Turning to Press On Toward God

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 2 Cor 7:10 NIV

Sorrow, remorse, regret is always a component of repentance but repentance is not necessarily a component of sorrow, remorse or regret.  Is the sorrow your feeling leading you to repentance.  If so, God is in it.  If not, then the voice of sorrow is coming from the flesh, the world, the devil – and is only producing death.  It is a sorrow that is not focused on sin and how it separates us from God but on the consequences that we’d like to avoid impacting us. 

But if you see this, you can pray to God to help you renew your mind. Doing this, you are already moving from worldly sorrow that is powerless and a waste of time to repentance because you are turning to God. Repentance means to turn again to your right mind – the mind of Christ – to God.  This movement – this turning – is a movement forward again, rather than back.  St. Paul tells the Philippians, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  Phil 3:12-14

This turning toward the forward focus on God is what transforms your life – renewing your mind to that of God’s.  If you can see that your sorrow is not God’s, you can choose to turn from that self-oriented sorrow to God and ask for him to show you his sorrow, rather than your own. This choice elevates us back to the seat of Christ – taking our sorrow from the selfish sorrow of our action’s impact on us to the Godly sorrow of how sin and separation from God ravishes God’s children and does nothing to showcase God’s glory.  From this vantage point, your sorrow is now transformed to bring true repentance mingled with Godly sorrow and the motivation that is able to overcome evil – not by focusing on evil – but by focusing on and moving toward God.  Father, please help us to distinguish the hurt pride, worry, and vanity of self-oriented sorrow and to choose to turn away from this dead-end to get back onto the course with you as our guide and very life which is always your will for us and always in our best interest and always a real demonstration of your glory.  Thank you, Father, for always being there when we turn away from sin to look into your beautiful eyes full of grace and mercy.

With your mind renewed to God’s perspective, your life is transformed.  Then you are able to see clearly and understand God’s good, pleasing and perfect will and have the power to walk in it.

For godly grief and the pain God is permitted to direct, produce a repentance that leads and contributes to salvation and deliverance from evil, and it never brings regret; but worldly grief (the hopeless sorrow that is characteristic of the pagan world) is deadly [breeding and ending in death]. 2 Cor 7:10 AMP

Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets. 2 Cor 7:10 MSG

John 6:16-21: Meeting Jesus in the Boat

John 6:16-21

We ought to wait on Jesus – remain in sync with him – but sometimes we don’t. Maybe we do this because we are confused. He does something amazing and we read into it that he wants us to head off into some direction that he did not tell us to go. We get excited and forget to ask him and take the lead. We think that he is like another person and if we take off, he may follow our lead. But Jesus is always following the Father in submission so submission to him is what is always required of us.

We take off without him and find that the waters are rough. We use our strength instead of calling on him until we find ourselves in the middle somewhere in the dark, exhausted with storms raging. Fortunately for us, God’s mercy is always toward us and his glory is unshakable.

If Jesus was a mere man and we had left him behind and navigated half a journey, then realized our need, we would have no choice but to return to the beginning. The quickest way to get back on track if
you’ve gone the wrong way is to turn around. But Jesus is not a mere man. He has authority over everything – even nature (including time and space) and death. He comes to us and meets us where we are. And his presence has an immediacy. By his authority, nature yields. Storms subside and we often find he immediately moves us to the place we need to be. But he does all this for his glory – which also happens to be for our best good. He alone knows our best good even if we forget this and take off without him.

We look at our good in very limited terms. We look at our most basic needs and mix this up with wants (lusts) and our glory (pride) and forget about life eternal and abundant. We are so consumed our own limited point of view that we barely grasp just how much God wants for us and offers us, much less the endless magnificence of his glory. But Jesus is not a rabbits foot to provide us good luck, or a food stamp program to meet out basic needs or even a life coach or mentor to guide our success in the world. He is the bread of life and we must partake of that bread – the very word of the Father. It is hard for us to understand this or to take it. We want to be offended. Men don’t like grace because it highlights their unworthiness and their lack. Still, to whom shall we go? Jesus alone has the words of eternal life and Jesus alone can meet all our needs.