How Repentance Brings Deep Rest
Following the Lord’s lead into a time of rest during this Lenten season, my heart feels free to draw near to the Throne of Grace. To my dismay, God is inviting me into a place of repentance. No easy task, but the work of true repentance brings deep rest to the Christian.
Lent offers a time for spiritual recalibration, which most assuredly includes repentance. Though an uncomfortable posture, the blessings of repentance outweigh the awkward and painful process.
Recognizing the restlessness of my heart under the burden of unconfessed sin, God’s gentle call to repentance provides the balm so necessary for the healing of my relationships both with God and others.
Knowing this, I still struggle to find the courage to yield to the Holy Spirit’s searching of my heart for unconfessed sin. (Psalm 138:23-24) Ashamedly, I admit I should not need the conviction of the Holy Spirit’s search to confess sin present in my life.
Yet, how many times knowing repentance brings deep rest, I refuse taking courage and fully confessing my sins.
“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.”
Knowing our frailty, God invites us to cast our cares and burdens upon Him. (1 Peter 5:7) And while we often think of cares in the context of 1 Peter 5:7 as worries or anxiety, unconfessed sin is also a burden we choose to carry.
Meditating upon Isaiah 30:15, sitting quietly with God, as I received His rebuke for resisting repentance, I wondered why I chose burden over rest. While your reasons for avoiding confession of sin may vary from mine, the Holy Spirit revealed four reasons I failed to confess sin.
Shame headed the list for me. Even as I sat there a particular sin from earlier that morning grieved me, yet I was reluctant to confess it. I felt the incredible shame and moved away from God instead of toward Him.
Resentment followed close behind shame. Other sins remained heavy upon me due to resentment toward another person involved, or resentment toward a situation precipitating the sin. Again, a specific situation came to mind where I felt powerless and overworked leading to a reactionary response on my part.
Fear of not receiving God’s forgiveness. Let’s face it, most of our sins are repetitive, we struggle in the same areas with the same sin problems. Sometimes, I allow fear to keep me in hiding afraid to confess the same sin again.
Pride, the worst of the four reasons sadly shows up as I dislike facing my sin and prefer rather to cover it myself, much like Adam and Eve did with the fig leaves.
While these reasons may resonate with you, more might certainly be added, as the human heart’s capacity for wandering from the Lord knows no limits.
But at the bottom of it all, our view and maybe even our understanding of God’s love remains pathetically narrow.
For if we truly knew His unfailing love, rather than employ endless tactics for hiding our sin, we would run into His endlessly forgiving arms.
Sitting in the stillness of God’s Presence, it was love which called me to surrender the heavy sin burden I held, and though I cycled through each of the reasons in turn, once I turned my face towards God, confessing the sin which bound me, I felt complete peace and deep rest.
Much like Christian in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, though saved upon entering the way by the wicket gate, not until he gazed upon the Cross, did he finally understand the depth of God’s love and forgiveness.
Then his [sin] burden fell off his back, removing his guilt and sorrow and he felt Joy for the first time. A good allegory for initial salvation of the Christian, it likewise illustrates how sin hinders Joy and rest in the believer’s life.
“O LORD our God, grant us grace to desire you with our whole heart, so that desiring you, we may seek and find you; and so finding you, may love you; and so loving you, may hate those sins which separate us from you, for the sake of Jesus Christ our LORD.”
*after St Anselm (1033-1109) From The Book of a Thousand Prayers, compiled by Angela Ashwin (Zondervan) pg. 15
Though required for initial salvation, repentance brings deep rest to the believer relieving our sin burden throughout our earthly journey. It must become a regular spiritual discipline as a means of cleansing, but also as a means of reuniting us in God’s perfect love.
Becoming more deeply acquainted with God and His unfailing love for us moves us into a deeper, more steadfast love for Him which impels us to forsake rather than cling to unconfessed sin, as we embrace a fully repentant attitude.
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