Repentance, far above all else, is a turning away from wrong ideas about God and about yourself and coming into an exchange of receiving by the Spirit of Truth, the mind of God about Himself, in you. It’s not being ashamed of yourself but exchanging yourself. It’s not a one time event but an on-going change from glory to glory. Repentance is not just changing your mind but losing your mind and gaining His.
Repentance
Samuel Logan Brengle
The Bible tells us that it is ‘perfect love’ which must, in the very nature of the case, expel from the heart all hatred and every evil contrary contrary to love, just as you must first empty a cup of all oil that may be in it before you can fill it with water.
D. L. Moody
God cast our confessed sins into the depths of the sea, and He’s even put a ‘No Fishing’ sign over the spot.
Kevin DeYoung
There is an eternal difference between regret and repentance. Regret feels bad about past sins. Repentance turns away from past sins. Regret looks to our own circumstances. Repentance looks to God. Most of us are content with regret. We just want to feel bad for awhile, have a good cry, enjoy the cathartic experience, bewail our sin, and talk about how sorry we are. But we don’t want to change. We don’t want to deal with God.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Every time you close another door—be it the door of immediate satisfaction, the door of distracting entertainment, the door of busyness, the door of guilt and worry, or the door of self-rejection—you commit yourself to go deeper into your heart and thus deeper into the heart of God.
Francis Frangipane
Satan will stop your destiny if you accept the power of disappointment into your life. Disappointment cuts us off from our vision, and without a vision people perish. Therefore, let me ask you: Are you carrying disappointment in your heart? Renounce it. Forgive those who have let you down. Have you personally or morally failed? Repent deeply and return to your Redeemer.
Ignatius
Angus Buchan
If you allow one little sin to creep into your life, and think it doesn’t matter, it will grow and grow until it affects your whole spiritual life, deflecting you from your primary aim of serving God.
Steve Backlund
Repentance is a change of thinking that leads to a change in actions. It is not a one-time event, but a lifestyle.
C. S. Lewis
I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says “Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology, I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.” But excusing says “I see that you couldn’t help it or didn’t mean it, you weren’t really to blame.” Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it.