Failure to Repent
Most of the book of Revelation was inspired to tell us about the seven years of the Tribulation. God brought on the Tribulation to punish those who would not trust Christ, even though God gave them every opportunity. The punishment came in the form of three series of seven plagues most of which caused much death and destruction all over the world. It is so sad to see that even though God was pouring out these plagues, none of the people who were not killed by the plagues repented of their sins. (Revelation 9:20) They could see the hand of God in all of the tribulation events, but they continued to worship demons and all kinds of idols of silver, gold, brass, stone, and wood. It was obvious that these idols could not see, hear, or walk; there was no evidence they were alive. However, they persisted in their rebellion against God. This is a terrible picture of how we can turn off our spiritual eyes and ears, so that we continue to sin, no matter what happens to us.
Repentance is a vital component of our spiritual well-being. First of all, if we do not repent of our sins, we can't be saved from them by the blood of Christ. Jesus will not forgive anyone who does not turn from their sins, realizing how destructive they are. It means to turn from them and to do the right things, because we have a change of mind that leads to a change of action. Once we repent of our sins and put our trust in Jesus, He saves us. Then, we are to grow in Christ to become stronger and stronger spiritually, so we can become more and more like Jesus. In order to see this happen, we still have to repent of any sins that come into our life. When the Holy Spirit shows us our specific sins that harm our relationship with Jesus, we have to confess to the Lord how bad they are, and we have to turn from them. It is not enough to be sorry for our sins with no change in behavior. The Holy Spirit will empower us to change, but we have to take the first steps to show God how serious we are about living in righteousness. If we fail to repent of sins in this way, it gets harder to do it each day that follows. God knows how to get our attention by punishing us, but if we fail to listen, it might be a huge amount of trouble for us, before we finally get the message. I pray we will never fail to repent of our sins, but we will do it gladly every day of our life.
#NHBaptistdotorg
Tomorrow, I intend to read Revelation 10-13.