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A Morning View By the Wood Stove

What inside your heart is different from what everyone else sees? If we surrender our lives to God why is it different?

Confession is different from repentance. We can tell the world everything, we may tell a few everything and we may confess all of our sins, which is good, but repentance is the painful act of surrendering and reconciling everything to God. Everything. Repentance means a complete 180 degree change of direction in our lives within our God relationship. 

Symbolically on Ash Wednesday we repent. It is a time of inward focus and self sacrifice leading into Lent. Lent is the time we remember Jesus and the forty days Christ fasted in the wilderness. It is an opportunity in the life of the church to formally commit to change. But is it a time of confession naming our sin? Or, is it a time of repentance not only naming but with the help of the Holy Spirit fleeing and changing our sin behavior? 

I believe confession helps us feel better. I believe repentance helps us be better. 

May Ash Wednesday and Lent be more than something we feel. May it be who we become. 

“Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away. Then times of refreshment will come from the presence of the Lord, and he will again send you Jesus, your appointed Messiah. ”   - Acts 3:19-20  NLT


Peace,

PB

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