The Pain of Repentance

“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”
-Kenji Mijazawa

What is the hardest part of repentance? I think it’s the pain. See when we sin we become numb to guilt and immune to the lines of right and wrong. So as we start to repent we in essence slowly melt back into the pain. As we melt the pain seems to be ten times worse because we are feeling the guilt for the first time. See if guilt slowly builds you are eased into the pain, but if it hits you all at once it’s like jumping into an icy lake. The smack of the water is the initial feeling and the stabbing pain all over you body is the throbbing after effect. I know I make repentance sound hard that is because it is and it needs to be so we know the severity of our sins. What we need to remember is “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” (That is a profound and wise statement Lance Armstrong once made.)

Life is short and we have to ask ourselves before we give up why it is we held on for so long in the first place. The answer to this question is the answer to the ultimate question you should ask before doing anything….is it worth it? Is sacrificing your time and giving your life to God worth eternal salvation? Is a little fun worth sacrificing your salvation? This life is a test, and the truth is pain is part of life. To reject that is to reject life itself, and to reject life is to reject God. Pain is regretful but suffering is optional, we can take it and turn our healed pain into wisdom or we can linger in it never allowing it to heal.

Repentance brings pain but that is how we learn and it’s the only true way to find your way back to the ultimate goal…lets not call it a goal lets call it a gift. So to have the ultimate gift you have earn it and sometime that is through pain.