Thoughts about life and pleasing God surround me today. The need to please the Father is front and center in my thoughts. It occurred to me that repentance begins the moment you stop defending what God is asking you to surrender. Read that again.
It rarely starts with tears or dramatic confession. It starts in the quiet when the arguments run out. For a long time we could explain why we needed to hold on to something — why the resentment is justified, why the habit is harmless, why the money, the relationship, the pride, the control is necessary. We build a case for it, even while we pray. We ask God to bless us while our hands are closed around the very thing He is asking us to release. True repentance is not when we become more persuasive in our prayers, but when we stop negotiating the offence.
What we defend reveals what we trust….what we believe. If we have to defend it, justify it, hide it, or revisit it over and over in our minds to make peace with it, it has likely become an idol. God rarely has to compete loudly, and that’s why surrender feels like loss at first. We think we are giving up a piece of ourselves, but we are actually giving up a weight that has been holding us down. The rich young ruler in Scripture did not walk away because he loved his possessions too little, but because he trusted them too much. He couldn’t imagine who he would be without them.
The moment you stop defending is the moment honesty returns. The psalmist said, “Search me, O God, and know my heart.” That is a dangerous prayer, because God will answer it. He will show you…not to shame you, but to free you. Repentance is not God turning His face away from you; it is God inviting you to stop turning your face away from Him. The defense drops, the excuse goes silent, and in that stillness you can finally say, “Lord, I agree with You. You are right about this, and I have been wrong to hold it.”
From there, grace can do what willpower never could. You don’t have to figure out how to let go — you just have to stop fighting to keep it. Surrender is not a one-time defeat; it is a daily decision to leave what you’ve attached yourself to and walk away without picking it back up. And when you do, you will find that God was never trying to deprive you. He was trying to restore you — with a clean conscience, a softened heart, and the unhindered fellowship your soul was longing for all along.
“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” — 2 Chronicles 7:14
Being About The Journey 