Repent! The Rally Cry of a Cowboy in the “Autumn” of His Life

Church services were different today.  I’m not sure if it was the crashing of our projector computer, or the fact that both our pastor and associate pastor were away visiting family for the holidays, or even the fact that we had two laymen preaching today’s messages, but things were…different, and that was a good thing.  Tonight’s message focused on the simple message of a cowboy who admittedly is in the “autumn” of his life.  He knows he doesn’t have much longer to go before meeting the Lord, and that’s alright by him.  The fact of the matter is, Wes Ramsey has been working on sanctification for most of his life, it’s a slow process he says, and that was refreshing to hear, since I’m just now seeing the importance of being clean before God ON A DAILY BASIS.  It made me happy that just because I don’t see as much progress as I’d like to see in my spiritual life, Wes is still working on his too.  An interesting thing he said tonight, and I’ve heard him say it before…that this nation needs to “return to Holiness.”  And in order to do that, we must do what Christ preached when he started his ministry, and John the Baptist preached as the forerunner to Christ, and prophets of old preached to their nation when it had fallen to adultery and idolatry.  We must repent!  Repent from what?  Sin obviously…duh.  But what kind of sin?  I think I can safely say, you name it, we probably need to repent of it. “That’s judgemental” you say?  Maybe…maybe not.  Consider for a moment that I’m not being judgemental, that there really is something in YOUR life that is not pleasing to God, don’t worry about MY life, and whether or not I’m judging.  Why don’t you (and I say this in love to ANYONE reading) sit down, SHUT UP, and consider that there may be sin in your life that you aren’t aware of.  I bet it’s in an area of your life you would never have imagined.  The Pharisees and Saducees of Jesus’ day weren’t ugly demon folks, they were “good” people who believed they were in the right most of the time because they followed God’s law and the traditions they made to help God’s law.  Sound familiar?  Don’t we do the same thing day after day?  Thinking we’re right because we live by the Bible and man’s traditions of church?  Sure it started out as sincerity to God, but it has turned into hypocricy and idol worship.  Repent! For once, repent of being a “Christian” and start being a person who just loves God and wants to follow HARD after Christ.  Maybe we start seeing ourselves as “lost” instead of just assumming we’re part of the fold.  Repent of being just another drone.