LENT: What is Repentance?
I intend to focus my reflections on a particular topic during each week of Lent. Part of my aim is to learn more about each one intellectually, but my ultimate aim is to experience more of each one, actually. This week’s theme is repentance.
I have some thoughts brewing, but I’d like to invite you into the blogersation, because this should be a community affair.
So, what is repentance? … How would you define or describe it? How do you do it? How do you know if you are truly repentant? How have you experienced repentance thus far in Lent?
Click the "comments" link below to chime in.
A LENTEN PRAYER (taken from www.hmd.org)
For sins which we ourselves have committed and for sins of omission,for sins of our hands and sins of our hearts, for the hurt we have caused you and our neighbors through ignorance or indifference, We ask your forgiveness
For failure to see your image in someone who is different, We ask your forgiveness
For putting our own welfare and social comfort above the basic needs of others, We ask your forgiveness
For our reluctance to get involved, We ask your forgiveness
For being grateful that we are in some way superior to another, We ask your forgiveness
For teaching that it is better to receive than to give, We ask your forgiveness
For the failure of your Church to be light in the darkness, We ask your forgiveness
SCRIPTURE READING: Hosea 14
I have some thoughts brewing, but I’d like to invite you into the blogersation, because this should be a community affair.
So, what is repentance? … How would you define or describe it? How do you do it? How do you know if you are truly repentant? How have you experienced repentance thus far in Lent?
Click the "comments" link below to chime in.
A LENTEN PRAYER (taken from www.hmd.org)
For sins which we ourselves have committed and for sins of omission,for sins of our hands and sins of our hearts, for the hurt we have caused you and our neighbors through ignorance or indifference, We ask your forgiveness
For failure to see your image in someone who is different, We ask your forgiveness
For putting our own welfare and social comfort above the basic needs of others, We ask your forgiveness
For our reluctance to get involved, We ask your forgiveness
For being grateful that we are in some way superior to another, We ask your forgiveness
For teaching that it is better to receive than to give, We ask your forgiveness
For the failure of your Church to be light in the darkness, We ask your forgiveness
SCRIPTURE READING: Hosea 14
posted by Will | 12:01 AM
3 Comments:
I have had a difficulty separating the practical definitions of confession and repentance in the recent past. Most of the time I would confess a sin and feel bad about it and want to change, never take any steps towards change. True repentance takes steps toward change and does not merely admit that I did something wrong.
Question for further bloggersation: What is the difference between repentance and regret? Okay thats a dumb question so I will answer it then pose another. Regret it seems is out of fear for retribution or an intense amount of guilt. Repentance is remorse over a broken relationship and a genuine desire to make things right between you and God (or another person). Feel free to tear those definitions apart and rework them but that's the meaning they hold in my mind.
So how do i get from regret over my sin to true repentance?
the ideas of repentance and lent (with what you’ve said about how it’s a wilderness time) got me wondering if the ministry of John the baptist was an important image. After all, John preached a baptism of repentance. His baptism broke all convention. Baptism was for proselytes, new converts; a Jew would never be baptized. John’s message is that your self-earned spiritual pedigree counts for nothing with God. Repent & be baptized: the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And what’s more, where was John preaching? The wilderness isn’t a normal place to hold a religious campaign. I mean, you’ve got to be pretty desperate to take spiritual advise from a raving man in the desert who wears animal skin and eats bugs. By making people come to hear him in the wilderness, he was tapping into the rich significance of exodus and exile. He’s telling them they are still spiritually in exile. They think they hold positions of honor in the kingdom and he’s letting them know they haven’t even reached the border. In essence he was deporting them from their spiritual cockiness.
do you think this is part of the meaning of repentance? a spiritual poverty that admits that we are refugees from God’s kingdom? that ‘makes straight the way of the Lord,’ by admitting that we’ve lost our way?
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