What To Repent Of?
Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church
1. Repent of your public, known sins.
Make it your ambition to come before the Lord and ask for His mercy for your public and known sins. That is, make known the sins that you’ve committed in public, that you know about, that others know about.
2. Repent of your hidden, private sins.
Uncover the hidden, deep, dark recesses of your private sins to the Lord. He sees it all and knows them all anyway. Uncover the deep blackness in the well of your heart. Bring it to light. Let the blackness of sin be cleansed by the crimson blood of Christ. Uncover and repent of these.
3. Repent of that ‘pet/darling/favorite’ sin that you won’t let go of.
Come to the Lord and earnestly beseech God’s mercy for that one sin that you repent of often. That ‘darling’ (pet, cherished) sin that you have, that you fight against, that you repent of often, and that you are most afraid of — or unwilling — to give up. Repent and surrender that to Christ.
4. Repent of your lack of serving family members at home.
True religion is lived at home. What you really are is evidenced by the pattern of conduct that you have with the family. Repent of the friction, the impatience, the lack of serving others, the selfishness, and the lack of compassion that you have demonstrated toward others.
5. Repent of your coldness of love toward the Father, Son & the Spirit.
God yearns that His elect Bride would passionately love Him with a blazing hot zeal. Sadly, many things distract us and cool our passion for God. Confess and turn from the coldness of your love to each of the members of the Trinity — the Father for His sovereign love, the Son for His glorious redemption and sufficient righteousness, and the Spirit for His regenerative power and His transforming work.
6. Repent of the littleness of your faith in fervent, ongoing, daily prayer.
Pray and repent of the littleness of your prayer. O that God’s people would increase in fervent prayer. Repent of the infrequency of your outbursts of prayer. Confess the redundancy and tendency of your prayers to become rote and heartless. Repent of this and seek to bring about change.
7. Repent of your laziness in bible-reading, bible-memorization, and bible-meditation each day.
To feast upon the Word of God is the greatest duty in which a Christian can engage. Repent of and expose to the Lord the laziness in Bible reading. Confess that there have been other entertainments, other distractions, and other circumstances that have crowded out and taken priority over your time communing with God in His precious Book.
8. Repent of failing to redeem the time because the days of evil.
Come to the Lord on your knees and beg for His grace and mercy because of the frequent ways in which time is wasted each day. Repent and ask for God’s help to manage your time better, to be more evangelistic at heart, to be more eternal in focus, and to live more Christocentrically in life.
9. Repent of your missed opportunities to call sinners to repent & escape hellfire.
Come to the Lord and loathe the many missed opportunities that God has granted you to proclaim Christ and His saving gospel to the lost. Whether it be at a park, with a neighbor, to a complete stranger, to a homeless man on a corner, or to a coworker in the next cubicle, repent to the Lord and seek for his grace to forgive and for His power to equip you to make changes.
10. Repent of your complaining, mumbling & grumbling.
Christians battle the ongoing desire in our hearts to rule sovereignly. And when we do not get what we want, what we think we deserve, or how things suit our preferences, we tend to complain, mumble and grumble — verbally or silently. It may be a loud bewailing to others or a silent mumbling in the innermost sector of your heart. Repent of this sin and turn from it.
11. Repent of your frustrations, selfishness and lofty thoughts of self.
The sinful heart is an idol factory. Repeatedly, the Lord commands His people to humble themselves and to abstain from all pride. Come before the Lord with humility and carefully and specifically expose the selfishness, pride, and exalted thoughts of self. Seek God’s grace and forgiveness.
12. Repent of your refusal to stand up for truth when others mock your Savior.
In the cultural context that now prevails, many blaspheme God, take His name in vain, and speak ill of God’s Word and of God’s truth. Repent and bemoan the times that you stood silently and remained unwilling to boldly open your mouth to proclaim the truth of Christ and His gospel to the nonbelievers. Seek God’s grace and endeavor to turn from this sin from here on out.
13. Repent of your shallow repentance.
Come before the Lord and repent of your repentance. Repent of the shallowness of lip service. Repent of the mediocrity of heart-sorrow. Repent of the fear of consequences rather than a healthy fear of God. Repent of the littleness and infrequency of genuine, fervent, committed repentance. Seek God’s grace and His empowering to change.
14. Repent of the infrequent meditations on Christ, His beauty, His worth & His atonement on your behalf.
Come to God in shame at the infrequency of your meditations upon Christ. See the glory of Christ and the sufficiency of His death. Claim the righteousness of Christ and the propitiation that He won. Cling to the atonement of Christ and His spotless blood that was shed. Trust in the redemption that He accomplished and the eternal victory in His bodily resurrection. Repent that Christ has consumed so little of your thoughts, affections, delights, passions, and longings. Come to Him in repentance and plead for His mercy, grace, and help to change!
Concluding Note:
In coming to God through Christ by the enabling grace of the Spirit, when you repent you will find God as a loving Father passionately tender in His forgiveness, incessantly flowing in his compassions, and ever-embracing with his mercies. Repent of your sins and resolve to put them to death by trusting in Christ more, seeking His glory more, and feeling the all-surpassing worth and splendor of His person and cross-work. God lavishly forgives. He generously pardons. He tenderly embraces. He loves to drown penitent sinners in the ocean of His cleansing and in the fountain of His delights. Come to God in repentance and faith and turn from your sins resolvedly, decisively and diligently and look to Christ in faith to put sin to death, to gaze upon His warm delights and strive to be holy for His glory!
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