The Medic Dad Chronicles

  One question I've wrestled with is this: Can Someone Think They've Repented… and Actually Not Have? I've wondered about this before. Can someone honestly believe they've repented when they really haven't? I think the answer is yes. Not because they're trying to fool anyone, but because it's easy to confuse guilt, fear, or emotion with genuine repentance. I know because I've done it myself. I've prayed because I was scared. I've promised God I'd never do something again, and I've felt terrible about things I've done. At the time, I thought that meant I'd repented. But I've learned that feeling bad about sin and actually repenting aren't necessarily the same thing. Paul explains it in 2 Corinthians 7:10 (NKJV):  "For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death." There's a difference between being sorry because you got caught or because...

Have you ever wondered... "If I really repented... why do I still struggle with sin?" I know I have. When I first began to understand what repentance actually meant, that question hit me pretty hard. If I've turned away from sin... why do I still keep falling into it? For a while, I wondered if something was wrong with me. Maybe you've wondered the same thing. Here's the good news. The struggle itself doesn't mean your repentance wasn't real. In fact, the struggle may be evidence that God is doing something He wasn't doing before. Before I trusted Christ, I sinned because that's simply how I lived. Sure, I felt guilty sometimes, but I wasn't really fighting it. Now I still fail. I still make mistakes. I still have days when I have to ask God to forgive me. The difference is... Now I hate my sin. I don't want it. I don't make excuses for it. I want to become more like Christ. That battle wasn't there before. The Bible says, "For...

I thought repentance meant begging God for forgiveness. I was wrong. One word I remember hearing growing up in church was "repent." If I'm being honest, I never really understood what it meant. I thought repentance was something you did after committing a really bad sin. I thought it meant begging God to forgive me for what I had done and hoping He would. It sounded like such a serious word that I figured it had to mean feeling terrible about my mistakes. Maybe you've thought the same thing. But that's not actually what the Bible teaches. A quick side note. The New Testament wasn't originally written in English. It was written in Greek nearly 2,000 years ago, and our English Bibles are faithful translations of those original writings. Every now and then it's helpful to look at the original Greek because it gives us a clearer picture of what a word meant to the people who first read it. The Greek word translated "repent" is metanoia (met-uh-NOY-u...

By the time I was thirteen or fourteen, life had changed quite a bit. I had a new friend in the neighborhood, and like a lot of teenagers, I wanted to fit in. Unfortunately, he had a habit of stealing from stores, and before long, I started following his lead. Looking back, I wish I could tell you I knew better and walked away. I didn't.  It started small. A pack of batteries here. A cassette tape there. At the time, I convinced myself it wasn't a big deal. Then one Saturday, our church youth group took a trip that included a stop at a large store before spending the day at a water park. While everyone else was shopping, I slipped a few packs of gum into my pocket. I thought I had gotten away with it. I hadn't. As I walked toward the exit, a man stopped me. He identified himself as store security and asked me to come with him. My stomach dropped. They called my youth leader to the front of the store. I'll never forget the look on his face. He wasn't yelling. He wasn...

A few years later, my family moved to Colorado. It was a whole new place, a whole new church, and a whole new group of friends. Looking back, I was pretty fortunate. Everywhere we moved, we always seemed to find a church family that welcomed us. One of my favorite memories from Colorado was being part of the children's chorus. One summer, we traveled around the state, singing at different churches. We'd pile into church vans, spend the day together, sing during the services, and either stay with church families or sleep at the church before heading to the next stop. To me, it was one big adventure. Of course, when you put a bunch of kids together in a church van for hours at a time, something funny is bound to happen. One afternoon we were driving down the road when I noticed someone riding a bicycle ahead of us. From where I was sitting, I thought it was a woman. Without thinking, and with all the confidence a young teenager could have, I looked out the window and proudly anno...

When I was around seven or eight years old, we moved and started attending a different church. It was a little more urban and had one thing my first church didn't... A huge field beside it. To the adults, it was probably just an empty lot. To us kids, it was our playground. Before church, after church, and sometimes whenever the adults were busy talking, we'd be out there running, playing tag, throwing footballs, or just finding ways to entertain ourselves. We didn't have phones, video games, or much of anything else. Give us a big field and a few friends, and we'd stay busy for hours. One spring, the field was covered in clover. Now, if you've ever seen a clover field, you know what comes with it... Bees. For some reason that only made sense to little boys, we decided it would be fun to squish them by clapping our hands together. The trick was not to get stung while smashing the bee. In hindsight, we shouldn't have been doing it, but, hey, we were kids.  Lookin...