What is Repentance?

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Dimas Salaberrios, Ministry Associate with Christian Union, is a dynamic teacher, speaker, and pastor. His bestselling memoir, Street God, was released in September 2015. Dimas holds a Master of Divinity degree from Alliance Theological Seminary and resides in the Bronx with his wife Tiffany and three daughters.

Transcript
Now, many of us have come to Christ, and we repented of our sins, and that's the only way that you can really come to Christ in an authentic way. But Jesus calls us not only to just do that once, but we should do that throughout our lives. One of the greatest communicators of the gospel, and one of the most powerful men of the Bible, was John the Baptist. This is what he said in Luke 3:8 — he said, "Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance." And what this is teaching is that over and over again, you should examine your life, see things that are in your life that you need to repent of, and do a fresh overhaul in any area in your life.

He says this in Isaiah 1:16 — Isaiah writes, "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil." All over the Bible, the Bible teaches us: find areas, repent of them. We are sinners saved by grace. So we must come to the realization that satanic influences, demonic things in this world, evil tries to grab a hold of us and we must always find times of refreshing. Times to examine our lives and things to put out of our lives. Ezekiel 18:27 says, "Again, when a wicked man turns away from his wickedness which he has committed and practices justice and righteousness, he will save his life."

So, there are times in our lives when we have to do good personal reflection. I remember when I came to Christ, I was following after Jesus, but I realized I was still living with a woman at the time.

And I said to myself, "You know what? I'm strong enough. I'm good. I'm not going to surrender to my flesh." And then I started to realize, compromise was creeping in, and I had to do what this text is talking about, I had to take out my sword, I had to chop that relationship, chop that situation. And I had to show that there were real, authentic fruits of repentance.

I want to challenge you today. What would be a fruit of repentance in your life? Not just saying, "Lord, forgive me," but what would be that action that follows that forgiveness that you can look at and say, once I was living like this, but now I've changed course. You know what? I allowed something into my life that started to cause me to not walk as Holy as I was supposed to, and now what can I do to get that out of my life? And I want to tell you, Jesus is so pleased when we take those steps and we kick the darkness out of our lives, to let his light shine much brighter. I'm praying for you. God bless you. Keep looking up, and keep Christ number one.