I’m never happier than when helping people do business with God as here, seated in a mud confessional in the interior of Guyana, South America.
You have read up to this point how becoming a Christian means putting faith in God’s love, recognising it’s for you and turning from wrong before asking God into your life. You can’t do this without repentance which is reaching up to God away from what’s wrong in your life and makes your heart inhospitable to Christ.
The gravitational pull of God’s love draws us up in competition with the gravitational field of evil in our souls, we call sin, which drags us down. Human beings are pulled down in the gravitational field of seven deadly sins: pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice and sloth. Someone made up a mnemonic for these sins—‘pale gas’, indicating their deadly impact through a comparison to chlorine. The deadly sins weigh us down in different ways. For some of us, the heaviness is sloth, or laziness, especially as we get older. For others it’s the weight of indulgence through gluttony, or the dead weight of pride that sinks so many of our relationships. Then we have avarice – greed, which can literally weigh us down! The downward gravity of sin affects us all. When we try to rise above it by our own efforts, we feel as if we are in the gym, trying to lift weights beyond our capacity. The more we try to lift ourselves, the heavier life feels. The gravitational field of God’s love that lifts our lives can’t be felt through our own efforts. It reaches down to offer us a hand up in Jesus and all he has done for us by his life, death and resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit. As we struggle with our relationships, insecurities and spiritual emptiness, we find ourselves caught by the gravitational lure of sin as if in quicksand. The more we struggle in our own strength to release ourselves, the deeper we go down. People caught in quicksand sink faster through gravity, the more they struggle to get out of it. They need an upward pull from outside themselves. Jesus does that for us when we repent and reach out to him.
How do you repent? You find your sins and bring them to God on your own or with the help of a trusted companion. This means examining your conscience in the light of God’s Spirit starting with a prayer like this:
Come, Holy Spirit, and show me my sins so I can bring them to God to receive forgiveness and a new start as a Christian.
To identify your sins – some cry out to you – think through this conscience examination of your failure to love God, neighbour and self:
Sins against God – blasphemy, ingratitude, disobedience, distrust…
Sins against neighbour – envy, gossip, hurtful acts, lack of consideration…
Sins against self – wrong pride, vanity, harbouring lust, gluttony, laziness…
Write the sins you identify on a piece of paper ready to take to God.
You can do this on your own, kneeling before a Cross or in church. Alternatively you could take the paper with your sins written on it to a Christian priest or lay leader who will pray with you and represent to you the welcoming love of God for sinners described by Jesus in the Bible:
I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you… So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him… the father said… “Quickly, bring out a robe – the best one – and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ (Luke 15:18, 20, 22-24)
You could make an act of repentance by praying something like this prayer:
O God I recognise the immense love that brought your Son to die upon the Cross for me. I turn to you, Lord Jesus, and repent of my sins, especially…..
Please forgive my sins. Take my life and fill it with your love.
I make this prayer with confidence in the name of Jesus my Saviour. Amen.
