Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. (Acts 3:19)

The Refreshing Joy Of Repentance

The Ford Motor Company is the fifth largest automobile company in the world, worth more than $158 billion. Henry Ford founded his company in 1903 after going broke five times and numerous failures. Ford is quoted as saying, “Failure is the opportunity to begin anew, more intelligently.” While this is a good motto for succeeding in life, it is especially helpful in helping the Christian run the race pitted against the adversary, the devil. Sin is a failure, and all men sin, falling short of the glory of God. Jesus lived a sinless life, and even the best of men cannot come close to living a sinless life. All men are failures in the spiritual world.

The proper view of sin is to know it can be harnessed by the power of God if the soul is willing. God knows the nature of man to sin and has offered a way of escape. Sin does not have to have dominion over the soul. The object of life is not to be sinless but to sin less; and this can be done by the grace of God. David sinned when he committed adultery with Bathsheba, got her husband drunk, and then had him killed. When Nathan, the prophet, came to David to expose his sin, David’s heart was filled with godly sorrow, and he changed his life. What David did was to fail his God. His failure would haunt him for the rest of his life, but it did not destroy him.

David used his failure as an opportunity to grow closer to God. Reading Psalms 32 and 51, David wrote about his sin, reflecting on a man seeking to be a better person before God. He understood the reasons for his failure. From that understanding, he developed a deeper knowledge of God’s word to help him in the future. When we face the battles against the devil, we will occasionally fail. The greater failure is if we do not learn from our sin to find out why we sinned, how we sinned, what led up to our sin, and how to avert the sin in the future.

Sin is a transgression of the law of God. When we sin, we break God’s law. We have greater faith when we learn from our sins to be more faithful in the future. That is true success. If we were tempted in one area of our life, we should change that so the temptation will not come again. That is learning from our “failures” to be a better person. Sin is terrible, but it can be instructive. When Satan wins a small battle in our lives, he wins a victory. Learning from that experience will help us not be fooled by the devil the next time.

The challenge of the human heart is how to overcome failure. God desires men to repent and change their lives to find the joy of forgiveness in the grace of God. The Lord is not willing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. He will blot out sin and wipe it away because He is a loving and forgiving God. The goal is to learn from the mistakes leading up to sin and become stronger to overcome sin. It is possible to resist the devil and make him run away. When the heart has been forgiven, the joy of coming in the presence of the Lord is realized. Sin will have its way in men’s hearts, but God’s grace will overcome sin to find times of refreshing in the presence of God.