Today is the National Day of Repentance. Tomorrow will follow with the National Day of Prayer.<\/p>\n
Somehow I never knew about it until today. I\u2019m thankful that I did<\/i> just learn about it, because yesterday my friend Preston Lund shared something on FACEBOOK. Here are his words:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened to repentance? It’s like ‘as long as I am honest about my sin issue it’s ok.’ I don’t think that\u2019s true. I think repentance somehow activates God’s grace, the imparting of His power to overcome. When we repent with genuine contrition and mourning over sin, then it’s ok because we are working on it; God is working on it. But if you don’t care, God knows and He isn’t going to violate\u00a0your will and demean His relationship with you. Repent. Just start trying however you can think to start trying. Call someone. Pray this prayer. \u201cI want to want to want to be like You Jesus.\u201d Don’t be prideful, and don’t let my hypocrisy stop you if you see me fail. Just call out now and be saved, be renewed, restore incredibly important fellowship with the God who gave you life, TWICE!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n
He understands that repenting is a missing piece of the puzzle of our Christianity and our responsibility as a believer. We miss fellowship with our Lord when we continue in sin and we miss being an example to others who are questioning, wondering, and maybe considering following Christ. We\u2019re not perfect, but when we repent we at least show that we are serious<\/i> about our relationship with God.<\/p>\n
Last week I blogged: The Standard of Measure by Which We Appear to be Holy. <\/i><\/b>Preston\u2019s words embellish what I wrote about. We think we can fool God and man. We think we can \u201cget away\u201d with things, but we can\u2019t. My husband Joe and I often meet with many couples whose marriages are failing. Usually they\u2019re failing because of an affair, but that isn\u2019t the real reason. Peel back the layers on the onion and you\u2019ll find a very pungent odor. Peel back the layers of marriage and you\u2019ll find the root sin of pride along with its other manifestations: selfishness, wanting to be happy at the expense of anyone else, pornography, lust, sexual addiction, selfishness, gluttony, anger, greed, jealousy, envy\u2026..and I\u2019m sure you can add many more to the list.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s take a minute and ask the Lord to reveal our sin <\/i>to us. THEN, repent of it. REPENT means to turn away<\/i><\/b> from it. Walk away. Run away. BOLT! Don\u2019t look back and don\u2019t do it again. Stop toying with it. Stop playing with it. Stop being tempted by it. STOP IT. Ask those you\u2019ve hurt to forgive you, and make amends to make things right. God has the glue to hold friendships, marriages, and life together. But we have to make the effort to correct our wrongs.<\/p>\n
THE KEY: Take the first step and just do it.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today is the National Day of Repentance. Tomorrow will follow with the National Day of Prayer. Somehow I never knew about it until today. I\u2019m thankful that I did just learn about it, because yesterday my friend Preston Lund shared something on FACEBOOK. Here are his words: \u201cWhat happened to repentance? It’s like ‘as long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,15,82,98,107,108,114,115,131],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adultery","tag-anger","tag-marriage","tag-prayer","tag-repent","tag-repentance","tag-sexual-addiction","tag-sin","tag-turn-away"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}