Open Doors: Conversations with Heart of the Father
Are you excited today? Well, we are. Today Matt and Jenn are going to continue with the theme for the month: repentance.
Learn how repentance is a gift as Matt and Jenn share personal stories of their lifelong processes of going deeper with repentance and faith as well as highlight an incredibly insightful reflection and the connection between grief and repentance through Neal's TIp #6 on Repentance and Faith in his Ministry Tips series (found on Youtube or our blog).
Matt: " So I was thinking about my conversion. And so, you know, the story, honey. I was at a swimming pool before my senior year in high school. I was talking to a friend who knew the Lord, and I just made that decision in that moment that I wanted to surrender. So I asked her to lead me in a prayer to surrender and give my life to the Lord.
I don't remember what she led me to pray, but I can tell you what was in my heart. What I was thinking as I was praying was, ' God, I don't know if you're real. I don't know if this is going to have any impact on my life. I don't really know anything except that I see your love in my friends who are following you. It gives me hope that it could happen for me, too.'
So I wanted something that they had, and I was willing to take the faith that I did have and give it to the Lord. As I prayed that prayer of surrender, I had all those doubts and unbelief, and yet by the end of the prayer, it was like, 'I truly believe, and I'm convinced in God's love and that He's real. '
It really made me think that we surrender with what we have. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be this extravagant fat faith, but if we give Him the incomplete faith that we have, it actually multiplies it. I think of that father of the demon possessed boy and how, at first he's saying, 'Jesus, if you can do anything, heal my son', and Jesus kind of confronts him about his lack of faith.
So the father cries out, 'Lord, I do believe; help my unbelief.' So just in the awareness of his need and his lack, he brought what he had to Jesus and it was enough. The boy was healed! So repentance is not about a perfect performance or running from our doubts or our fears. Rather it is taking what's there, taking responsibility for our lives in the moment, and wanting to come to Jesus and ask Him for more.
And when we do that, He brings His kingdom and the results can be real transformation."
Repentance is a GIFT! Join us for this and so much more in this episode.
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Release: February 2022
Music by Christian Harper.
Artwork by Rosemary Strohm at Command-S.