Wednesday, August 1

This week Pastor Ali Kalkandelen from Turkey will be guest-blogging on 10 Minutes with God. There will be no audio this week, but we please enjoy Pastor Kalkandelen's posts!

Wednesday

A NEW LIFE STYLE: REPENTANCE, THE OLD DIES AND THE NEW BEGINS
Repentance can open doors for salvation. People of Nineveh repented when they heard the message of Jonah. They turned their back to their sinful life style and embraced a new life style. That was living under the rule and dominion of God. Jonah 3:10 says that “Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil ways; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.” 

We see in their example that repentance is not just realizing that you are a sinner and acknowledging that you need God’s forgiveness; it’s new way of living with inner and outer fruits. John the Baptist mentions same message when he preached repentance. He said “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” He also said that “… bear fruits worthy of repentance…” There for repentance is a life style, a radical change in someone’s life. It’s lifelong. It’s not something that you do once and totally forget about it. But it’s something that you live on it every day. It’s not like deciding that you lose weight but eating more every day; or exercising once a while for a short time or for a short period. It’s deciding that you lose weight and you do the right things not only for your body but also for your soul every day, every moment. It’s a new life style. 

People of Nineveh confessed their sins and repented. God saved them from the destruction that was about to come over them. However, the change that they made in their life didn’t last long. With the new generations they had they were backslidden and now, one more time, they were worthy of God’s wrath. 

Today, some many Christians believe that, if they once do prayer of salvation ONCE and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, that is it. They are saved and go to heaven afterword. Some people call this type of repentance and then the life style as “the cheap Gospel”. People and churches are doing crusades and other events just to get people to that place that they say “Yes. Jesus I believe you!” That is not the purpose of the Gospel. That was not what Jesus Christ and His followers preached and died for. 

When we repent, we need to change. We need to turn our back to our old life and begin living a new life. Our son Elijah was diagnosed with Type one diabetes four years ago. It was a shock to learn that. We, as a family, feeling free of what we do, what we eat, where we go. But after his diagnosis we couldn’t live our lives the way that we lived. We had to make changes and these changes should have been lifelong. The doctors kept us at a hospital for a whole week to teach us about the changes we need to make: we couldn’t eat the things that we use to eat. In order to live, he had to exercise daily and get use to a very different routine. He had take insulin shots every day. It was a new life style and a new life that we had live. 

We have been living this new life for last four years. We are careful and we have to be careful. If we do a mistake we see a negative sign right away. If we don’t go back to the life that the doctors thought us, we have to face consequences. It’s not some thing that we lived in future and forgot about it. We live it 24/7. 

This is a change and a new life that I’m talking about. When we repent nothing can stay the same. It has to change. We can’t be the same person and our life can’t be the same as well. When we make a mistake and sin we can’t just backslide and go to the life that we had once. We repent and continue as a repentant, more careful this time. 

What are some of the elements of a repentant life? We’ll talk about them in next two posts.

Pastor Ali Kalkandelen