There is a problem in our self-help ladened culture when we diagnose ourselves with all these ill-gotten issues, then buy treatments and join support groups, only to get a marginalized amount of change from it. This has always been our problem. This is why we go shopping for larger clothes during our “diets” rather than for smaller clothes. This is why we never truly overcome our addictions. This is exactly the reason we fight over the same exact things with people. This is why we never change. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. – Matthew 3:8 Real repentance begins when we are truly sorry for our sins. This “sorrow makes no excuses, it takes full responsibility, and never places the blame on people, society, or circumstances. But being sorrowful alone doesn’t produce what we would call “fruit.” I know the abstraction of fruit in the Bible is hard to understand, so let us define “fruit” in this sense as signs of life change. So I ask, how many of us change our attitudes, behaviors and lifestyles because we feel sorry about something? Better yet, how many of us make these adjustments permanently as opposed to temporarily? Are your the changes in your life dog and pony shows that garner enough cheers and applause from people at the face of it but are empty and void otherwise? Is it enough to just get people off your back? Don’t you want something more? John, the Baptist, sees these religious people approaching his beachside baptizing party and immediately locks eyes on them. He realizes the biggest problem with religion and religious people is when people find the rhythms (the ins and outs) of their faith systems and manipulate it for affective change but really don’t mean to have effective change. Simply said, religious people have the tendency to make a big show out of their sorrows and their repentance but show little otherwise in actual practice. But it’s not just the hypocrisy of the religious. I have plenty of things in my life I need to be repentant of, but I’ve been way too afraid of change. I’m afraid of changing because changing actually means hard work and temporary discomfort that I don’t feel like I deserve to bear. I’m sure this is how many of us feel. Yet, if we want to experience a “fruitful” life, we need to be discomforted by the pruning process of life change. If we want to truly see how God perform miracles in our everyday lives we need to earnestly be repentant. We need to feel a sorrow in our hearts that breaks us without excuses. This type of repentance leads to confession to God that we are unable and opens the doors for God to work in your weaknesses so His grace and mercy can abound in us through our life transformation. Let’s pray for that type of repentance and for real “fruits” to be unleashed into our lives.
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