debt to society, and that, if I were to be released, I would be able to live an upright life and show myself worthy of your mercy."
This was the man whom Governor Neff pardoned. The Power of Repentance
Christopher D. Green writes:
"You could say that it was part of the environment surrounding our house. It was an unwritten code held sacred to all in the family. From the time I can remember being able to remember things, I grew up understanding what it meant to say, 'I'm sorry.'From childhood, I recall my parents instilling in me and my sister that if we were truly sorry for something we had done, we could always ask for forgiveness and we would be forgiven. It was a mutual obligation both parties (the inflicter and the inflicted) had to accept. Through the realization we had wronged another member of the family, unity could be restored with those simple words, 'I'm sorry.'
"I remember a time when this worked amazingly well, until I abused the system. I still remember breaking my sister's baton over my knee when I was about eight years old. It was then I learned about the power of repentance. As I forced the midpoint of that lightweight baton over my knee, I remember thinking, 'Saying "I'm sorry" will fix this!'Repeated 'I'm sorry's'were declared in my defense, but Mom saw through the veil of charade. I had abused the right to say 'I'm sorry'! Finally, after a long discussion, I was forgiven. Not for breaking the baton as much as I was forgiven of abusing the ability to repent and say I was sorry.
"There are times now when I think of how I have abused the repentance God has provided through Christ. Have I taken advantage of our relationship?" The Incurable Inebriate
A man named Henry Milans lay in a ward of Bellevue Hospital in New York. A group of students stood around his bed, while the instructing professor remarked: "We have discovered in this man all the marked indications of the incurable inebriate. Note the dancing eyes. Note the trembling of the hands and other members of his body. This man can never be cured. He must die as he has lived, a drunkard. Nothing can save him."
Not long after that, Ensign Hall of the Salvation Army describes what happened. "Amid the fervent 'Hallelujahs!'of Christians in the hall, Milans stumbled forward. The change that took place in him was remarkable. What science was unable to do, Christ accomplished in a moment."
Nineteen years after his conversion, he testified: "From that moment to the present I have never been tempted to take a drink of anything with alcohol in it. I should have to learn all over again to love the drink that was for 35 years the greatest love of my life." A Tour and a Turn Around
A backslidden member of Dr. Philips Brooks' parish called at the study to request that his name be dropped from the roll. Dr. Brooks reminded him that the step he proposed was a serious one and appealed to him to reconsider. However, the man was insistent.
Just then a poorly dressed boy entered the study with a note scribbled in pencil on crumpled paper. After Dr. Brooks read it, he challenged his visitor: "My friend, this note is from a poor, sick woman who is requesting that I visit her. I must go to preach a funeral message in a few minutes. Would you be good enough to go along with this lad to his home and supply whatever his mother needs?"
"Certainly, Dr. Brooks, I shall gladly do that for you and for her," was the answer.
He followed the lad down the wide street into narrower streets and finally, into an alley. The boy stopped at a shanty whose half-open door, held by one hinge, led into an unlighted room. When the stranger stepped in, the half-blinded woman welcomed him, "Oh, Dr. Brooks, I knew you would come! You are God's man. You always come to the call of trouble. I am sick and hungry, but first I want you to pray for me. Please pray."
The backslider had not prayed in years. Should he tell her that he was not Dr. Brooks? While he was hesitating, she pleaded, "Oh, pray for me." His heart would not let him refuse the request. He dropped on his knees. Following his first sentence which was a petition for himself in his own backslidden condition, he prayed for her and closed the prayer. Then he explained, "My dear woman you have discovered by this time I am not Dr. Brooks. He is conducting a funeral and he sent me to help you. Oh, how you have helped me! What do you need?"
She told him anything would be appreciated. There was no food, fuel, or medicine. Accompanied by the son, they went to a store, filled a basket with fruit and goodies which the lad carried home. He then ordered and charged to himself, groceries, medicine, and coal to be delivered.
Hurrying back to the pastor's study, the man, no longer a backslider, found Dr. Brooks in his study. Renewed in spirit, the man extended his hand and said softy, "Oh, Dr. Brooks, I do not want to be dropped from the roll: I am all right now sir, I am all right."

Going Fishing Without Bait
A fisherman had planned a special fishing trip for several months. He made out a list of essentials and scratched each item off as he packed. He had his car checked and serviced. All of his appointments were under control. Everything was ready. He even made sure to leave his wife and family well stocked with whatever they might need. The long awaited time finally arrived, and he eagerly bid them goodbye, hopped in his car and left.
He arrived at his fishing cabin that evening, got things tidied up and his food in order, set the alarm for 4 AM, then went to sleep dreaming of the fish he would catch on the morrow.
He arose hurriedly at the first sound of the alarm, quickly ate eggs and bacon, almost gulping the food down in his anxiety to get out on the lake. Just as he was getting into his boat, he made a startling discovery: he had not brought along any bait-the bait box was empty!
Many people prepare to meet God in a similar way.

Defective Inside
A visitor to a sculptor's studio commented, "I saw some blocks of marble lying off in a corner. Out of one a hand emerged, out of another was a head, with face unfinished. Others had unfinished work. Why the abandoned pieces?
The artist answered: "All those pieces showed great promise on the outside, on the surface. But as I chiseled deeper, flaws and defects in the marble that were not visible on the surface showed up. They had to be abandoned."
The difference between marble defects and human defects is that the marble cannot repent and be cleansed, but the human can. The defective heart becomes the perfect heart at the touch of the Master.

Real Sorrow
Two little boys were playing together one afternoon. They had not been playing long when the larger boy took advantage of his weaker playmate. Georgie, the smaller one, too proud to complain, withdrew some distance and sat by himself, manfully winking back the ready tears. After a short time, the larger boy grew tired of his solitary play and called, "Say, Georgie, come back. I'm sorry." Georgie, warned by previous experience, did not respond to the invitation at once. "Yes," he replied cautiously, "but what kind of sorry? The kind so you won't do it again?" No Retribution
When Robert Southey was a small boy, he tells of another boy in his neighborhood by the name of Jim Dick. A number of children began tormenting Jim one evening, calling him names because of his racial origin. The poor little fellow was reduced to tears and slunk away. One day Southey wanted to go skating, but his skates were broken, and the only boy from whom he could borrow a pair was Jim Dick. "I went and asked him for them," said Southey. " 'Oh, yes, Robert, you may have them,' was his answer. When I went to return them, I found Jim sitting by the fire in the kitchen reading the Bible. I told him I had returned the skates and thanked him for letting me use them. He looked at me as he took his skates and with tears in his eyes, said, 'Robert, don't ever call me names again,' and immediately left the room. The words pierced my heart; I burst into tears, and from that time resolved never again to abuse a member of a minority group." A Christian's New Nature
A Hindu said to a native missionary, "I am sure if I lead a good life and do what is right, giving up my bad habits, God will be pleased with me and receive me into heaven." "That is the way most people reason today," replied the missionary. "You know the babul tree (a tree with long, sharp thorns). Now, suppose you break off from its branches a hundred or more of the nasty thorns, then will the tree cease to be a babool tree?" "Certainly not." "Suppose you should apparently stop one or another or even many of your evil ways and habits, you would still remain the same like the babool tree. You must have an entirely new nature, must become a new man, in order to please God. Only Christ can give you a new heart." The missionary's reply was sound and scriptural. The message of Christ, His first and only message to sinful man, is his need of repentance. To Repent
Francis Fuller very wisely said, "To repent is to accuse and condemn ourselves; to charge upon ourselves the desert of hell; to take part with God against ourselves, and to justify Him in all that He does against us; to be ashamed and confounded for our sins; to have them ever in our eyes and at all times upon our hearts that we may be in daily sorrow for them; to part with our right hands and eyes, that is, with those pleasurable sins which have been as dear to us as our lives, so as never to have more to do with them, and to hate them, so as to destroy them as things which by nature we are wholly disinclined to. For we naturally love and think well of ourselves, hide our deformities, lessen and excuse our faults, indulge ourselves in the things that please us, are mad upon our lusts, and follow them, though to our own destruction." The Pharisaical Sinner
An evangelist, wanting to comfort someone who had just accepted the Lord, said to him, "You see how even a publican was accepted when he cried for mercy." "Ah," said the man, "but I have been a greater sinner than a publican: I have been a Pharisee!"

Too Much or Too Little
A very practical man was known to confess: "I have too much religion or too little; I must either give up what I have or get more. I have too much religion to let me enjoy a worldly life, and too much worldliness to let me enjoy religion." He solved the dilemma triumphantly by a wholehearted acceptance of Christ as his living Lord. He put an end to divided loyalty and doubtful obedience. A Changed Disposition
An excellent story of a good man's deliverance from the tyranny of bad temper is told by Dr. Alexander Whyte in his James Fraser, Laird of Brea. It seems that Fraser, a minister, was at times, by his own admission, of a sullen and peevish disposition. One day when he was visiting his people, he called on one of his elders to have a conference with him. All the time Dr. Fraser was talking, the elder sat patting a pet dog to whom he paid more attention than to his minister. When his wife came into the room to give them tea and ventured a word or two in the conversation, he turned on her with an angry look and curt remark that sent her out of the room with reddened cheeks. Fraser rode slowly back home that night giving himself time to think. "After all my evangelical preaching," he said to himself, "to see an elder of mine such a brute at home!" But gradually Fraser began to see that it was a case of like minister like elder; at any rate, in the matter of mulishness and glumness at home. The minister was much later than usual in arriving home that night. But from that time, his whole household connected that night with a great change in the head of the house. A sermon he preached on the following Sunday was so conspicuously blessed to the bad-tempered elder that his household also took immediate note of a miracle. James Fraser and his elder had entered into newness of life.

Repent-Not Penance
A minister found some young people reading the Douay Version of the New Testament. On noticing a passage in the chapter which was translated "do penance," where the English Version rendered the same word as "repent," he asked them if they knew the difference between penance and repentance. A short silence followed; then a girl asked, "Is this right? Judas did penance, and went and hanged himself; Peter repented and wept bitterly." The girl had it right. "Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out" (Acts 3:19).

Wandering Boy
There was a young civil engineer of western Kentucky who assisted his father in his business of railroad prospecting and surveying. As he traveled from place to place, he fell into the society of loose men and acquired intemperate habits, more than his father seemed to be aware of. He shrewdly managed to conceal his evil habits from his parents who were wonderful Christians, the father being the choir leader and the mother a soprano soloist. Once, while the young man was employed on a section of road forty miles from home, it became necessary to lay over from Thursday noon till Monday. His father would be detained till Saturday, reaching home in time for the choir rehearsal. The son, instead of going to his home, went to a bar to begin a spree. The bartender understood his case too well and kept him hidden in his own apartment. When his father came home, he expected to find the boy there. Trouble began when the question, "Where is Harry?" informed the startled mother that he should have come earlier. During the Sunday evening service she was to sing a solo, and by special request-because she sang it so well-her selection was to be, "Where Is My Wandering Boy?" It seemed impossible to her to sing that song under the circumstances. When on Sunday morning, a policeman found Harry, the certainty was no more comforting than the suspense had been. She was advised that he would be "all right tomorrow morning," and that she had better not see him until he sobered up. Toward Sunday night Harry began to come to himself.
His father had hired a man to stay with him and see to his recovery. When Harry learned that his mother had been told of his plight, the information cut him to the heart and helped to sober him. When the bells rang, he decided to go to church. He knew nothing of the evening program. He was still in his working clothes, but no reasoning could dissuade him. His attendant, after making him as presentable as possible, went with him to the service. Entering early by a side door, they found seats in a secluded corner, but not far from the pulpit and the organ. After the usual succession of prayer, anthem, and sermon, the time for the solo came. It was probably the first time in that church that a mother had ever sung out of her own soul's distress:
Oh, where is my wandering boy tonight,
The child of my love and care?
Every word was to her own heart a cruel stab. The congregation caught the feeling of the song, but there was one heart as near to breaking as her own. She sang the last stanza,
Go for my wandering boy tonight,
Go search for him where you will,
But bring him to me with all his blight,
And tell him I love him still.
Oh, where is my wandering boy?
Just then a young man in a woolen shirt, corduroy trousers and jacket made his way down the aisle to the choir stairs with outstretched arms, and sobbing like a child, cried, "Here I am, Mother!" The mother ran down the steps and folded him in her arms. The astonished organist, quick to take in the meaning of the scene, pulled out all his stops and played, "Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow." The congregation joined in the great doxology, while the father, the pastor, and the friends of the returned prodigal stood by him with moist eyes and welcoming hands.

Under Christ's Supervision
A poor German girl announced that she was going to give a piano concert. In order to attract people to come, she mentioned in the advertisements that she was the student of the famous Hungarian professor, Franz Liszt. But it was a falsehood. To her dismay, she learned the professor was going to visit her town on the day before the concert. What should she do now? She went to meet him, confessed her guilt, and asked him to forgive her. The professor answered, "You made a mistake. All of us make mistakes. The only thing that you can do now is to repent; and I believe that you have already repented. Sit down and play." At the beginning, she played with much fear. The professor corrected a few of her mistakes and said, "Now truly you can say that I taught you. Go ahead and play at your concert tomorrow evening, and the last piece will not be played by you, but by your teacher." You are like this girl. You have sinned. There is nothing else you can do but repent. Then you will play the role of your life under the supervision of Christ Himself. The last and the best piece will be played by Him.