What Is Stopping You? (Matthew 21:32)

What does it take?  In order to be or do something, it usually requires some preliminary steps or skills.  To run, you first need to walk.  To read, you must memorize and recognize letters, their sounds and words.  But what about something like believing.  What does that take?

For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him.  (Matthew 21:32)

It appears that repentance affects a person's ability to believe.  It seems that when the publicans and harlots had their lives changed as a result of John's message, those who witnessed it should have then recognized John as a man from God.  Yielding to that truth would then have caused the listeners to accept and believe John's message and how it pertained to their lives.  By repenting, they would have enabled themselves to believe.

Repentance continues to be a major aspect of the believer's life both before and after salvation.  In salvation, man must repent and believe what God had said about him and his sinful condition.  Once man recognizes and yields to this, his entire attitude about himself, his condition and his ability to save himself will be changed.  He then can believe the gospel.  Again, repenting enables a person to believe.

Repentance continues to affect us after salvation.  As we face trials and difficulties, our hearts have a tendency to have fear and sometimes even doubt about the goodness of God.  It is only when we allow God's word to turn our hearts around and accept the truth of passages such as Romans 8:28, that we then again can believe and trust the Lord.

What action of repentance do you need to do in order to help you believe and trust God?


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Should You Change Your Mind (John 19:15)

Have you ever changed your mind?  Of course you have and we all have on countless occasions, but what made us change our minds.  Sometimes our minds were changed because we saw another option from which we could choose.  Other times we changed our minds because we understood the problem more clearly and saw that our choice was wrong.

There is one group of people who changed their minds that has always puzzled me.  On one day, those in Jerusalem lauded Jesus Christ with praise and within a week they were shouting Crucify him! Crucify him!

On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.......But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. (John 12:12-13; 19:15)

Why did they change their minds?  Did they find another King?  Did they more clearly see their condition and recognize that their choice was wrong?  Some may say yes, but I believe that they changed their minds for another reason.

Israel was more concerned about what they could get from Jesus than they were about getting the person of Jesus.  They wanted fed, healed, and delivered from the Romans, but God desired that they would want him, his fellowship, and his comfort.  As soon as they recognized that Jesus was not going to be the person who would crush the Roman Empire and remove the oppression that had been put upon them, they rejected him.  This happened because they focused on what they were getting from Jesus instead of focusing on Jesus, the person.

Before we point the guilty finger at Israel, we must stop and perform a personal inventory of ourselves.  More often than we may share to admit, we too focus our concerns on what Jesus can give or do for us, instead of him as a person and the relationship that he wants to have with us.  We are more concerned about what we can get from God instead of getting God.  We more so appreciate the blessings we receive instead of the blessed one.  It is the same as caring more about your house than you do for your home.  It is similar to being more grateful for milk than you are for the cow.  

Are you guilty of this?  Look at the prayers that you pray.  How much time do you spend requesting things or actions from God in comparison to seeking his face or asking to know him better.  The Apostle a Paul set the perfect example for us when he wrote, "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death." (Philippians 3:10)

You like the majority of us, may need to change your mind back to how it was when you first came to Christ.  It seems that back then, everything was about Jesus: who he is and how knowing him made even the most dreadful life enjoyable.  We need to get back to that.

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