I Samuel 7:6
“They gathered to Mizpah, and drew water and poured it out before the LORD, and fasted on that day and said there, “We have sinned against the LORD.” And Samuel judged the sons of Israel at Mizpah.”
The people made a whole hearted return to the Lord. They repented. We all need to do this on occasion. This is so, because we are sinful and imperfect. We will make mistakes and willfully sin. Repentance is necessary at those times.
Mistakes happen. Theses are accidents in which we don’t purposefully do something wrong. We apologize to those offended and to God. We ask for grace for this not to happen again.
Willful sins are different. We intentionally disobeyed. This is where the people were in today’s verse. A deeper repentance is required. The idea is “This was wrong and I do not intend to do this again”.
I’ve heard it said repentance is like doing a 180. We need to avoid the things that tempted us to do wrong. This is a change in lifestyle. It might involve avoiding places, particular people and so on.
This is what makes repentance difficult; we might not want to make those changes. This is why most people don’t come to Christ; they don’t want to change their lives.
The Lord doesn’t give up. He works on us over time. This is what happened to the people in today’s verse. It took then 20 years to change their hearts.
There are two different types of repentance. One is returning after a lifestyle of sin. This is like the prodigal son. The other is the sin that we commit while following Christ. In John 13, Peter asks Jesus to cleanse all of him, but Jesus says in verse 13, “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean…” We will stumble and get out feet dirty as we walk in this world. We get up, repent and continue following the Lord.
Repentance is cathartic. It feels good to come clean and get clean. David said in Psalm 32:3, “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.” When we go to God and confess a weight is lifted.
Lord, thank You for repentance. Help us to go through this process whenever we fall.