Lord, prepare me a sanctuary. You are Holy, tried and true. With thanksgiving, I be a living sanctuary for You. Worthy, You are worthy, King of kings, Lord of lords, You are worthy 2x, Worthy, You are worthy, King of kings, Lord of lords, I worship You.

Our Father in heaven, we worship You, we praise You, we glorify Your Name, we praise, be Thou exalted in the Name of the Lord. Thank You Lord for a new week, a new day Your Mighty Hand have brought us into, we are grateful and we return to say thank You. Precious Redeemer, we bow down before Your Throne to say “Thank You.”

Beloved, how are doing? Wonderful weekend I believed? How was the fishing exercise? Interesting I suppose. Let us try make it not only regular but a life style that will be very pleasing to Your Father.

Last week, we treated topics like ‘Confession’ and ‘Perfect Willingness’, and they were fully packed. However as many powerful as tools it may appear to contain, they cannot work on their own without what we are considering today, “Repentance.”

This form the foundation to all others. Your repentance leads to the confession and rejection of sins in your life, then when you are cleanse and made whole,  comes the willingness to follow Jesus and obey every of His directives.

We are going to examine what worketh godly sorrow in us and we will also consider how salvation is only secured in Christ not in our own righteousness as our monthly theme stated “not of works but of grace.”

Beloved, the essence of all this teachings is to help us if have accepted Christ to be ‘firmly rooted’ in our belief (Heb 10: 23) but if we are yet to come to Christ, we are to do that speedily too. Why? Because the end of everything is here.

No more procrastination, deal with it now, be decisive for Christ now! For He has called you with a heavenly call and you answer is now, else when the ‘time is up’, beloved behold there is no second chance to make amend or to live again, so be all you should be now. Now is the time, now is the hour; be engage now!

Godly sorrow worketh repentance.” 2Corinthians 7:10

Genuine, spiritual mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God. Repentance is too choice a flower to grow in nature’s garden. Pearls grow naturally in oysters, but penitence never shows itself in sinners except divine grace works it in them. If thou hast one particle of real hatred for sin, God must have given it thee, for human nature’s thorns never produced a single fig. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.”

True repentance has a distinct reference to the Saviour. When we repent of sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross, or it will be better still if we fix both our eyes upon Christ and see our transgressions only, in the light of His love.

True sorrow for sin is eminently practical. No man may say he hates sin, if he lives in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely as a theory, but experimentally—as a burnt child dreads fire. We shall be as much afraid of it, as a man who has lately been stopped and robbed is afraid of the thief upon the highway; and we shall shun it—shun it in everything—not in great things only, but in little things, as men shun little vipers as well as great snakes.

True mourning for sin will make us very jealous over our tongue, lest it should say a wrong word; we shall be very watchful over our daily actions, lest in anything we offend, and each night we shall close the day with painful confessions of shortcoming, and each morning awaken with anxious prayers, that this day God would hold us up that we may not sin against Him.

Sincere repentance is continual. Believers repent until their dying day. This dropping well is not intermittent. Every other sorrow yields to time, but this dear sorrow grows with our growth, and it is so sweet a bitter, that we thank God we are permitted to enjoy and to suffer it until we enter our eternal rest.

Beloved, come to God with that child-like kind of sorrow. When a child is repentant of an action done, even as an adult you can feel it, it is pure and so sincere. This type of godly sorrow is what will help you to have a true repentance indeed.  Further consideration on the work of repentance:

Whom He did predestinate, them He also called.” Romans 8:30

 

In the second epistle to Timothy, first chapter, and ninth verse, are these words—”Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling.” Now, here is a touchstone by which we may try our calling. It is “an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace.” This calling forbids all trust in our own doings, and conducts us to Christ alone for salvation, but it afterwards purges us from dead works to serve the living and true God.

As He that hath called you is holy, so must you be holy. If you are living in sin, you are not called, but if you are truly Christ’s, you can say, “Nothing pains me so much as sin; I desire to be rid of it; Lord, help me to be holy.” Is this the panting of thy heart? Is this the tenor of thy life towards God, and His divine will?

Again, in Philippians 3:13,14, we are told of “The high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Is then your calling a high calling? Has it ennobled your heart, and set it upon heavenly things? Has it elevated your hopes, your tastes, your desires? Has it upraised the constant tenor of your life, so that you spend it with God and for God?

Another test we find in Hebrews 3:1—”Partakers of the heavenly calling.” Heavenly calling means a call from heaven. If man alone call thee, thou art uncalled. Is thy calling of God? Is it a call to heaven as well as from heaven? Unless thou art a stranger here, and heaven thy home, thou hast not been called with a heavenly calling; for those who have been so called, declare that they look for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God, and they themselves are strangers and pilgrims upon the earth.

Is thy calling thus holy, high, heavenly? Then, beloved, thou hast been called of God, for such is the calling wherewith God doth call His people.

This is where we are taking off this week dearly beloved. These call is for laborers in the vain yard. If you are not yet born-again you are free to join by first accepting Christ and you are good to go.

Someone is making an excuse, ‘am yet to receive my own calling’. Read Matt 28:19, you have been long call, just that you are yet to respond. Keep still and the Spirit of God will show you your own Samaria to go and make the city glad, and heaven will rejoice over you (Acts 8:5-8).

This week, you will be a carrier of double joy! Beloved, when you create joy in heaven; heaven will create joy on earth (you) (Heaven rejoice over one sinner you brought home) (Lk 15:7; 10). Be wise; be a soul winner today and see heaven smiles on you.

Remain blessed in the Lord.

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IFEOMA OHONDU is the founder of the MattersoftheHeart foundation, a platform where issues affecting our everyday life are discussed and where necessary proffer solution. She is part of the end time army, who will not break their rank to fulfill the urgent call of God upon her life by declaring His word to the helpless, the doubting, the comfortless and the dying world. The world will experience great restoration and healing in the Word of God through her ministration. She is a voice to emphasize key spiritual truth about Faith, Healing and Encouragement.