Sunday, December 8, 2024
Apostle BILLEY.
Proverbs 28. 13 He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.
Being able to remember what you’ve done wrong and repent is a blessing and a favor from God.
There is repentance at every level: personal (for oneself), family (for the whole family) and national.
And so a person created by God goes before Him to ask forgiveness. There are no blessings for a person when there are hidden sins in his life. And this regardless of the type of sin: anger, lying…It will block God’s blessings.
As it says:
Isaiah 59. 1 Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, That it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy, That it cannot hear.
2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you,
So that He will not hear.
The wise person must make repentance a blessing for his life.
We encourage every Christian to meditate seriously on the booklet on deep repentance:
“Deep Confessions & Forsaking Of Sins”
(And we’ll highlight a few points together).
Those who decide to confess and abandon their sins must show courage.
a/ To expose every hidden sin, every wrong way…
Because sin that was committed last year, but not confessed, is still there in the person’s life. And it’s only the blood of Jesus that can take that away.
We’ve got nothing to lose. That’s why having a humble heart helps you grasp God.
Pride and self-justification will never allow a person to enter into this grace. Beloved, you have to be brave.
b/ Explain the “when, how, frequency and duration” of this illness. You have to talk to the Lord about everything, expose any evil.
Beloved, don’t forget that you’re doing it before God.
Behind every sin is Satan and the demons behind it. When we renounce evil, it weakens them, because they feed on evil.
Brothers, God will never judge us, nor condemn us, if we go before Him to repent. He’ll forgive us, no matter what wrong we’ve done.
Some things in our lives are due to sin. All we have to do is be brave and confess, confess and we’ll be set free.
c/ Exposing the degree of our responsibility: that is, what you yourself have done or are doing to bring this sin into your life.
d/ Exposing the consequences we see in our social lives: has this sin prevented graces, blessings.
We mustn’t accuse others, saying that it’s because such-and-such a person did this or that that we’ve acted.
e/ Explain the consequences in the home, in the church, in marriage…
Because of sin, some cannot serve God; Because their consciences accuse them. Be brave let that be and God will open a way once and for all.
f/ Expose what has been stolen as blessings, time, favor, health, financial opportunity…
The Holy Spirit will help us every step of the way.
Have you ever remembered a wrong you did a long time ago, even 10 or 20 years ago?
It’s the Holy Spirit who does that, and through these teachings, He’ll do it more.
So when He does, take note and start meditating on it, regretting and asking forgiveness.
Repentance is not something of today, but since time immemorial, billions of people have repented and maintained a relationship with God. And they’re in heaven now.
There’s the gate of heaven and the gate of hell. At first, the door to heaven seems complicated, but when you persevere, in the end you’ll see grace, eternal life.
While the door to hell is initially very attractive; very wide, it seems that through it you can do anything you want, but the destination is hell, bitterness.
3. People Who Repented Deeply In The Bible.
Among these people, let’s remember King Nebuchadnezzar, in the book of Daniel. His empire was very large, and God allowed him to take Jerusalem. He was a pagan but God used him for His agenda. He put Israel under his tutelage. The Lord allowed this because Israel had given itself over to idolatry.
Over time, God spoke to this Gentile, explaining that it was He who had put him in power and should honor him(Daniel 2:37-38). But Nebuchadnezzar closed his heart and some time later erected a golden statue and wanted all the land to come and worship it (Daniel 3.1-5). But Daniel and his friends refused to do so(Daniel 3.12).
God insisted on speaking to this king, through the mouth of Daniel, who interpreted his dream to him (Dan 4.22-27). So Nebuchadnezzar agreed to raise God in his country. However, a year later, he looked at his empire, a great kingdom, then opened his mouth and began to glorify himself: Daniel 4.29-30.
So God humbled him. Daniel 4.31 While the word was still in the king’s mouth, a voice fell from heaven: “King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom has departed from you!
And from that moment this king lost his senses, received the mentality of animals and began to live like an animal for years (Daniel 4.32-33).
Then one day he humbled himself and asked God for forgiveness, and God restored him. The Lord Himself had preserved His place as King; no one else had access to it during all this time. It has been completely restored. (Daniel 4.34-37)
Beloved, he who repents will always see God’s hand of grace on his life.
- God doesn’t want anyone who dies to perish in their sin.
God calls the church to repentance, as well as the whole world.
Actes 17.30 ruly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent,
This is not the repentance of the day we gave our lives to the Lord, which is repentance in order to be saved. But after that, and all our time in the world, we must learn to repent of every sin in our lives.
A lie from our lips is not harmless; it opens the door for the devil to visit us in our dreams and in our homes.
Beloved, sin opens the door to the enemy. And repentance closes the door.
2 Peter 3:9; Ezekiel 18:30.
If a man, whatever his status, rank or social position: elected representatives, politicians, governors…, does not repent of his sins, he will go to hell. But if he repents he will be saved.
Even those who perform abortions, the medical staff who help people do that, if they repent, God will forgive them. For He is patient and does not want them to perish.
They are manipulated by the world of darkness because God created every Man good.
Beloved, you must forgive your enemies.
2 Peter 3.9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
God wants our families, our neighbors, our colleagues to repent and be saved.
- No One Can Deceive God
Psalm 139 1.O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off.
3 You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways.
Consider this:
One gentleman was in a coma, and in an instant, he was dead for 2 or 3 minutes. And in that instant, everything came back to his memory, his whole life.
Yet another person, an atheist teacher, one day he was driving and had an accident. And he died. And he saw himself on one side, but He could see his body in the car. It was with his spirit that he saw his body. And immediately he understood that God exists without preaching. He had the thought of eternity. He wanted to see God. He felt God’s love.
How is this possible?
This world is full of doubting spirits, full of darkness that fights us at every turn.
It’s hard for man to think about God, because thoughts are busy. Decisions are made influenced by evil.
For this gentleman, the thought of eternity may have occurred to him at that very moment, because the devil had left him seeing that he was dead. Then he could feel God’s love and presence.
Then he saw a video of his life in less than a minute. Nearly 50 years in the making, and seen in less than a minute.
He began to cry and ask for forgiveness. Because that’s when he realized he was a criminal, a villain…
Then the Lord said to him, “You teach in your school that I don’t exist, but since you’ve asked for forgiveness, you’ll go back. But change your way of living…”
In the meantime, the fire department had come to collect his body and take it, without hope, to hospital. But as the Lord guides all things, He prompted a nurse to come and open the plastic covering to see the body, and that’s when the gentleman coughed and came back to life. Today, he has become an evangelist.
Beloved, we don’t need to experience these things to know what Jesus said.
God knows everything. It’s true that sometimes we can hide things from our spouses and families. But we mustn’t hide anything from God. Even if it’s an exaggerated expense, we have to tell Him.
- Why Must We Repent And Renounce Sins?
In addition to the 12 reasons given in the booklet, we can add point 13.
This causes physical and spiritual illness. John 5:14; Luke 4:18-19.
John 5.14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”
What caused this man’s illness? It was sin that nailed this gentleman to the bed for 38 years.
This means that sin has the power to destroy physical life. Beloved, let us repent of the evil in our lives.
- God Created Us Spirit In A Body.
We are inside our bodies, we are spirits and we can see what is wrong in our lives.
We must search our hearts before the word of God. For example:
Mark 12.29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.
31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Listening to this word, the proud-hearted person will hear nothing. It’s called having an insensitive heart.
We need to be sensitive to God’s voice and examine our hearts.
On pages 10 and 11 of the document, (dealing with “point 12 God Created Us Spirit In A Body”), we need to go deeper into it and work in our hearts.
We have to ask the questions and wait for the answers. For example: Do I love God with all my heart and soul?
We must desire to know all the evil in ourselves. You may not love God at all, or you may love Him but not the way God wants. Maybe it’s 25%, 50%, 75%… ? Knowing that we must love God 100%.
The Holy Spirit can help you measure this, for He does not want us to perish.
The more He shows us, the more we’ll be saddened. It’s a good sadness, one that leads to repentance. At the same time, there will be the joy of understanding what’s wrong in our lives, but also the sadness of seeing that we’re in these wrong things.
The Holy Spirit will help you. Those who embark on a path of intimacy with God become heroes.
IN THE NAME OF JESUS, Let Us Pray… →
Lord, give me a heart of repentance.
Take from me the heart of pride, of self-justification.
Take from me that which is contrary to You.
And help me to do all things with a heart of humility and repentance.
And strengthen the whole church for this time of fasting and prayer.
In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.