Devotion 1/29, Repent

Yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. And he relents over disaster.

Joel 2:12–13

God delights in renewing, changing, restoring, redeeming, saving, transforming his people. God delights when we turn from our sin with fasting, weeping, with mourning. And obviously, this is in one sense a picture of salvation. We experience forgiveness from God the moment we turn from our sin and ourselves and replace our trust in Jesus as Savior, Lord of our lives.

He relents the judgment and wrath that we deserve and He reconciles us to Himself. This is the Gospel, and this is the Christian life. It’s a daily turning from sin. It’s the tendency we have to go back to that which we have been saved. And so we are continually returning to Him.

God, we pray that you would help us to continually repent. Well, God, I pray that if there’s anyone reading this right now who has never turned from their sin and themselves and trusted in you, they ask that You would save them from their sin through what You did on the cross and Your resurrection from the dead. Trust in you as Lord of their life. God, we pray. I pray that that moment would happen right now. They would return to you with weeping and mourning, and experience your grace and your mercy and your steadfast love.

Father God, help us to continually turn from sin to you. And when we fall, God help us to turn back to you quickly. And we pray even right now that you would uncover, expose in our hearts any and all ways where we are not walking with you, or we’re not honoring you in our thoughts, in our desires, in our words, in our actions, or whatever it might be. Help us to turn from our sin continually, even right now, with contrition, with mourning and weeping, and you would renew our hearts as we humbly come before you. This I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.