This morning, we are continuing in a sermon series we began last week on revival.  Remember how we set this series up last week, by sharing with you that your elders have been fasting and praying for the Lord to bring revival in our midst, which we believe is the heart of God for us as God’s people at Trinity.  God put this on your leaders’ hearts.  We made the point last week that God is the One who brings revival, but we have a part to play.  I am not worried about whether God will do His part, be faithful to His promise.  I know He will.  We also have to do our part!  Our part begins with marveling at the grace of God and the love of God which has been poured out upon us, and then seeking the Lord to deepen the relationship He has established with us each day.  This was the theme last week, and I encourage you to get the CD if you missed last week, so you can catch up with where we are as a body. 

This morning, we want to continue with this theme, to look at another response which I believe is crucial for revival.  Every revival which God has brought through history, as you study revivals, has repentance for sin at the core.  By revival, we mean a move of God on His people which refreshes and renews their faith so that they are excited about Christ, and a move of God in the community which brings non-Christians to a place of conviction for sin and hunger to be right before God, leading to many salvations.  This morning, we are looking at this theme: God disciplines us as His children, calling us to repentance so we can be renewed in His love.

I. God’s love for us never changes.

I want to make a critical point, from the Word of God, before we begin to talk about the role and place of repentance in our lives.  Most people think God is like their earthly fathers and mothers, who often base their love on the performance of their children.  Even the most conscientious parent at times communicates less love to their children when their children are being disobedient.  I have seen mothers, who dearly love their children, at a point of exasperation when their kids have been bickering and picking at each other all day long, until their mom finally “loses it” and sends them all to separate rooms in what sounds like anger to their children.  I understand this feeling– Ann and I have been there, done that and bought the T-shirt.  But the way children often interpret this is that they feel like they are loved more when they are behaving.  Verbally, we have often told both our children that we love them no matter what, but I am not sure we have consistently communicated that in our actions.  The result of this is, that most of us, on some level cringe when we have sinned and know we have sinned and then are confronted with the notion of approaching our heavenly Father.  In our minds, we have heard that God, our Father in heaven still loves us, but our hearts have not embraced this truth completely.  If you picture your Heavenly Father with an angry face, you have an unbiblical picture.  Giod is a God of wrath as we talked about last week, but His wrath is focused on sin which is not covered by the blood of Jesus– you are covered by the blood of Jesus if you know Him!

The Lord our God is not like us, as humans.  His character of love has not changed and will never change.  There is nothing you can do to make the Lord love you any more, Christian, and there is nothing you can do to make Him love you any less.  His love never changes!  And in that we can both rest and rejoice!  Listen again to these words penned by the apostle Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit:  Romans 8:35‑39, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written:

"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."  

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  There is no power which will separate you from the love of your God and Lord, Jesus Christ!  Your sin does not change the agape love of God for you!

II. God disciplines those He loves.
Even though we have this love relationship established by the Lord our God, you as an individual, and we as a church tend to depart from this relationship because of sin.  When you move out of fellowship with God and away from your love relationship with your God, He disciplines you or us.  God disciplines individuals, families and churches so we will come back to Him and to the love relationship that brings us abundant life. 

The author of Hebrews calls on us to expect to be disciplined.  In fact, he makes the argument that if you are not disciplined, it means you are not true children of your Father.  What does discipline look like?  Well, the author tells us to endure hardship as discipline.  The Greek word “hardship” means chastening or instruction or training.  God does not want us to remain as we are, but wants to train us in righteousness.  Your age does not matter in this.  Young and middle age and older people are trained by the Lord to know His righteousness!  Our struggle here is at least two fold.  First, we have been taught by our culture to avoid chastening and hardship at all costs.  Instead of the slogan “No pain, No gain”, the slogan of our culture is, “NO PAIN, NO PAIN!”  This is neither a realistic evaluation of life, nor is it good for us.  The author of Hebrews makes the argument– which of our earthly fathers did not discipline us as we needed it, for our own good, as they thought best.  If your Heavenly Father loves you much more, doesn’t it make sense to you that He will discipline you?  The other problem we often have is our arrogance.  We don’t believe we need any discipline, because “we are doing right well on our own, thank you very much!” 

Remember David, the man after God’s own heart?  This same David stayed home from war one year and got into a heap of trouble.  He lusted after Bathsheba as she bathed, committed adultery with her and she became pregnant.  If that wasn’t enough, to cover his sin, he had her husband, Uriah the Hittite, placed in the front of the battle lines so he would certainly be killed in the ambush which was set for him.  Even then, there is no record of David coming clean until the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to him.  Nathan told him a story of how a rich man took advantage of a poor man, taking his only ewe lamb, when he had many to choose from in his own field.  David’s anger burned and he declared that this man must die!  Nathan pointed his finger at David and said, “You are that man!”  When confronted with his sin, David confessed his sin, but not before!  Because of his sin, the judgement of God fell on his house.  God forgave David, but there were still consequences for his sin.  My point is this, all of us are very good at rationalizing away our own sin, instead of owning it.  We point our fingers at others and the splinter of sin in their eye instead of taking the log out of our own eye.  On some level, this is true for most of us!  So, our God needs to discipline us.

III. God’s discipline calls us to repentance.

I want us all to be clear on God’s intent.  He loves us and wants the best for us more than we want the best for ourselves.  Now, we have to believe that this is true.  Too often, we complain and get bitter about discipline, but as we embrace and learn from it, we trust that He is doing a good work in us for His own glory and purposes.  We don’t always understand what God is doing or why.  Lynette Davis was visiting with us last weekend.  For those of you who are newer to the church and never knew Lynette, she is a young woman who was a member here before moving to be closer to her parents.  She developed cysts on her spinal column which doctors were unable to treat.  These cysts caused her tremendous pain which was debilitating to her.  She told me after the service Sunday that she still has the severe back pain which we had fasted and tried to pray off of her, but she said God had used the pain for much good in her life.  She was managing her pain, and it had taught her to sympathize with others in pain and to be more dependent on His Word in and through her life.  It was a beautiful example of what we are talking about here.

Verse 10 tells us God disciplines us so that we may share in His holiness.  What does that mean?  God loves His children, so He wants us to be as much like Him as we can be.  We may not believe this yet, but the truth is that we are most blessed when we walk in holiness.  The devil has lied to us and many Christians have believed this lie which says that it is more fun to live like the devil.  That is patently not true.  I love my life in Christ.  I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone in the world, especially those partying and doing all kinds of lewd things our culture calls fun or entertaining.   How warped is that to think that drunkenness and hangovers and broken relationships and pain is fun?!  Those things appeal to our flesh for a season, but those kinds of activities always lead to a feeling of incompleteness, emptiness or worse– death. 

The harvest— in other words, what you will reap from the discipline as you submit to it and embrace it– is peace and righteousness.  One of the fruits or results of righteousness as I walk in it is peace.  When I have walked righteously, there is nothing anyone can say or can do which will hinder my peace.  There are no skeletons in my closets, nor are there broken relationships.  I walk at peace with God, at peace with others and at peace with myself.  That kind of peace is worth a lot my friends. 

How does God want me to respond to His discipline?  With repentance.  Repentance means godly sorrow and a turning away from ungodliness.  The ungodliness may be in action, words, thoughts, attitudes or motivations.  It may have to do with misplaced priorities you have or with poor decisions you have made or with listening to the wrong sources or selfishness.  The Greek word for “repentance” is metanoeia, which is a compound word meaning “change” and “mind”, or change of mind.  Repentance does not mean feeling sorrow that you got caught, which is clearly the case in many high profile cases of our political leaders from both political parties.  Listen to how John describes repentance in these verses:  John 16:7‑8, “Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.  When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment...”  Part of the role of the Spirit within us is conviction of sin.  The Spirit convicts non-Christians of sin so they will repent and come to know Jesus, and convicts Christians of our sin so we will repent of our sin before a holy God, and be whole in His sight.  We need this gift of the Spirit!  Our response to this love from our Lord is to agree with the Spirit where we have sinned.  I agree Lord that my thoughts or my attitude or my actions were sinful in that situation.  I repent of this– I don’t want that anymore in my life, but I want Your way Lord! 

You may say to me, what about those sins I have repeatedly done.  The great news of the gospel is this– where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more!  God’s grace is sufficient to forgive you and atone for all your sin.  The Lord does not want you to stay in your sin, because that will never produce good fruit in your life.  He knows that your sin will hinder you from experiencing more of His grace, so He wants to help you with it.  He wants you to know about it and freely bring it all to the cross.  As you continue to bring your sin to Him, even things which you struggle to lay down, which seem to repeatedly hang on to you, God will work to cut you free.  Jesus tells us that “if the Son sets you free and then you will be free indeed!”

IV. The fruit of repentance is renewal.

The final thing we want to touch on this morning under this theme is the fruit or the results of repentance.  Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 7:10‑11, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.  See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done.  At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.”  Do you want to get refreshed in your faith?  Ask the Spirit of God to put His finger on every sin which hinders you from walking more fully in His abundant grace, and confess them all, one by one, by faith, nailing them to the cross.  As you leave the foot of the cross, leave your sin there and refuse to entertain engaging in it again!  I have watched Christians who have been set free of a particular sin– the jail door has been opened by Jesus and you have been led out by Jesus– go back in again and shut the door by their disobedience.  Willful sin harms you and those around you.  If you need accountability, find it and delight in it.  Never go far from it.  All of us are susceptible to fall.  The person who is in the dangerous place is the person who believes it could never happen to them.  It can and it has. 

Once we leave our sin at the cross, we are free!  There is no more burden of guilt, there is no more need to cover anything up because it is all in the light already!  You rejoice once again in what Christ has done for you.  You are in a place of longing to know Him more.  This is a good place to be.  Repentance should be a natural part of our lives.  I will tell you this about my own life and the sin which still dogs me at times– when I am quick to repent and not carry any sin, when I am constantly coming before the cross and laying my sin there, every day, then I have more abundance in my life.  I experience the fruit of repentance.  There is much more joy in the journey.
Remember that we are seeking the Lord, asking Him to bring revival to our hearts and to our church, which will change us and transform our community.  Repentance is key.  This is our part.  No one can repent for you.  You need to do that yourself.  Even in the small things, the persistent things, call sin what it is before the Lord– sin.  And leave it at the cross, asking for His grace not to pick it back up again.  Listen to how David describes the freedom in forgiveness in Psalm 32:3‑5, 9, 11,
“When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night
your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, "I will confess
my transgressions to the LORD"‑‑
and you forgave
the guilt of my sin.”
9 Do not be like the horse or the mule,
which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle
or they will not come to you.

11 Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous;
sing, all you who are upright in heart!”

I would like to close our service today with an extended time of response.  Some of you need to come up to the alter.  The act of getting up out of your seat and coming forward is significant, because it represents bringing your sin to the Lord.  Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks– that is one of the sins we struggle with in Florence– we are way to worried about what people think rather than what God thinks.  You can kneel where you are in your pews, you can spread out on the floor, as you are physically able to do that.  I want to do this by bidding prayer.  Not every one of these things I will speak will apply to every one of you, but own the sin which is yours, by faith lay it down at thee cross.  Sometimes I picture myself laying it down at the foot of the cross.  Mark will give us some background music for this time...

Any of you who would, I invite you to come to the alter as we pray...

Lord, we come before you as our holy God, and we freely confess our sin.  Give us true, godly sorrow for our sin.  We believe you hear the prayers of your children.  Lord, we confess this morning:
*our worry and anxiety– where we have not trusted you...
*our fear of others or fear of unknown, where we have not trusted you.
*our lack of love of others who are around us...
*our lust of eyes
*our pride, our arrogance...