"CALL TO REPENTANCE" - Nik Boaglio

New Hope City Church... SOAPING God's Word

SOAPING with Nik Boaglio – June 30, 2013

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Scripture – Joel 2:12-13 – “Call to Repentance”

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That is why the Lord says, “Turn to Me now, while there is still time!  Give me your hearts.  Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning.  Don’t tear your clothes in your grief; instead tear your hearts.  Retur n to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful.  He is not easily angered.  He is filled with kindness and is eager NOT to punish you.”

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Observation – One of our enemy’s greatest victories among the Christian community and among all lovers of Christ has been his ability to convince us of ‘his’ false narrative of who our Father is.  He so often gives us a vivid image of our Lord sitting on His great throne of judgment, eagerly anticipating the day of His wrath.  He sits slyly smirking, as He will judge us in any way that He wants, at any time He wants, and for any reason that He can think of!  “Lord I repent for myself and any other believer who has ever had this false imagery placed into their thoughts”…Nothing could be further from the truth!  MY all loving Father is in fact looking at me in the complete opposite way.  “If you refuse to discipline your children, it proves that you don’t love them; if you love your children, you will be prompt to discipline them.” (Proverbs 13:24)  My children often think that it brings me great amounts of pleasure to correct them, give them chores, or to punish them.   They cannot understand the minutest amount of wisdom that I might have in their guidance, teachings, and lessons they may need for their future.   Instead, I am viewed as mean, only to be mean.  What Kind of Father would that be?  When we mature, we can finally understand that the reason that we were given tasks, chores, and responsibilities was not so that we could fail, but so we could succeed!  The Lord is looking at us and taking our training wheels off, not that we might crash and skin our knees, but so that we might succeed and ride freely!  He is looking for any way possible NOT to punish us, but if we are a stubborn and selfish people…He will leave us wandering in the desert and bring us His justice.  

Application -   Joel shows us the contrast between the fear of the Lords judgment and the joy of God’s divine intervention.  Before, we see that there was fasting, plagues, weeping, mourning, and tearing of clothes.  After we truly come through repentance with broken and open hearts, there will be feasting, harvesting, and songs of praise.  The Lord spoke to Joel’s people, just as He speaks to us now,” I will restore to you the years the locus have eaten.  I’ll not only give you a fresh start, but will restore to you the years that were lost, the energy that was wasted.”  So when you are feeling burned out, depressed, disappointed, and utterly defeated…please remember this promise that He gave to you.  But, in order to be able to tap into this wealth of blessings, to be able to retrieve these lost or stole years, there must first come a true repentance of our hearts.  People used to tear their clothes as sign of deep sorrow or anguish, but the Lord is telling us to stop our old ways and to instead look at ourselves inwardly…at our own hearts!  We must break our hearts wide open before we come to the Father so that He may fill it and mend it completely.  We need to stop cringing at this word ‘repentance’ and look at it as a strictly spiritual, militant term for ‘about face.’  So if we are marching against the enemy and hear the Lord’s command ‘about face’ …we simply turn and start marching in the opposite direction!

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Prayer – Lord, I confess my sins unto You.  I will not run from them, they were not just an error on my part, they were not a laps in my judgment, nor were they anyone else’s fault.  I confess my sins to be mine alone…Please show me You’re mercy and love, even when my attitude is lacking.  I acknowledge these armies of locus that You sent in order to restore my life back to You.  I humbly come before You and am ready to march into whatever direction You command me to go…knowing that You march on ahead of me.

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-Nik