The Discipline of Repentance
One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
Luke 23:39-42 (NIV)

There is a spiritual discipline that is seldom mentioned, let alone preached and practiced. This discipline is not embraced by most Christians. They try to keep it distant and ignore it. They don’t want to bring it up in conversation. It’s not something many Christians are excessively proud of when compared to the other spiritual disciplines. They love talking about prayer and how the Lord has spoken to them and what the Holy Spirit has revealed. But this discipline stays at a conversational distance.

I am talking about the discipline of repentance.

Repentance is what we see from the criminal on the cross. He thinks differently after being changed by Jesus’s presence, His innocence, and His holiness. The criminal has a change of mind about his own life while hanging next to the sinless Christ. He becomes sorry for what he has done and how he has lived, and he wants to head his life in an opposite direction. He wants to change. He is repenting.

He went from mocking the Lord to being awakened to Jesus’s lordship. He becomes acutely aware of the deep trenches that his life has fallen into, and in the precious little time he has remaining, he rebukes the other mocking criminal and he asks Jesus to remember him when He comes into His kingdom.

There’s nothing more powerful to me in all the Scriptures than to hear Jesus when he says these words: “Today, you’re going to be with me in paradise.”

If repentance is confession of sin to God and changing mind and heart…

If repentance is the spiritual conviction to live one’s life differently from the way one has been living it…

If repentance is the shift from living outside God’s will to living in God’s will…

…then the question we should be asking ourselves is:

When is the last time you’ve stepped into that refreshing?

When is the last time you took advantage of the access to that blessing?

When is the last time you have positioned yourself to receive that liberating gift?

When is the last time you repented?