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Forgotten Factors …. An Aid To Deeper Repentance by Roy Hession.

Forgotten Factors …. An Aid To Deeper Repentance            by Roy Hession.                                           Kevin Jesmer NIU UBF     11/3/10

      This book is a short book about repentance. We tend to think of repentance as just some superficial act without any thought. We think I repent of swearing and I repent of lustful thinking. But repentance is much deeper than that. There are many factors about repentance which are often missed when people try to get right before God. They try to repent but still they find themselves in the same predicament.  When we get down to the core issues and the fundamental nature of sin and solve those issues in God, then we can be set free from the power of sin and taste freedom in Christ.

     This book was given to me by a Canadian shepherd in 1987. He wrote in the front cover, “Dear Shepherd Kevin. I thank and praise God who has kept you strong in his grace and his love. I thank God who has been helping you to grow into a strong man of God. I believe God will surely make your desires pure and cleanse you. I love you in Christ. Your servant…Shepherd Daniel (Massey).” I thank God for Daniel’s love and concern for my life. He was showing me that in repentance and faith is my salvation.

     Shp Teddy read this book in preparation for the Men’s Purity Workshop. He had read it decades earlier  and new that it would contain material that would surely bless the conference.

    This Author covers the forgotten factors in adultery, fornication, homosexuality, dishonoring one’s own body. The author tries to get down to the core issues. For example, adultery is not just a sin of the lust. But it is also the sin of coveting another’s wife. He uses the example of David and Bathsheba. Nathan the prophet rebuked David, not for lustful desires, but for taking the wife of Uriah. When we commit adultery we are actually coveting one who belongs to another and it is theft. Fornication is also more than lust. It is also influencing another on a slippery slope towards a broken relationship with God. We may think that it is innocent and that no body gets hurt from it, but actually God’s heart is hurt and we are stealing someone else’s heart away from God and building a wall between others and their Savior, Jesus Christ. I am not going to say anything about homosexuality. About dishonoring your own body. Such things are not just because of uncontrollable urges. They are also about sins against the temple of God. Our bodies are the temples of the Lord. They must be a place where God can reside. They must be holy for the holy God to live there.

     In all of these sins, we tend to forget about God. We think about yourselves. But there is a great wrong done to God. The author again refers to David’s sin against Bathsheba. Nathan rebuked David and told him that he has despised the word of the Lord. He also stated that what David did, displeased the Lord.  Do we ever think that the sins we allow in the body hurt the very heart of God? God has a great hope for each one of us. Her wants for us, immeasurably more than we can ever imagine. He wants us to be heavenly princes and princesses. But we can not attain to God’s hope for us if we are indulging in the lusts of the flesh.

    The Author leads us to the cross of Jesus. He reminds us God’s forgiveness when we come to Jesus in repentance and in faith. He tells us of the strength we will receive to live a new life in Christ. But he also states that, just as we have received forgiveness, we need to forgive. We need to forgive ourselves. And we need to forgive those who have sinned against us in one way or another. When we repent and receive God’s forgiveness God works to give us a new life. The author used David’s relationship with his Son Absalom and how David forgave him and how David accepted everyting according to the sovereignty of God.    He includes a poem,

“Something beautiful, something good; All mu confusion He understood; All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife, But he made something beautiful of my life.”

    The author tells us what true repentance is. It is the turning away from sin. It involves confession, that is agreeing with the word of God and agreeing with God concerning our fallen state. When we repent and accept God’s forgiveness and his grace, then sin has no more dominion over us. We do not have to be victims of our sins of the flesh. We don’t have to live in self  condemnation and in broken relationships. Couples do not have to go to divorce court. There can be victory in Jesus when we repent of the right things before God and live in the love and grace of God.

I would like to end my book report in a poem….

“God made me for Himself to serve him here

With love’s pure service and with filial fear

To show His praise, for him to labor now;

Then see his glory where the angels bow.

All needful grace was mine through his dear Son,

Whose life and death my full salvation won;

The grace that would have strengthened men and taught;

Grace that would crown when my work was wrought.

And I poor sinner, cast it all away;

Lived for the toil or pleasure of each day;

As if no Christ had shed his precious blood,

As if I owed no homage to my God

O holy Spirit, with they fire divine,

Melt into tears this thankless heart of mine;

Teach me to love what once I seemed to hate

And live to God before it is too late.”    Sir H. W. Baker




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