# Repentance
When you're given an opportunity by the presence of the Lord, when the Holy Spirit begins to touch your life, and he begins to deal with you and point out areas in your life that you need to change, and He brings you to a place of repentance, and you say "Yes Lord I repent I turn away from that god, I want to turn away from my idolatry, my self-seeking ways, I want to turn toward only You alone God", but yet you say these things to the Lord and still turn back to your old way and act the same way, you've treated that which is holy as common, you've profaned the holy. We've drawn near to God, we've been touched and blessed, convicted and repented but after all these things that have taken place, we still go home and be the same person that we were before we came.

And then after a while we come back the into the presence of the Lord as if it is an average thing. You say "I'm doing okay, I'm living this way and nothings happening to me, God's not striking me down, and my life is fine!"

FOOL. You don't poison a dog with a spoonful of poison. You take the biggest fattest juiciest piece of meat, and you inject it with the poison. The dog comes and it smells the smell of blood and devours it without even a notion that there was anything in the meat that would kill it, and it walks away satisfied thinking it just had a great meal. Only to find out in several hours that its life would be taken away.

But you say "I don't see anything of this in my life! I'm doing what I want and I'm not seeing of any of these things happening in my life!"

You're just getting started on your steak. You don't recognize the severity of the situation, you don't realize that Satan has reeled you in, that you've been snared in his trap, and the devil himself is laughing at you all the way home, because you think you've partied and had a good time, you think you've kept your issue a secret, or you think you're just doing your thing and putting on your christian face and the devil is laughing at you all the way home.

When you come down and wept at the well and you repent and you say "God forgive me, cleanse me, set me free Jesus please pardon my sin!" Do you get back up and act the same way you did before you came down? If you had a smug attitude with your mum do you go back home and have the same smug attitude? If you were a liar before, do you keep lying? If you've been cheating on your schoolwork before, did you cheat again this week, or did you plan to cheat again. If God has put his finger on that area of lust in your life, did you go back out and still act like you're the playa? Young lady did you go back up and still try to get the attention of the boys? Can I tell you something? It's profane. Repentance is not walking to an altar, it's not crying, it's not even asking for forgiveness, repentance is none of that. Repentance is turning away from the things you were doing before that was breaking the very heart of God. If you're a backbiter, if you like to talk about people behind their backs, did you come down and 
repent and ask God to forgive you, and then get back up and keep talking about people? The Bible says it's one of the things that God hates. So is strife.

Christian repentance is when there is a brokenness in your heart, because you've sinned against God, you've broken the heart of God, you've treated the things that are holy as if they are common, and you have a recognition that before God you are undone. You are in danger of judgment. You recognize that your sin was what nailed Jesus to the cross, nothing more nothing less. It's not "What about that guy?" It's not about that guy, its about you.

We don't have time to be cold anymore. We don't have time to be lazy anymore. You don't have time to fix your prayer life when you're standing at the judgment seat, it will be too late! You can't repent of your sin issue when you're standing at the judgment seat, it's too late! So many young people, you're like an ostrich with the head in the ground, you act like it's not there, you act like your sin issue is not an issue, it's a problem, a challenge, you say "I'm working on that", as if repentance is like building a house.

Repentance is a change of heart. The problem with most of us is that we're just like the prodigal, we've got to be eating pig slop before we realize that what we've done has totally ruined our lives.