His Kindness

I woke up this morning thinking about Paul's words that God's kindness leads to repentance. What does that really mean? Why is God being kind when He leads us to turn from our sin and back towards Him? I would have put it another way: " It is God's mercy or it is God's plan... or maybe it is God's best for us... " But why His kindness? Pondering this I reflected on parenting. My parents always wanted the best for me but I often did not dial in to their desires for me. So.... I rebelled. Can any one out there relate? I wanted my way. Problem was it was not always the high way.

The High Way

The word for sin in the Greek is amanita which means missing the mark. My son once gave me a lesson on bow hunting. He loves to hunt. As for me I would rather hunt by shopping. He will sit in his deer stand forever waiting on a deer to come by. You have to be perfectly quiet and still. I figure that is why I have never been invited to sit with him in his deer stand. In my bow lesson he taught me that you have to line up the site with the animal you are trying to shoot. You look down the bow at the place that lines it up. If the animal is not in your "sight" you will miss the mark. Sin is missing the mark. Our sight is off; our eyes are on something other than God and it causes us to stumble or fall in our faith. When we turn back to Him we take the high road. 

But God

The good news is that we all have fallen short of the glory of God; we all have sinned and will sin. But God...has offered us a way out. When we turn back to Him in repentance, in essence we are putting God back into our "sight". His kindness draws us back with cords of love. As we grow in our love for Christ, we become more sensitive to His nearness. Sin separates us from Him-- it causes us (not Him) to shrink back. I was listening to a song on Christian radio yesterday and found myself humming it all day long. One of the lines is about being desensitized to sin. When we continue in a destructive pattern eventually we lose our sensitivity to the voice of our Shepherd and He feels far away like a distant cousin rather than a close friend.

What to Do?

If today you find yourself like Paul who did things he didn't want to do (Romans 7) and it is a constant struggle, turn back to God in repentance. Consider His kindness and how He longs to be close to you; how His love never fails and how sin steals your joy. The enemy prowls around to devour you in sin my friend. But God is near...He waits for you to return to Him. Why not turn back?

The photo above depicts the way God receives you when you turn back to Him!