Ideas about Repentance
(Study 5 of 5)
Today's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: Ideas about Repentance - Part
5 ------------------------- Date: 11/05/1999
Keywords: "repentance" "sinner"
Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the
face of sexual temptation.
This is part five in a five part study.
Click the number to see other studies in this series: ---1---2---3---4---.
Passage: Luke
15:25-32*
25. "Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came
near the house, he heard music and dancing.
26. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going
on.
27. 'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has killed
the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'
28. "The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So
his father went out and pleaded with him.
29. But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been
slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat
so I could celebrate with my friends.
30. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with
prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'
31. "'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and
everything I have is yours.
32. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of
yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'"
Question
What was the biggest objection raised by the Prodigal Son's brother?
Practical help
Perhaps Scripture's best-known party-pooper, the stay-at-home son
objected not only to celebrating his brother's return, but to forgiving him for leaving in
the first place. The rescue-repent-rejoice pattern illustrated elsewhere in Luke chapter
15 would have irked him no end (click here for the previous study
in this series).
Similar people would protest instant parties for penitent porn
strugglers. "Let the sinners prove their repentance with a season of self-control,
then celebrate," etc.
Ironically, such people include many strugglers themselves,
believing they are ineligible to rejoice while still repenting. This postponement of joy
is not God's way to restoration.
From the three stories in Luke chapter 15, God's way is not by
shortening grief but by hastening joy. Grief and joy are not mutually exclusive.
The Prodigal's brother, however, wanted none of this mix, preferring
only the grief and none of the joy.
If you're a smut struggler who wants to repent, take heart. As you
turn from porn, you can embrace two things: remorse over the sin that bound you and joy
over the fact that God has set you free.
Don't let the Prodigal's brother talk you into one but out of the
other.
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*Scriptures are from The Holy Bible: New International Version © Copyright 1973,
1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.