Repentance & Self-Examination
A brief weekly spiritual check-up keeps small things from quietly becoming large ones.
To repent simply means to turn: to be honest with God about where you’ve gone wrong, and to come back to Him. It isn’t a one-time event. It’s something every believer does again and again, for life.
Once a week, spend a few minutes in honest review: Where have I fallen short? What attitudes or actions need to be surrendered?
This is not about shame. The Holy Spirit convicts with specificity and leads toward freedom. Condemnation is vague and paralysing — that is not the same thing.
Self-examination leads naturally to repentance, which keeps the channel open.
Two kinds of sorrow
When we see our sin, we feel sorrow. But there are two kinds of sorrow, and they lead to very different places.
One kind is really about us. It says, “I can’t believe I did that,” as if we were too good for it. It can look like humility, but underneath it is pride. It makes us want to hide, the way Adam and Eve hid from God in the garden. And what we hide, we tend to repeat.
The other kind is about God. It says, “You love me so much, and I keep turning away.” That sorrow doesn’t hide. It tells God the truth, and it tells someone you trust, like a mature believer or a pastor. What is brought into the light can be healed.
God isn’t shocked by your sin, and you don’t need to be either. Real change starts on the inside, when your heart turns back to God, and the outside follows. The effort to turn is yours. The power to change is His. When the old pull comes back, turn again, with the simple prayer Jesus praised in one of His stories: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13)
“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”
— 2 Corinthians 7:10 (ESV)
A few questions for an honest check-in
Some find it helpful to take a few of these into a quiet moment, once a week or once a month:
- Where is most of my time, money and attention going — and what does that say about what sits at the centre of my life?
- Which parts of my life are being driven by fear, regret or a craving rather than by love — and what would it look like to bring one of them back to Him?
- What would following Jesus well look like for me — with my work, my family and my season of life?
- How could I serve someone this week with what I actually have?
- What good fruit am I seeing — and is there anything to refine?
This isn’t meant to make you doubt. You may honestly find you’re doing well — good. There is always room to grow, and growth is the point, not guilt.
It also helps to remember this: the desire you feed is the one that grows. Feed your love for God and for people, and the old cravings slowly lose their grip.
Recommended
Recommended channels, ministries and resources for repentance and self-examination will appear here as we find them.
We’re always looking for more ways to help people practise this discipline well. If you know a ministry doing good work in this space, let us know.