Over the Cliff - Why the Enemy Won't Repent

Recently I began to wonder why the enemy, knowing all they know about God, will not turn and ask to be forgiven. They know the end of the story, they know there is no hope for them, yet they continue on against God. It looks as if Judas tried to say he was sorry but it was not really heartfelt apparently. Was his heart too hard by that point? We know he did not make it through the narrow gate. In Psalm 52 David shows honest admitting of a horrible sin, of killing a good man to try and hide his adultery. So we see one person who committed murder repent, and another who just betrayed another man who could not. This should cause us to become gripped with a fear to do whatever it takes to soften our hearts before God, as Hebrews says, “as long as it is called today”, this means do it now, right now, today.

It is my personal belief is that there is a point that both people and spiritual beings get to in their hardness of heart and mind that they cannot go back. They cannot admit they are wrong. We have all had an argument with someone where we thought we were absolutely right. We would come to find out that we were wrong, but that feeling of admitting we are wrong was so strong, we had worked ourselves up so much that it took too much humiliation to say, “I am sorry, I was actually wrong about that and I really feel bad now about it”. The entire bible warns us, and very much so in the book of Hebrews, against hardening our hearts and the danger that lies in doing so. I know there were so many times in my life where I just could not and would not admit I am wrong. I believe that there is a point where we cut ourselves off from the possibility of ever being able to admit we are wrong and therefore sealing our fate before God, we will not enter the kingdom. We all have read about people and may even have known people who never seem to be able to admit they are wrong or say they are sorry. This should scare us to death with fear and cause us to rush to say we are sorry to everyone. Ebenezer Scrooge was scared enough come Christmas morning to turn into someone who was not going to stay hard in his heart. Often we hear people talking about whether you can lose your salvation or not. That is something I refuse to think about as it does not help your life with either conclusion you come to. But here we have evidence of people, like Judas, and others in the bible, where you can certainly harden your heart with pride and stubborn refusal to admit we are wrong. The end result is not going to heaven.

So why does this happen, how do we get to where we can’t admit we are wrong? I believe it is a combination of several things. One of them is the extreme discomfort, both mentally and even a little physically, that comes when you admit you are wrong. Like swallowing vinegar, it is a hard feeling for a few minutes. But also like swallowing vinegar, swallowing our pride is very uncomfortable for a few moments, but then we have the experience of growth. We mature. Children cannot admit they are wrong. Adults can. If we cannot, even at an adult age, it means we are still emotionally acting like a child in our life. I also think another reason we cannot admit we are wrong is because we fear of looking stupid in that moment. This shows that we have not developed adult character. The goal for us if that is who we are is to look cool at all times. It is not to be admired for having a strong character. Immature people don’t grasp the concept of character. If you want to grow, you have to go through the process of experiencing and living through the process of doing what adults do.

So what can we do “as long as it is called today” to soften our hearts if we think we may be someone who has become someone who can’t admit you are wrong? The first thing is to pray right now to Jesus and tell him specifically that you want to renounce everything in your heart that causes you to be stubborn and angry. Pray for the Holy Spirit to come right now to remove all of the hardness in your heart and soul and mind and body that is keeping you from being free to be wrong. This will change your life. But you must mean it, you have to feel that “want to” feeling, it cannot be like Judas. We can pray to Jesus that we feel so hard that we don’t want to, but we can say, “Lord, I can’t feel anything in my heart but I know I am wrong inside and I do want you to give me a heart that is soft, I do want to remove all of this pride from my life. Please help me to have that desire to rid my life of this.’ I can tell you from my experience, if you pray this prayer, Jesus will, through the Holy Spirit, begin to set you free. You will get up from this prayer and you will feel a sense of peace and a sense of tenderness starting to happen in the moments after this prayer.

You can then begin to think for a moment of someone that you have been wrong an did not want to say you were sorry to. Look for something that was not a very big argument. You may want to decide in your heart, I don’t want to go over the edge, I don’t want to lose all hope of heaven. Perhaps decide to call or talk to that one person and tell them you want to say you are sorry and that you were wrong. That is all you have to say. Let it be uncomfortable. You will not die, you will not suffer any physical pain at all. Think that you will die if you don’t find a way to say you are sorry. Call that person right now, don’t make excuses. You can say something like, “I am calling because I struggle with admitting I am wrong and I don’t want to be like this anymore. Bob, I was wrong when I said or did this and I want to tell you that I am sorry.” Those two sentences will change your life. Those two sentences will be the day that you begin to feel the power of having a strong character. Those two sentences will please God and He will bless you for that.

January 2025 Conversion

Everyone wants to hear something. Something that brings peace to our minds. At every moment in a person’s life, they want and need to hear something. something good about themselves. something that reassures or brings relief. That draws you near to solving a problem. That it’s going to be okay. that makes us relax and brings a state of calm. That is going to heal some kind of pain. No matter how much of this we hear, we continue to want to hear more.

Sometimes what we need to hear is not what we want to hear, but it is what we should hear. In the first few days of January 2025 I didn’t want to live. I did not want to go on any longer. What I wanted to hear was something good, but there was nothing. On the night January 2nd in a very dark room in front of my wood stove, I began to pray. My prayer was like it always had been for years. But this time two things made the prayer become different, more real. The first was that I had no more interest in going forward in life, so this was not a prayer about my future, it was in present tense, in this moment in time. The second was that I realized I had nothing to lose. At that moment, in my mind and heart, I had nothing I wanted to live for so there was not the need to ask for anything beyond that moment. When you don’t think you are going to be living beyond the next day or two, you don’t focus on beyond that.

Although I had been a believer in Jesus for 30 years, I had no peace in my life or my heart for over 20 years. I felt that everyone else had some kind of victory, some kind of testimony, some kind of breakthrough story experience, and I never did. No sermon or book or video every put a dent into my hard heart for 20 years. I had prayed many times for God to not let me die this way, but I really thought I was going to. My life for many years had been increasing more filled with dread and fear of everything. All I have known for about 15 years was anxiety every moment of my life.

My prayer started out as a discussion with God about my situation and feelings in life up to that moment. But that feeling that I had nothing to lose made me say things that I normally would not say to God. I had grumbled before to God about how life doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t seem fair. I knew theologically that this particular Job style attitude was deeply wrong and that God is never not fair. Where God entered into the midst of this evening was where I could feel something inside of me changing. I could feel the sense of my hiding this resentment about my life starting to come out. But as it came out of my mouth in words and feelings, I also started to speak directly to God about my knowing that I am wrong in my heart about how I view Him and life. It was in those moments that I could feel the room changing, even though it was still the same. I could sense that I was not alone but that God was moving me to turn. To turn from this anger, towards confession that even thought I felt right, I knew from Job that I was dead wrong. As I started to say, “Please forgive me for this horrible feeling in my heart, please change it”, I felt something leaving me. The more I begged to please see life the way I should and for Him to forgive me for having such a disrespectful mind frame towards Him, the more I felt a sense of the feeling that something inside me was leaving me. It was at this moment that I noticed that I had a thought in my head much different than the words and topic of what I was saying out loud to God at that moment. Much like hearing a strange noise off in the distance, I stopped and I said to God, “what was that thought?”. It was the most horrible thought, but it was something critical of someone or something. It was something negative in nature. As I asked the Lord to show me where this thought was coming from, I started to say, “I renounce this thought from where ever it is in my mind, body and soul and I cast it out of me in the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit”. That was the moment that my life changed.

Much like the first time a person has too much alcohol, or someone experiences sex for the first time, for the first time in my life I experienced the sense of being set free. It was not dramatic, but it was real. There was nothing happening but a sense of peace coming through my heart and mind and body. I began to ask God to show me everything in my life that was inside of me and where it is coming from so I could pray and renounce and ask to cast it out of me by the power of the Holy Spirit. I asked God to reveal to me anything and everything that was in my heart to come out of me for the rest of my life. To continually show me. I started to renounce and pray against and cast out any kind of malice, greed, hatred, ect. This went on for about 45 minutes or so. It was the most freeing feeling that I had ever had in my life. This was the beginning of change for me, a change that I never thought would come. god heard my prayer, He would make sure that I did not die with all of my bitterness and anger.