The first evangelical message

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I was speaking for a church in Toronto, Canada and asked the group: "Who can tell me what was the first message Jesus preached?" There was silence. I asked again-still no reply. "If you know, please raise your hand," nothing but confused looks. Finally one man got it and spoke up: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Both Jesus and John the Baptist preached "repent." When have you last heard it preached? Seems like repentance is out dated in our "have it your own way" culture. If it is preached at all it is toned down to mean "just add Jesus to your current lifestyle and viewpoint." But that is not what the word means.

Repent means to turn your life around, to put off the "old man" and the ways of the flesh and to put on the "new man" and the character of God. It means to change the way you think, to change the things you say, and to change the way you act. Repent does not mean to acknowledge God and then to keep living the way you want.

A person cannot fully repent in a moment at an altar. Repentance is the life-long process of conforming our thoughts, feelings, words, and actions to the kingdom of heaven. Jesus taught us to pray to God, "Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven." He did not tell us to pray to go to Heaven, but to have the kingdom of God come to us--and that is nothing less than God's will being done on earth just like it is in Heaven. Now we, as individuals cannot bring the world, or our country, or our city, or our neighborhood, or even our family and friends to do the will or God--but we can begin to do God's will ourselves. That is repentance--to stop doing our will and the will of our society and to begin to do God's will instead.

Paul put it like this in Romans 12:2: "Don't be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." What he is saying is repent--don't be like the people around you but be totally changed by thinking new thoughts. We must be transformed--totally changed in the way we live our lives.

Do you know that a captain cannot turn a battleship around in a moment or even in several minutes? It takes time to head a battleship in the opposite direction. The same is true of our lives. Many of us have given a few moments or minutes to the intent of repentance and then assumed that we have repented. But if our lifestyle is not drastically different from the people around us, from the popular way of doing things, have we really repented? Are we not still thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting like the world.

Ask God to show you what you need to turn away from. He will show you. Also, here are some sample suggestions of things we can repent from: disobedience, lack of daily Bible reading, bitterness, controlling other people, not taking the time to truly listen to people, apathy, taking the best seat available in church instead of the lowliest one, not helping and serving other people, dishonesty, not asking God how He wants us to spend our money, ignoring the poor, lust or pornography or other sexual sins, seeing yourself better than other people, using profanity, selfishness, spiritual pride, not turning the other cheek, not blessing our enemies, seeing sin as acceptable behavior for people who call themselves Christians.