Luke 3:1-18 is one account of the ministry of John the Baptist.  John came in the desert preaching for people to repent of their sins and turn to God.

 What does it mean to repent?  It simply means to “change one’s mind”.  If you have been thinking one way, it’s time to think in another way.  For example if you think “thoughts of fear or worry all the time”, you need to repent and change your mind and think thoughts that line up with the truth—God’s truth.  When Jesus says, we have nothing to fear or worry about, he means it [Mat. 6:25-34].  This is truth!   You’ll find this one truth in particular all throughout the Bible—God doesn’t want us to be afraid.  Yet why do so many people struggle with fear, anxiety and worry?  We haven’t trained our minds, we haven’t repented of thinking the thoughts that are so familiar to us, but so far away from the truth.

Repenting also involves changing our actions.  If you read this account of John’s ministry, you’ll see that after the people listened to his message one of the first things they asked him was, “What should we do then?” [vs. 10]  John told them how to change their actions, so that they would “produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”  What does that mean?  It simply means that people’s lives would show they have had a change of mind.  John wasn’t trying to put a whole lot of rules and regulations on the people, he was simply trying to give them a clear example of what it means to repent by changing the way they did things.

Freedom comes as our minds are renewed.  When we have renewed minds, our actions begin to change and as this takes place in our lives, we walk in great freedom, in the power of the Spirit.  Galatians 5 talks about the freedom we have in Christ, but this freedom is not to be abused, instead we are to use it to serve one another in love.

The freedom that you find in Christ directly impacts others in your life and in the world around you.

I want to encourage you to pursue repentance.  It is not a bad thing.  Our God is not a fault finding God.  Just as with John’s message, he encourages us to change our minds and change our actions.  The ones that John referred to as a ‘brood of vipers’ were the people who did not think they had anything to repent for.  In truth, we all have things to repent for, to change our minds about, and need to have God change our minds about. 

Repentance is not a bad thing.  If God or someone says to you, you need to repent, seriously, this is not a bad thing.  This should never be done in an attitude of condemnation, but we should look at this as an opportunity for change and freedom!  Let’s all look at repentance in a ‘new light, the light of God’s truth’—It is a good thing!