Feeling bad is not enough

Time to fire up the blog again, I have found a book that I think is very good, a book that besides the Bible I can use as a daily devotional. The book is Note to Self by Joe Thorn, so each day I will share the scripture passage a expert from the book and a few of my own thoughts.

Scripture passage Psalm 100: 4-5

⁵ Finally, I confessed all my sins to you
and stopped trying to hide my guilt.
I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.”
And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.

Section from the book

As you consider your sins and feel their weight, you decide to embrace the guilt and even heap it on. Then, only after you have felt sufficiently bad about all that you have been and done do you begin to feel better about it all. It’s as if amassing feelings of guilt becomes a perverted kind of penance in which you pay for your transgression by making yourself feel bad—as if your guilt is a means of getting clean

Simple thoughts

Many think that feeling bad about something they did wrong is good. While you should feel bad for the wrong you’ve done sometimes feeling bad is not enough. Often people get feeling bad and repentance confused. They think that if they feel bad enough about what they did, that will make it better. Feeling bad for what you did is like trying to take a bath in mud. You may get wet but you won’t get clean. The only way to get clean is to trust in Jesus and repent of your sins. Repentance is not feeling bad, it is truly hating what you’ve done and turning around and walking away from it and back towards Jesus. So don’t just feel bad about the sins you commit, repent of them, hate them, and turn back to Jesus then experience what it feels like to be clean.   Kind of reminds me of 2 Peter 2:22
They prove the truth of this proverb: “A dog returns to its vomit.” And another says, “A washed pig returns to the mud.”