The Day of New Beginnings

A Perpetual Open Heart

 

Repentance is something of a paradox. It is the trigger that activates the work of the cross in our lives. Repentance is more than just asking forgiveness for a wrong committed. The repentance that brings change is a godly sorrow, a grieving over what we are, not just acts committed. It’s not easy coming to the place of true repentance. It’s not easy because it’s difficult to reach the place of seeing what we really are in the Adamic nature. 
 
Even as Christians we don’t want to be exposed to the shame of our corrupt nature in Adam. Subconsciously we try to avoid it as much as possible. That’s why the majority of Christianity preaches a sugar coated Gospel, telling everyone God wants nothing more than to shower them in blessings and prosperity. However, once we open our hearts to the repentance that leads to Christ’s life formed in us, we are on our way! Paul describes this level of repentance in 2nd Cor. 7:
 
9  I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.
10  For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.
11  For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you: what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong! In everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter.
 
It was stated that repentance is something of a paradox. Repentance is a necessity for the work of the cross to be perfected in us, yet repentance in itself can never remove the stain of the Adamic nature. 
 
There is a bigger picture that must be seen. God is after a people who will walk with Him in unbroken fellowship. The Adamic nature makes that impossible. The biggest hindrance to unbroken fellowship with God is the condemnation and guilt that spring from the fallen nature. It’s a condemnation and guilt most Christians don’t know anything about because of their shallow relationship with the Lord. “Huh?” It’s only when we really hunger for a deeper walk with God that this condemnation and guilt syndrome emerges. Once we attain the repentance that leads to life (Acts 11:18), it becomes a state we live in. A repentant heart becomes a given before God. THEN we are ready for the next step.
 
Focusing on what we are in our Adamic natures and constantly repenting of it can never bring the changes we want. Eventually it will lead to frustration and despair. This is how Martin Luther came to the great revelation, “The just shall live by faith.” A perpetual open heart toward the Lord brings more changes than years and years of repentance alone can ever bring. Why is this so? Because an open heart is the result of a work of grace in our lives. In the face of the shame and condemnation the Adamic nature carries, an open heart is impossible without His grace beamed toward us. Thus, an open heart is an exercise of faith. And how are we saved? “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast (Eph. 2:8-9).” This is seemingly basic stuff; it’s taught everywhere in fundamentalist Christianity, yet how little of it is experienced to the depth. 
 
Gen. 3:
1 ¶  Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?"
2  The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;
3  but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’"
4  The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die!
5  "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 ¶  When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
7  Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.
8  They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
9 ¶  Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"
10  He said, "I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself."
11 ¶  And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?"
12  The man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate."
 
Verse five is what we want to focus on. "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." The serpent tells Eve that she will be like God. That is precisely what the human race has become. As a whole and individually, the Adamic nature rules as God. It answers to no one, it makes its own decisions, and it creates its own world to live in. By the work of man’s hands a world has been created that exists apart from the one true God. As inhabitants of the world we have created, we have no one to rely on but ourselves. That’s why money is the prime driving force in man’s world. Without it, we go hungry, we are denied all the creature comforts we have invented, and we have no status or importance among our peers. In spite of the prosperity shills who tell us God wants nothing more than to make us rich, our financial condition is one of the first things God touches when He begins to deal with us to bring us into His world. He does this to teach us man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Deut. 8:3). The god syndrome of man is self reliance; the way of spiritual maturity is dependency upon the Lord. 
 
Why does God allow what seems to be perpetual problems and hang ups of the Adamic nature within us to linger? When we have a revelation of how He wants to create His own nature in us, and we cry for it day and night because we see how corrupt we are apart from Him, why doesn’t it happen to our satisfaction? The answer is the verse just quoted from Deut. 8. It reads in its entirety: He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD. God let Israel be hungry. He causes us to be hungry as well; not for literal food, but for His nature to displace the vileness of Adam. He let Israel go hungry to bring them into a dependency upon Himself. He lets us go hungry to bring us into a dependency upon Himself.  When we stand in His presence and know it’s only because of His grace enabling us, it humbles us and positions us for God to be everything He wants to be to us. 
 
Whether we can connect all the dots or not, God allowing us to live with what seems like a denial of His promise of His nature fully operating in us actually serves to create His life in us in the long run. There is nothing more important to God than to see His people with a perpetual open heart toward Him. He accomplishes it through letting us go hungry, through bringing us into a total dependency upon Himself. When we can keep our hearts open toward God in the face of our greatest failures in attempting to walk in the fruit of the Spirit and not the works of the flesh (Gal. 5), then we can know God has indeed worked something of His nature into our lives.