I couldn't find the exact quote, but it goes something like this:
"Repentance is agreeing with God who you are, who He is, what you've done, and what needs to change. Repentance isn't changing; it is God's methodology for changing us."
I had my doubts about this definition when I first heard it (and I still do), but time and experience have given me a different perspective on it, that this is not just a passive "I'll keep doing what I'm doing and wait for God to fix it" definition of repentance.
I kind of like that definition!
Yeah, I agree, it’s not passive. It’s a lot of struggle to leave the way you have always thought and begin to agree with God. The world, your own flesh and the devil work in concert to prevent losing you. So the renewing of your mind is struggle, it is not passive, it’s actually a bit violent of a struggle with your enemies (world, flesh, devil.) you are trying to escape them, they’re trying to hold you.
(But I CANT collect only enough for the day Lord! That’s not how the world works and I will be living under a bridge eating cat food in my old age if I don’t gather and amass two million dollars for retirement!) It’s Israel in the desert with the manna. It’s unbelief. It’s the opposite of daily trust. I won’t go on and on with more examples. It’s usually the point of temporal provision and worry over it that we get stuck, just like them in the desert winding up with a jar full of worms.
But after you are in agreement with God, you will most likely struggle to try to change your heart, since you now agree with God, it’s got to change. and that’s the part you DO have to become passive in, at least eventually. You can strive to keep your murder in your heart where no man sees it and you can make your outside look pleasant to them, but you cannot change your heart. And parents and society have already taught us we should hide and keep these angers and resentments (these murders as your renewed mind sees it) at others inside, for the good of self and society. You can’t even really comprehend what the heck it MEANS to pick up your cross and follow. But you most likely will struggle to try to do this all. But this is the part God has to do. If you don’t believe me about that, examine yourself, shadow yourself, and take note of the quick flare of anger or resentment inside yourself before you catch it and keep it inside. Or if you can’t examine yourself like you are an odd bug to look at and watch, you can look and see when it happens to others. If you are looking directly at their face the exact moment it happens, you literally SEE that split second of anger and offendedness and quick burst of reddening of face from the rush of blood as the heart begins to beat faster, the slight tightening of the jaw, before they catch it. It’s only for a second, but it’s quite ugly if you catch it before it is pulled back in. The murder has already occurred, it has just then been quickly hidden from others, like a shark fin suddenly breaking up out of the water and sinking back into it just as suddenly. And what good is the self control of quickly hiding the murder that has just occurred? God certainly saw it. And He sees it when you leave and then later pull it back up to fume and resent over it, murdering a second time, like a serial killer who has saved some token so he can pull it back out later to relive the murder.
That’s what you can’t stop or change. That’s what you may try and try to stop and to fix that you can’t. Because it is IN you. So you eventually have to give up and say, it’s useless, I cannot kill my own self, you will have to do it Lord or it won’t be done. I need you to kill this enemy of mine and Yours. Please do it, I cannot find rest from this enemy that keeps rising up to torment me. That is the point where you willingly pick up your cross and are willing to go to your death. It’s the point where you have truly seen yourself and want to die for Him to be your life.
So that is why I say the renewing of your mind into agreement with God still does NOT give you the power to DO what you now agree with.
And sin is very deceitful. It works against the renewing of your mind to an outer keeping and the outside of the cup. Sin argues with God and deceives us to our death. It says, no, that’s nonsense that anger in your heart is murder. Murder is outward only and you have never killed anyone so you have at least kept that law all your life. It is still murder in Gods eyes, whether it actually proceeds to the outside with a gun or not.