Monday, December 12, 2016

The Need For You to Decide to Repent and Change


Having been on over 10 college campuses for school and missionary work; it never failed that during certain parts of the year the soap box preacher would come onto campus preaching fire and brimstone, yelling with their Bible in hand at the college students that they should repent of their sin and come to the Lord!  Now I’m not disagreeing that sinners, including myself, need to repent. But I do believe the soap box preacher was taking the wrong approach, if anything, he was pushing people away from the Lord, not drawing them closer to Him!

And yet, in the Gospel today we hear about St. John the Baptist preaching like the soap box preacher!  “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand!” But there is a different between the two!  John the Baptist lived in the desert of Judea.  Do you know how many people live in the desert?  Not many, it’s a place of solitude and isolation.  The fact was people from all over Judea and Jerusalem were going out to see the saint and listen to his message.  They, except the Pharisees and Sadducees, had already made the realization that they wanted and needed to change their life and St. John the Baptist was extending the invitation to come back to the Lord.  We see it also in the life of Jesus Christ as well. Jesus goes out, yes! But it’s the sick, the lepers, the blind that call out to the Lord for healing!  Again, the healing begins with their decision to seek repentance and turn back to the Lord.
In a same sense, I can’t force you to repent.  I can’t force you to grow in your faith.  This can only be done by your decision to seek out and cooperate with God’s Grace.  So, I encourage, better yet, I’m inviting all of us, including myself, to prepare our hearts by repenting and turning back to the Lord!