A Faith Worth Sharing: Week 2

This podcast is a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. You are listening to our Sunday school series entitled "A Faith Worth Sharing."

There's a stopping of something and a starting and turning to something. There's this ownership aspect of repentance. It's really painful for us. It's not a one-time action. It's an ongoing thing that keeps going.

Here's one of those staple words for following Jesus, and we're all kind of fumbling over ourselves, but collectively we're coming up with a pretty decent answer. So there are these fundamentals Jesus has given us, and we don't know what to do with them. That gets exposed when we do a lesson like this. Repentance—how do we not have a lockdown definition? How do we not have a lockdown pathway that we use to enjoy Jesus more?

I think our collective definition was fantastic, but let's start building one together through a quick biblical survey.

Someone read this verse for me. Give patience and rest, and rest is your salvation. Quietness and trust is your strength.

So Hebrew poetry uses parallelism. It's not saying multiple things—it's saying the same thing over and over. These are almost like synonyms. Repentance and rest are the same thing. Quietness and trust and strength and repentance and rest are the same thing. How on earth is repentance rest?

There's a cleansing to repentance.

There's a freedom to it. You feel like you've been vulnerable enough to admit something and just feel alive. You're living in the reality of what you should be living in with Jesus. You give up and decide that you lose, and Jesus wins. That's well said. You're choosing to give up and let Jesus win, and we want Jesus to win in our hearts.

Our souls are made to be in alignment with God. We've been returning from some evil thing.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Sometimes behavioral change isn't always—it's always heart change. At least it should always be heart change. Rest from guilt. Rest from self-efforts. Rest from shame. Rest from carrying it around. Rest from all those things.

This is why Jesus gave us repentance. He doesn't want you to walk around with that burden, that guilt, that shame, that pressure to fix yourself, your perfectionism, the anxiety of trying to control everything. He wants you to rest in him, know his presence and his loving grace. It's rest.

Now Jeff alluded to this where he repented to all of us for preaching bad sermons on this. That's a pretty awesome moment.

Someone read this for me really loud:

Now I am happy not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. 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. — 2 Corinthians 7:9-11

What do we learn about repentance from this passage? It comes from godly sorrow. Let's describe this godly sorrow in your own words. It leaves no regret. There are all these phrases in there. That's super serious stuff.

In my former life when I pastored like Jeff and James, you would sometimes have really broken marriages. We had two army guys who served overseas and did horrific things. They came back with lots of sexual sin, and it blew up their marriages. But I saw a contrast. I saw one guy who was just like, I don't know. I saw another guy going, "Whatever I have to do. Whatever." We created the world's greatest gauntlet of all time, and he just went through it every step.

I remember as he was going through it, I was like, "Oh, I've never seen this passage come alive before in a human being, and now I have." With his wife, with his counselor, with us, with his friends, it was just like his indignation against his own sin. His readiness to do anything to make things better. His longing, his concern, his wanting to see justice done on himself. And you know what's cool about that story? It was a process. He didn't start there. It's just what the Spirit did.

See, repentance—the Spirit is creating holistic change. It's holistic. Go back to this passage. Look how holistic it is. Doesn't it get into the emotional life? Regret, indignation. It's deeply visceral when it takes off. And this is what the Holy Spirit is slowly producing in us: holistic change.

So repentance is rest. It's rest from sin and shame and self-effort. And it's holistic change. Rest from sin. But sin is also war.

Therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, and evil desires of greed, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived, but now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language from your lips. — Colossians 3

I wish we had more time to unpack this passage. It's terrifying. It really is. Because if you look at the inner life—the stuff we're put to death—it's impossible stuff to put to death, isn't it?

Tim Keller didn't come up with hard idolatry. Paul did. And Paul didn't really make it up. He got it from the Old Testament. But the reality is there are these deeper motivations in our heart: evil desires, greed, impurity. And those things, which are idols that rule our heart, that garner our attention, our identity, our sense of self—we're supposed to put those things to death.

But we don't wage war with our sin, do we? What's our normal posture with our sin? Cover it up. Yes. So there's a cover-up element to it. Absolutely. What else? Apathy. Yes. Manage it. Yes. Justify it.

See how better our definition is for this. This is the realm we live in. Instead of treating sin like a frozen animal that's trying to destroy us, that we're trying to kill it before it kills us, we treat it like an animal we're trying to domesticate. I'm gonna teach it to sit. I'm gonna teach it to shake my hand. And that's how we treat our sin.

But repentance is a war. It is a flat-out battle where you're joining the Holy Spirit against the flesh and all that it does in your body. It's a war. It's a war for your heart.

Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance? — Romans 2:4

So what creates repentance in a human soul? Kindness of God. Kindness of God. So repentance is gospel power.

I think this is one we forget all the time. I'm going to belabor this point multiple times in this presentation. You know that lesson we did yesterday? You know the main fruit of doing gospel meditation and preaching the gospel to your heart all the time is? Repentance. How do I know someone's preaching the gospel to their heart? Because they're repenting all the time. Because faith and repentance go hand in hand. When someone in the human heart is experiencing the deep mercy and kindness and beauty of Jesus, and they're enjoying his rich grace, that human heart goes, "God, I've sinned against you. I don't want this sin ruling my heart. I want you ruling my heart because you're beautiful."

I have a holy trinity of white guys I quote around the world. There's only three. This might offend some of you. It's okay. There's three white guys I can quote anywhere in the world: Tim Keller, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Spurgeon. They're the holy trinity of white guys. Doesn't matter what part of the world I'm in, I quote one of these three guys, and they're like, "Well, that's good. That's good. That's good." Spurgeon's my favorite because he's just so eloquent and colorful.

While I regarded God as a tyrant, I thought my sin a trifle. But when I knew him to be my father, then I mourned that I could ever have kicked against him. When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin. But when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could ever have rebelled against one who loved me so and sought my good. — Charles Spurgeon

It's God's kindness that leads us to repentance. So the degree we're enjoying the grace of God, we're going to repent. Now, the inverse of that should be terrifying you right now.

If some of you are like halfway self-aware going, "I'm not repenting very much right now," that means I'm not enjoying Jesus very much right now. Can't get away from the inverse. And so that's why that gospel fluency lesson is so important, and the other one too. Because if you're enjoying Jesus, you're going to repent.

So what is repentance? It's more than this. At the very least, it's rest in God. It's holistic change. It's a war against our sin that's empowered by the gospel. You see how as we spend time with the scriptures and let it start nuancing us, it can really help us understand sin.

The Anatomy of Repentance

I have to give credit where credit's due. The next four slides—it's not a complete one-to-one steal, but it's pretty close—from a guy named Thomas Watson. He lived sometime around the sixteen hundreds in Great Britain, a pastor who wrote prolifically. His understanding of the human heart and repentance was gold. And so I wish I came up with this. Now he didn't have really cool slides and 3D effects and stuff like that, so I'm just making Thomas Watson pretty. That's pretty much all that's going on here.

But there's a small little paperback called Doctrine and Repentance. I rarely do this, but it's one of the few classic Puritan books—I forget what their series is called—but anyway, there's a bunch of paperbacks. This is one of three worth getting: Doctrine of Repentance. It's phenomenal. His introduction was like, "Do you realize your repentance needs repenting of?" And I'm like, it does! This is great. I don't like this guy—he's taken away my behavioralism.

So here we go. The anatomy of repentance. I gave you the verses for you to look up and do the deep dive later, and we just don't have the time to go super deep on this. But at the very least, repentance is these six things.

There's an ownership element, right? Where you're looking at your sin and going, "I did this. This is my problem. I'm bringing this chaos into the world."

There's a confession element that I want to mention, right? Where you're like, "Now that I'm taking ownership of it, I'm going to God, I need to confess to you and the people I've sinned against what I've done wrong."

And then there's a godly sorrow element which we covered. Where there's this holistic change happening, there's this indignation, your inner life is being connected to.

At some point, there's a godly shame. Okay, now—okay, we live in a world where people talk about shame now. Brené Brown's awesome. And so you're like, "Wait, there's no good shame?" Right? There's just a little bit of good shame in the body. Just a little bit. It's where you feel embarrassed by how you rob Jesus of glory, where you feel shame because you tarnished his name, where you as a child of God go, "I have wounded my Father's image." Does that make sense? If any Asians in the house, you already get this, right? You're like, "Yes, I have shamed my father many times and I feel bad about it."

And then there's a hatred of sin. I mean, you're not going to turn from something you don't absolutely hate. And so what the Spirit is ultimately creating in you is a hatred of the thing that's trying to destroy you. Makes sense? So where we want to get to is our sin, a hatred of it. So this is the weird stuff. If you got a whole lot of love of Jesus in you, simultaneously you're going to have a lot of hatred towards sin, and your heart's complex enough to handle those realities. Kind of fun, isn't it?

And then there's a turning. So that—I forgot who gave the first definition, so to get there, we've got to have all these other ingredients in there. That's a lot, isn't it?

Before I give you a tool that puts us into reality, why don't you just break up into groups of four? Try to make sure there's one person you don't know. Shake hands real fast, like introductions in ten, fifteen seconds, and then talk about an aspect of this that's completely missing in your life. Now you don't have to talk about why it's missing or the sin that's creating that missing part, but just talk about the aspects of this—like, "Oh, I don't have this in my life. I want you to personalize it before we get to the field." Does that work? Introductions, what's missing? Go.

Alright. So I'm gonna give you the tool, and this is the second most used tool we have globally right now. So you got the most used one last week. This is the second most used one. This tool will help you to begin that lifelong process and journey of constant dynamic repentance in God. It's not a tool you can impose on someone else—that doesn't work that way. But it is a helpful tool that if you wanna grow in repentance, you can invite someone else in and out.

So I'm gonna explain it real fast. I'm gonna use myself as an example real quick, and you're gonna help me repent. And then we're gonna talk about how you would apply this to your life. Does that work?

The Tool: Six Steps of Repentance

Ownership. How do I take ownership of my sin? That is the first question you ask. As a pastor, it's the most painful thing I do when I work with people because I can't even get to the first step. You just hear the 3,000 excuses. The problem is those excuses long before they're external or internal. Repentance begins at some point when the Holy Spirit helps you to go, "I've sinned. This is my issue."

This is why Psalm 51 is so cool watching David going full ownership of his sin. That's why it's in the Bible.

So you gotta take ownership of your sin. Then there's confession. How do I specifically confess my sin? I want this concept to lay in your head: Why is confession a gift to you? Right now, most of us have negative connotations to it. Why is it possibly a gift to you?

I'm agreeing with God. Good. Keep going. Brings into light. This is all good. Keep going. Freedom. Yes. Sharing your burden. Yes. Confession helps get the sin off you and back on the cross where it belongs. Because Jesus did something about that sin on the cross. He canceled its power. He paid for its price.

Confession allows you to get—it's like a vent to the soul, quoting Thomas Watson here. It allows that awful dark matter to get off your heart and back on the cross. Confessing it to both God and to others puts it in the light, lessens the burden, helps us to grieve with God, but it helps us to see where the sin belongs—and not on you. How cool is that?

Godly sorrow. How has this sin damaged everyone—me, my family, my community? This is the money question. If you can start experiencing godly sorrow because you can see and feel how the sin is damaging you and everyone in your life, you'll begin hating it. If you don't experience godly sorrow, you're not gonna hate it. If you start experiencing godly sorrow, you're gonna hate it. At least begin the journey.

Godly shame. How does the sin rob Jesus of glory?

Holy hatred. How might I kill this sin?

It's hard to get here unless you do these four. Honestly, this last one is a byproduct of the previous four. That make sense? I have to put it on the slide because Thomas Watson had it in his book, but this actually focuses your action plan—still a byproduct of the first four.

Applying the Tool: A Personal Example

Now that I've briefly explained it, let me use myself as an example. Probably for the last twenty years, I'm way too ambitious for my own good. Way too ambitious. Way too success driven. It is a perpetual problem that makes me work way too much.

I just need to identify: Are there any other ambitious, success-driven people in the room? Raise your hands proudly. Good. Good. Okay. For the rest of you, that means you're all people pleasers. Just hang in there. I love you. You're doing great. Let's just make fun of successful people for a while.

Whether I was a church planter or worked for Tim Keller or worked for myself, man, I really wanna be successful. I wanna be seen in a positive light. It's a real problem. It's not enough that Jesus is doing all those things.

I want glory from it. So it's really important for me to take ownership of how success-driven I am.

I want to get the conversation going about confession. What would it look like for me to confess my ambition, my desire for success, my success idolatry to Jesus? What would that sound like?

Someone said: "That you put time and attention into your success that should have been given to your family."

Do you hear that? So it's going to sound something like: "Jesus, I put so much time and attention to my success and glory versus the success and glory of God. Your success and glory, Lord Jesus."

What else would my confession sound like? Let's help Valerie out. What would that sound like? Someone else besides me—the other side of that point, like what it should be like. "I know I should be doing this, but I'm not, so I need to be able to do it."

That's supplication. We can frame it differently—not grammar version, not imperative, not indicative. We just want to make statements. So it's going to sound something like: "Jesus, you've given me this amazing, lovely wife to love and serve and build up. You've given me these amazing kids to encourage and shepherd. You've given me these amazing friends to build up and love and sacrifice for. And Lord Jesus, I'm just using all of them for my glory and purposes. I don't believe in the gospel. Lord Jesus, I don't believe your grace is good enough. Lord Jesus, I don't really believe that getting my identity from you is enough. I feel like I have to add to it for my own glory and purposes."

This is what's terrifying about my occupation: I am literally using Jesus for my own glorious success. This is why you should not be in ministry.

"Lord Jesus, I confess that I think I'm strong enough and I think I can do it all. Lord Jesus, I confess I think I'm good enough and strong enough to do this all on my own without you. But Lord Jesus, I don't know how to change this. I don't know how to start to change this or change me."

Learning About Confession

What are we learning real quick about confession here? What are we doing?

"More about us. You have to unpack it and go deeper. It's like any exercise—if you give yourself five minutes to confess, the first two minutes is worthless. It's your worst confessions, but it's not worthless. It's what you need to go through to get to the better stuff."

I rarely do this well by myself. This is why repentance is supposed to be a team sport. You need other human beings to help prime the pump, to help you go a little further and a little deeper. I tend to be really nice to myself. I know there's some self-loathers in the room, but some of you give yourself little kickoffs—"You're trying so hard. You're doing great." And so if you're a little too easy on yourself, you need someone to help you start to see, "Oh man, I'm not even touching the surface of this."

God's Sorrow and How Sin Damages Us

How has my success idolatry damaged me? We're not going to talk about Kim or my kids or the church, just me.

"If you gain the world but lose your soul, it's kind of worthless."

Gain the world, lose your soul — Matthew 16:26

Well said. A divided heart. My success has created a divided heart.

"It steals your joy because you're so narrowly focused on one thing that you're missing God's blessing in your life."

It's stealing me of joy. I'm missing all the opportunities God has for me because I'm focused on myself.

"You're painting the things that God is doing as your own success."

I'm robbing God of glory. I'm a thief.

"There's never enough. There's this unsatiable appetite. It's never enough. So you're robbing yourself of rest."

I'm robbing myself of rest. Look, we can do this delicately. Am I the perfect physical specimen in front of you right now?

Maybe I'm not eating as well as I should or exercising or resting as much as I should. I think that's a result of my success, I know. I also see damage in me. I'm a little hamster in my little hamster wheel trying to keep this bar really high of success, and it's wearing me out.

Usually it's more than that. There's anger. Fear, anxiety, anger, absolutely. When we get to Kim and the kids, I'll be more materialized about it.

How This Sin Damages My Family

So how's this sin damaging my family? I'm distracted even from home. I'm giving them a horrible example. They can't actually know you because if they knew you, then you wouldn't be successful. So it creates a barrier for my actual authentic relationship with them because I'm trying to keep up that successful persona. They could be a problem getting in the way.

That was about the most Asian thing you've said. Because like that's common language in our Asian homes, isn't it? It's like, you reflect me. That's right. Absolutely. It might also reflect back to two gods, and it's not a good reflection at that point.

So okay, let me give you an analogy. So my wife just observed a pattern after I started traveling too much. There's the week before I leave where I'm stressed out making slide decks and getting my trip together, and there's a frenetic energy. Then I'm gone for a week. And then I come back and I'm crashing, and I'm trying to catch up from the trip. So she said, "You might travel a week, but we lose you for three."

My wife and kids feel a little like second place or third place or fourth place. They get more of my stress and anxiety than they do my joy in Jesus.

How else might my success be damaging my wife and kids? They might think, "Dad thinks I'm a distraction from his success." They might be internalizing it. "I'm distracting dad from his success." Yes. It totally messes up the family dynamics. Instead of experiencing the father's joy through me, they're experiencing something else.

Sometimes we talk about success as very work oriented, but sometimes success can be people oriented. Where you're actually hurting someone by trying to succeed by making them your success. You can really hurt your kids that way. Did y'all catch that? Sometimes we can make people our success and there can be a dynamic to that as well. Any new moms in the room, you'll know exactly what that feels and looks like.

How This Sin Damages My Community

Real quick, how's my success idol damaging my relationship with my community? I think believers and unbelievers alike. Your heart isn't towards them or for them. My heart's not towards them or for them. It's focused on myself. I'm not there. Hard to build friendships if I'm gone all the time or distracted all the time.

So believers, I'm missing out on them and they're missing out on me. For unbelievers, this is how I'm portraying the gospel in their life. They're like, "I'm not sure what this Jesus stuff is about. This dude's just as driven, neurotic, and self-absorbed as I am."

The Practice of Repentance

Now why is it so hard for us to put ourselves in a hot seat and go down this road? It's uncomfortable. We don't practice it. What I've discovered is maybe one out of a hundred human beings can do this for themselves. The rest of us need another human being that we trust, that we invite in, that we give the keys to the conversation to, and they ask us leading questions until we cry.

This is how it works. How do they know we're repenting? Because we start crying because we're feeling the weight of our sin. And then your job is to preach the gospel to that person as they're starting to experience the weight of that sin. That's powerful work.

We don't know how to do this because we rarely practice it. But it's the key to us actually enjoying the rich mercy of Jesus because we're actually feeling the impact of our sin.

This room's really smart. You know what we like to do? Understand our sin. Analyze our sin. Diagram our sin. Versus connect to our sin. Feel the weight of it. See how it's damaging us.

Do you understand what I'm doing here? There's one thing for me to say, "I got success idolatry. Let me break it down for you." There's another thing where we have another human being in my life going, "Hey, really? You could have eighty hours this week. When did you talk to your wife? Did Lily get any time with you this week? How come?" And just go down that road with me until I'm emotionally connecting with the weight of my sin and its impact on other human beings.

Since it's only in that place that I'm actually seeing sin for what it is, but emotionally I'm feeling the sorrow of what it's caused in my relationships—not only with God but the people in my life. Does that make sense? We don't like doing it, do we?

It's a cyclical process. We rarely start here. It's more like you do these little loops, going deeper and deeper and deeper. It's never a straight line. It's usually iterative with multiple conversations, but it only works if you invite someone else into your own heart to start asking these questions.

Godly Shame and the Power of Looking at Jesus

So then you get to the godly shame one: How does the sin rob Jesus of glory? I think we covered that really well early on when we started talking about how I'm literally stealing glory from Jesus, which then makes me want to kill the sin.

If we had the proper ninety-minute workshop experience, I'd be breaking you back into his roots and you'd be trying it out on each other. Alas, we can't do that in this iteration. But in a community group near you about a year from now, you're going to be experiencing this to a great degree.

I want to give you a couple of things to help you with this. So since I quoted one Puritan, let's quote another one. Robert Murray McCheyne—Scottish McCheyne—for every one look you take at your sin, take ten looks at Christ. It's one of my favorite quotes. One of my favorite quotes.

So we're talking a lot about how you need to confess your sin and take ownership and godly sorrow. What's the power for all of this? Looking at Jesus. Do you see how faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin? To a degree, you are really forcing yourself to interact with Jesus. To a degree, you're going to be actually repenting of your sin.

What I've discovered is you don't do this well unless you have someone not just asking you hard questions, but preaching the gospel to you while you're doing it. That's why you need another human being. Most of us will just go to shame and stop trying to do this by ourselves. This is why you rarely do this by yourself, because you need another human being looking at you going, "Whoa. Whoa. You're going to shame. Jesus loves you. He died for you as a child. Okay. Okay. You're back with me now. Let's go back to this again. Oh no, you went back to shame again. Oh, he loves you. It's gonna be okay. He took care of us on the cross. Oh, you're back. Okay. Let's go back to this again."

This is what we do for each other. We preach the gospel to each other so we actually have the emotional space and security and the identity to tackle the sin. Really tackle the sin. Does that make sense? This is the hardest question to deal with. Here you can do this in your head. Here you have to do this with your heart. And this is where you need someone pounding you with the gospel so you can actually emotionally engage and experience the harm of that sin so you want to hate it.

So let me say this whole different way: Why do most in this room rarely change and repent and hate our sin? Because we don't enjoy the gospel enough in community to actually deal with its damage in our lives. Tracking with me?

Creating a Culture for Repentance

So how do we create a culture for this? Three things.

Vulnerability. We gotta just be really honest with each other appropriately in those spaces of community and friendship and give our real selves to each other. Or we're never gonna repent. Here's good news: I've known James forever. Everything I'm talking about is not new to him. We've been talking about some form of my success ideology for over twenty years now. This is not new to my wife. We've been talking about this for almost thirty years. So as you have appropriate circles in your life, you gotta be vulnerable. It's weird that I have to tell a bunch of Jesus followers to do this, but we have to do this.

So that builds to us being lead repenters. We'll just do this. We'll make them comfortable. How many elders are in the room right now? This is great. We'll just focus on YouTube because this is gonna be awesome. Three. Three almost four.

There is no culture of gospel, grace, and repentance unless we have lead repenters in the room. So whether you're an elder or a community group leader, the room is as healthy as the leader. If I come in successful and polished, the group's gonna have to be successful and polished. If I come in repenting, the group has to come in repenting.

You've seen that during share time in any Bible study you've been in. If you're just sharing about how your auntie's sick or an uncle has cancer—I mean, those are important things—but that's how shallow the prayer requests are gonna be. But if you come in like, "Man, my success idolatry is getting me," I used to start vomiting stuff out. Well, the next person can't talk about their auntie now. The next person's like, "Oh, the peer pressure in the bar is so high. I can't fake it now. I gotta join them." And so it's so important to have lead repenters in the room.

You can't fake being a lead repenter because you'll just say the same thing over and over and people are like, "Wait a minute. This is a game. This isn't real." So we have to be real lead repenters. That means we actually have to be the people using the tool and applying it to ourselves, and it's really, really hard.

For you to be a lead repenter, you have to be a lead believer. The only way you'll ever be a lead repenter is if you're the person preaching the gospel to yourself. If you're the one radically enjoying Jesus. See how that works?

We wanna create a culture for this at CTK. It starts with you being more vulnerable—appropriately in relationships. Don't overshare. Don't trauma dump, but be appropriately vulnerable. And then become a lead repenter, where you're learning to lead with what God is doing in your life, changing and confronting you, and that's being empowered by being a lead believer.

So what new habits will you foster? You have thirty seconds to discuss this. Yes, Ruth?

Be honest as I can with God about what I'm really thinking, feeling.

Yes. Being honest as much as you can with all the thinking, feeling, believing with God. Good. Keep going.

Welcome someone drilling me on how I sin.

Yes. That is a new habit to develop. Welcoming someone you trust, a friend to come in. Most of us, Lord willing, has at least one person we can do this with. If you don't, that can be almost the next thing you work on. It's like, who can I develop a friendship with? Would it be appropriate for me to invite them in to help you mature? Good. What else?

I'm making this very tactical. What else? When are you gonna put this in your calendar? What are you not gonna do so you can do this? Yes. Excellent contribution.

You know, we're gonna move to God and prayer and search your heart. So then it's like almost creating space for that reality. Keep going. What other new habits?

You should go through the whole process.

Yes. You just laid out a roadmap for what real faith fitness looks like. You do one of those well and a few of them kind of, but none of them the whole thing.

The whole process leads to something. In community. Like, are you gonna practice this or not? Are you gonna try this or not? You're gonna take different aspects of it and try working on it or not in community. So having someone else with you really helps.

I've been in different accountability groups or Bible studies or discipleship groups, whatever you call them. The beauty of being known in a group like that is sometimes someone's pretending to take ownership of something and then the rest of the room smiles like, "Yeah, that was funny. Let's try that again." There's no shaming going on. They understand what's going on. They're not berating the person, but I've been that person where someone's like, "Yeah, that was really eloquent, Ruth, but you didn't do any of those. Let's try this again." I'm like, okay. You know, I fell in love with that.

We have to do this together and figure this out together. I have a feeling there's some other really good people with their words that can analyze and verbalize things and actually not repent. I have a feeling there's other people in this room that can repent of low hanging fruit so they don't have to deal with the deeper stuff. You can try to fake this for a while.

I've been in small groups where everyone's repenting of stuff so they don't have to really repent of stuff. Do you see how that works? But you have to know each other well enough to kind of go, "Wait a minute. This is a misdirection. What's really going on?" But you don't feel like that's the Spanish Inquisition at that point. You're like, "Oh, okay. Let me go there."

So the habits we have to build is learning how to practice this in community, maybe one little step at a time. Oh, you can do this without a community group, although I think community groups are really important. Is there another human being you're doing this with? Does that make sense?

Now, this is not the last time you're gonna see this. I found in churches you need to see this a couple times and there'll be a much more extended version of this at some point where you in your groups can really tactically get into this. So think of this as exposure therapy—like an introduction to gospel repentance. We'll get to it.