Zac Monte - Repentance

Sunday, April 26, 2026 - Zac shares what God has been putting on his heart about living in a spirit of repentance. From personal stories, to scriptures about David, Jonah, and the Prodigal son.... He cautions us against judgment of others, assuming "rightness", and emphasizes that repentance is a way of BEING.

Matthew 3:8  "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance." 

Matthew 4:17. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We just say yes to you, God. We say yes to all that you have for us today. Would you continue to stir us up? Stir us up, God. Stir us up. Let the life of your presence stir us up and flow like a river in and through us, through this city. And may this be a monumental moment on the earth that someday in heaven will look back and say, remember that day? This day. Remember this day. Remember what Zach shared. Remember my encounter with God. Remember Pastor Arcee saying that? I'm serious. So now with every eye open and every head not bowed, thank you, God, for this family. Because when I see them, I see you. And thank you for helping us to see your kingdom come to earth as it is in heaven through my brothers and sisters. Jesus said the kingdom is within you. So we're gonna let it out. Right? In Jesus' name, everyone said. Amen. Amen. Amen. So without further ado, yeah, would you welcome my son who I love very much? Let's give him a big hand. Come on.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Good morning, good morning, everybody. Well, RC asked me probably, I don't know, two months ago. I had spoken here once before. It was nerve-wracking. I felt anxious, intimidated, all that stuff. And he asked me again and he goes, Hey, do you want to do it a second time? And I was like, Not really. No. But I'm like, the most uncomfortable things of my life are usually the things that I need to lean into and go toward. And I said, Yep, I'm gonna say yes, and the Lord's gonna say whatever He wants to say at this point. So I'm talking about the very light topic this morning of repentance. Because that is what's been on my heart for quite some time. Um I want to start by saying the baseline definition of what I found when you look up definition on the internet goes as this repentance is a sincere turning away from sin and a turning toward God. It involves a change of heart and mind, recognizing wrongdoing, feeling genuine remorse, and making a commitment to change behavior. Pretty accurate, right? One of the things I really want to touch on today is not just being repentant, but living in a spirit of repentance. It's an ongoing thing. It never ends. It's a journey. All of us are on. I myself am very much on. And a spirit of repentance is defined as this: it is an inner posture or attitude where the heart is deeply open to God, marked by humility, self-examination, and a genuine longing to be restored. It is not just feeling sorry for wrongdoing, it's a continual openness to transformation, a softening of the will, and a readiness to return to love and truth in every step. And I read that and I went, wow, yeah. Like that is the continuation. That is the heart of God towards all of us at all times. So this morning, in the spirit of repentance, I want to talk about two particular stories to bring the morning forward. Two personal stories of mine. One uh was when back in 2016, uh we were, I was in a band called Minor, it was a worship team that basically spawned out of our home church back in Gilroy, California. We went up there, we spent three and a half months. This is before my beautiful wife Rachel, who's carrying our child right now, whoop-whoop. Um I had a crush on one of the rec team leaders. Her name was Sarah. This will tell you a lot about me at this time. So halfway through summer, well, something you also I don't know, I had never at that point been in any sort of real romantic relationship in my life. Had no context, no understanding. Ladies are gonna love this. Halfway through the summer, I sit down with her, it's like midday, and I'm basically what what is a there's a cliche term they use. It is to how d DT define the relationship, DTR. They had a bridge at Hume. So that's what we did. And literally, the only thing I told her was all the things she needed to change. Right? That was our first real conversation, and that is how I approached it, okay? Wow. I was incredibly ignorant. Here's the reality behind that. Later that summer afterwards, so after I did that, she basically immediately stopped talking to me at all. She avoided me completely. She was like, who does this guy think he is? Ridiculous. Um at the end of that summer, I sincerely apologized. I had literally no idea what I was doing or what I was saying. But here's the reality: I had no context, I was not aware. I was well-intentioned. I wanted to move towards something, but I had no idea how to. So I tried. And guess what? I ended up learning because of this. And then some years later, when we all went to Hume with the kids a couple years back, Rachel met Sarah, and Sarah's married now, she's got a couple kids, and we told her the story again. And she absolutely remembers every moment of this. It was so awkward. And she's like, I can't believe you did that, dude. I was it was terrible. But I was well-intentioned. I didn't know what I was doing or causing harm or hurt. I had no idea, right? Uh having had the Holy Spirit in my community bring awareness to this area was me coming to the understanding that I needed to figure out how to act rightly in this particular example. And I had to take ownership outwardly. It would be different than just secluding myself and saying nothing to her because, well, guess what? I did nothing wrong. I was well-intentioned, I was all of that. So that's my Sarah story. And that, yeah, please take that one home and laugh at it. That's a good one. And then another thing, and I'm not going to go into the full, the full story of this, but I believe I've expressed and explained to you all that in 2017 my dad passed away. One of the things that happened during that time is, and mom, I know you're here. This is not to be offensive whatsoever, because I love you with my whole heart, genuinely, and I'm so glad you're here. Um, I grew up in a home that was pretty emotionally stunted, and I was emotionally stunted. Uh, didn't know how what tools to use for certain things. Fear, you talk about grief, that is an incredibly difficult thing to process. And one of the ways that I initially stepped into grief, because again, had no idea, had no tools, had no real awareness of what that was like. And I didn't, especially at that time, allow God to show me, hey, I'm walking through this with you. My first initial reaction to things and knowing this is just about myself, is to avoid, to ignore, to basically, everything's fine, nothing's wrong, I'm just gonna go on as normal. Well, what ended up happening after that, because I had no tools to process my grief, I just continuously avoided and ignored. I numbed and I secluded myself. I made stupid choices during that time. I didn't have connections with my close personal mentors and brothers and friends that put me in a path to understanding, man, when you're going through a really hard time, that's why the Bible talks about grieve with those who grieve. It's rough. And he will sit with you in that. And I chose, me, chose not to, until much later in life, which thank God he's taken me out of so much of that, and he's so good. But ultimately, myself, I've had to take time in my life to repent about things that I myself have done to myself, and that's not an easy thing. And I want to make pretty clear these two things. That first story was an outward repentance that was done to another person that I needed to repent for, ask forgiveness for. This particular situation was for inward repentance. I had made my own choices. I had chosen in this thing that had happened to me to seclude myself. And it took me a long time to really forgive myself to get out of this pit that I dug myself into. What depression felt like, I understood after that experience. So I have so much empathy for people who are going through grief here. I see you. It's not an easy thing, but I promise you the Lord will walk with you in it. He's faithful. Um but those are those two categories. And then I also want to be very clear both of those things start internally. Both of them. How we hurt people on the outside and how we hurt ourselves, the more awareness we come to understanding of what it looks like to live with a spirit of repentance, it affects firstly you, and then it affects how we interact with all people. And that is something that the Lord really, really has been pressing on me the last couple years that He has been refining me in, and I'm just very grateful. I'm just very grateful. That's why I wanted to talk to you guys about this today. Um, what does the Bible say about repentance? There's three particular stories that stood out to me. Also, does anybody have anything off the top of their heads immediately? Like, what does the Bible say about repentance?

unknown 9:46

Goodness of God that leads us to repentance.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Absolutely. Goodness of God that leads us to repentance. There's three particular stories that stood out to me that I want to just quickly highlight as best as I can when I say quickly. These are these are what came to me. The first one is because we've been, Rachel and I have been going through the Old Testament with Anna and Melinda from YWAM, and we had kind of a beautiful in-depth study of the King David. I know there's a show out and all that stuff, but specifically going through scripture and learning more about him and what he's gone through. Yeah, I want to talk about King David for a second. So, what are some things that that are said about King David? Do we know anything about him in this room?

SPEAKER_01 10:32

He was a man after God's own heart.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Absolutely. Anything else? Anybody? Absolutely, he did. Yes, he did. He was the only repentant king. And he was cut every other king was cut from the cloth of David because of that specific fact. The only one. We all know he was David and Goliath, young kid. Got the sling, killed Goliath, right? Brought down. He had favor with King Saul. He was a musician. He, yeah, he was he was just a warrior. Now, like I said, I'm not going to go too in depth onto the entire life of David because we'd be here forever. But he was a man after God's own heart and he had lots of favor. While he was king, so obviously we're fast forwarding. He had he was a warrior, he went to many battles, he uh he gained much territory and much land at that time. One of the things that happened is, I'm sure we all know, he messed up. He saw Bathsheba bathing, and he looked upon her, and he basically slept with her, and she got pregnant. Now, this happened because he had idle hands. He was supposed to be going to battle and he did not. He stayed back. This is something, this is a he to all of us. Not sorry, this is not a he to all of us. This is a he to myself because I understand this. Idle hands lead to not the best things. Those those moments when you're bored and you're just absolutely you don't know what to do with yourself. That usually, what's what's the what's the cliche? No good thing happens after midnight. I forget, I think that's what it is. This is his midnight moment. And it was recorded in history for all of us to know. So here's what I'm wanting to get at in this particular story. He slept with Bathsheba, they got pregnant. Now, this is an important part. He then, her husband at the time, Uriah, or her partner at the time, he put in the very front of a very dangerous battle, knowing that he was going to die. So David effectively killed another man, took his wife, impregnated his wife, or his partner, and then married her and brought her into his line. You have to understand about the culture at the time, it was an honor-shame culture. Lineage and legacy was incredibly important. Incredibly important. David effectively stopped an entire line of family. That's huge, especially then. And his only way of bringing honor back into the situation, one, was to first bring her into his family, marry her, take care of her, provide for her, because he had effectively ended her husband's life and the line of their family, which he then did. Yeah, it was a that's a big one. Um so how is he still the king all others were compared to after this fall, as we have already discussed? It's because he repented. We're gonna open up Psalms 51 together. This is the author who writes about David's true repentant heart, and I want to I want all of us to get somewhat of an idea of what this man said that brought him back to a place of real repentance. Because it's not just something that is, oh, I'm sorry. You know, there's something to be said about taking responsibility and speaking up and into something. So let's read Psalms 51 together. I I think I have the ESV version right here, but these are very, very important words. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones that you have broken rejoice. That is an incredible line. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice, because he rebuilds us. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all of my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore me to the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise, for you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your own good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem, then will you delight in right sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings, then the bowls will be offered on your altar. So his words were not just, God, I'm sorry. He genuinely felt remorse. He felt wrongdoing. He knew that he had really messed up, truly. And from that point forward, he had made it right. And God had entered into his story and he restored him. That is one incredible moment of a man's words who literally at the time was he was king. We have to realize this. And he had to go, have mercy on me. But he did not need to do that. But in the eyes of the Lord, he knew he did. Exactly. Exactly. David repented, he turned from his ways back to the Father. He was the only repentant king, and God preserved his legacy and rule. This says so much about the heart of God for and what he is about. So much. The next story I have, which I'm sure all you guys know. Do you guys know the story of Jonah? Yeah? This is another really good one. So basically, I'm going to wrap this in a tight little bow real quick because we can't obviously dive into this forever. There was a man, his name was Jonah. He, well, God literally talked to him and said, Go to Nineveh and tell them you have 40 days, or I'm going to destroy, and I'm going to destroy them. And Jonah goes, Nope, not me. I'm not the guy. I don't want to do this. And he runs away. He gets on a ship. He then, there's more to the story, obviously, he gets throws himself over technically, and he gets swallowed by a fish. A big fish, right? He's in the belly of this fish. Firstly, can we all kind of imagine that for a second? You know how insane that would be? Jumps into the ocean. He's like, I deserve this. I ran away. A fish swallows him, and he goes, God, you have saved me. I'm in this belly of a great fish. Look what you have done. And he goes, You know what? I'm sorry. I'm going to go to Nineveh. You're right. I should have followed you in the first place. I'm ridiculous. So he gets out, he goes to Nineveh. He tells the king there, God's going to destroy you in 40 days. King Ahab? I believe it was King Ahab. Maybe I've got the name wrong. I should look at my notes. The king of Nineveh, the ruler of Nineveh, puts on sackcloth, and he chooses to fast. And they turn from their evil ways. And Jonah leaves, and God tells him, I'm going to spare them. Jonah just went through saying no, going into a belly of a fish, saying, Oh, I'm so sorry, God, you saved me. I'm going to go do this. Goes and does this, does the thing, and then it switches. And Jonah literally is angry. It says this in the Bible. He goes, He's angry, and God understands his anger. That's a huge point. God is not afraid of our emotions or surprise when we have feelings. He just wants to hear us and he wants us to be honest. So this is what ends up happening. Nineveh is saved. God says, I'm not going to kill them. Jonah is outside of the Nineveh at this point. And what ends up happening is it's a very hot day. This leafy plant grows, covers him for a full day. Thank you, God. This is so wonderful. We're so grateful. I'm so grateful for this. The next day, God sends a worm, eats that plant, it dies. It's a terrible, scorching day. And he literally says, I would rather die than be here any longer. One day, mind you. Oh man. Then the Lord said, He was speaking to why, basically his heart for why he wants to restore and renew. Then the Lord said, I feel sorry about the sorry, you feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. It came quickly and died quickly. But Nineveh, Nineveh, has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness. Not to mention all the animals. Shouldn't I feel sorry for such a great city? He was more concerned about a plant than 120,000 people being wiped off the face of the planet because God had told him, This is what I'm going to do. That speaks to the heart of the Father right there. And Jonah had to get to a place, firstly, especially when he was in the fish, of going, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I did this wrong. I disobeyed you when you told me. Go to Nineveh and say this. And we're on this journey, and he's continually in a spirit of repentance. And even in him experiencing anger and frustration and confusion for not really knowing, God, why? Why would you tell me to do this? Change your mind. And now I look foolish. Now I'm humiliated. Why this makes no sense. Also, even after Jonah was freed from the fish and forgiven, he was still pointing at others. Look at them for what they deserve. They are wrong, the Ninevites, particularly. How you judge others is how you will be judged. That is a real statement that I'm sure plenty of us know. But it's in this thing, God is telling Jonah, this is what you want for these people. Do you want the same thing? And he literally has the worm came and killed the plant. I would rather die. No, you don't want that. You don't want that. And in Matthew 7 2, it states, For in the same way that you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you used, it will be measured to you. This is the teaching part of the Sermon on the Mount, and it focuses in avoiding hypocritical judgment. That is a perfect example in Jonah. About God, you said this. I'm repeating myself now. You said this, and now I want the judgment to come upon the Ninevites, but the heart of God even then was, nope, I want to restore. It is in his kindness that leads to repentance. And we see that even back then. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Yeah, people who come to a spirit of repentance by exp people will come to a spirit of repentance by experiencing how we live our life walking in a spirit of repentance, empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is an infectious thing, much like many other things. And the more we all walk in it as a family, the more I walk in it and choose every single day, God, bring an awareness to things that I don't even know that I'm unrepentant for. He will show you. He will show you. Another thing, like I talked about last time I spoke, is the story of the prodigal son, which I would say is the most important teaching in the Bible. I'm not gonna say the whole thing again, but the son squanders everything. When he comes to his senses, he returns to his father. That's really important. When he comes to his senses, he returns to his father. Just like Jonah had anger, the prodigal son came to his senses. He began to have awareness of what was wrong, his wrongdoing, how he was missing it, how he went, I'm gonna squander all my inheritance. Uh, this is not this is not the best. I've cast my pearl before swine. What have I done? He comes back to his father and he asks, please forgive me. And if anything, will you give me the lowliest servant position in your house? The lowest. Can I at least be a servant among you? Can I at least be that? And as we talked about last time, as yet he was far off. The father saw him, was filled with compassion, ran to him. I can't wait. I can't. That's all of us. I can't believe you've come back to me. That's repentance. That is it. He recognized, he came to his senses. Oh man, that's not it. The father's it. And he came back to him. And though he deserved condemnation, judgment, shame, much like the culture was back in, the father said, Nope. That's not it. That's not what it's about. I meet you with open arms, I'm compassionate. I'm gonna even throw you a party. And he did. This is the heart of repentance. It's coming to our senses, it's returning to the Father's ways, our true inheritance. True, true inheritance. Romans 2, 1 through 4. It's God's kindness that leads to repentance. It's goodness of God that leads to repentance, but it is his kindness that leads to repentance. And I think it's so easy, much like the story I talked about previously. I don't know about anybody else. Is it easier for anybody else to forgive others more than or easier than to forgive ourselves? It's usually easier, right? When we come to the understanding of what he has done for us, and we have an even greater revelation, because I believe over our lives, on this journey that we're all on, we will continue to have a greater revelation of who Jesus is and what he's done. It's not this one-time thing, it's not this, oh, I know he went to the cross and I know he did this. It is a continuous, it's a wave. That's why the Bible is a well. It's a well of knowledge, it's a wellspring of life. And he will come and he will show you over and over and over again, much like his kindness that leads to repentance, much like his mercy, all of it, much like his grace that he so easily and so often pours out on us. It is his kindness that he forgives us. That's his kindness that led Jesus to the cross. It's his kindness that allowed us to access him and his kingdom. Now here's the next one is Matthew 3:8. This is John the Baptist talking. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. John was the forerunner, we all know, that made way for Jesus to come, right? He was the guy. He was a crazy man, but he was the guy who was legit. He was like, I know what's going on, I know who's coming. I'm gonna make a way for him. He knew. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And we all know what the fruits of the Spirit are, we all know those types of things. Those things are born, are bore because of repentance. When we don't know something or are not aware of something in our lives, and we gain awareness of what those things are, God illuminates them to us. From that, we have joy, we have patience, we have self-control, we have all the good things that come from Him. So fruit comes from keeping, staying with repentance, staying in repentance. It's a way of being, it's not a one-time thing, it's not the, and we all know this who are married in the room. Rage, I'm so sorry I did this. And then I just leave it at that. It's a continuation, it's a journey of recognizing, oh man, these are patterns and behaviors that I have. I need to lay these before him as I want to bear fruit in my life, because that not only is the best way to live, but it's the best way to live for others around me. Here is maybe the most important part of this. In Matthew 4, 17, Jesus says, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Here in New Heart. Our pastor is Jesus. Our desire is for the presence of the Lord. And that pretty much is it. Everything comes from that place. One of the ways the kingdom of God comes to the earth is through us living and walking in a spirit of repentance. So we can talk about God, I want more of you. I want to know you more. I want a greater measure of your presence. I want a greater degree of who you are. He's telling you, repent. For the kingdom of God is at hand. And guess what? His kindness leads to repentance. It's not condemnation, it's not judgment, it's not you're less than you don't deserve it. It's never been any of those things. I have spent a lot of my life believing the opposite. I have to earn it, I have to deserve it, I have to be good enough so that God gives me good stuff. The more you recognize that you can't, you just can't. He's so good, and he sees you exactly where you're at, and he goes, I will take you, I will form you, I will mold you, I will show you the best way. But you have to be honest, you have to be aware, you have to submit yourself to the true responsibility of going, I messed up, and I feel remorse. I need to change my ways. And it's not because it's some behavior modification that people try to make you be something specific. It is the best way. And the more you test it, and the more you do it, and the more you see it, the more you'll come to understand that Jesus was the most legit, the most genuine, the most real, and his way and his life, and what he allowed for us to be in the midst of. He literally has given us his spirit. Literally, and we're blessed because we haven't even seen him. We get the privilege of repentance. I don't know about anybody else. I grew up not liking that word very much. Ooh, I don't want to repent. That's terrifying. Like I have to tell someone I did something wrong. The more you do it, the more you recognize his spirit. The more you grow, the more you bear fruit. And if you desire his presence, which is what we are here for as a collective, we want his presence. Yes for this church, yes for Santa Rosa, yes for Sonoma County, and for anybody who walks in, walks out. It doesn't matter. Whoever we touch, we want that to be an overflow. We've all heard stories of how we've seen overflow of what that looks like here in this place. That comes from repentance, or one of the ways is it comes from repentance. This is true freedom. If we want to live in step with him and his culture and not our own, we must live in the spirit of repentance. Yeah, it leads to freedom. It leads to his kingdom coming and reigning here because it is his culture, this is his way, this is his kingdom. One of the things uh I'd like to in your day I I don't know how everybody feels about this. I don't live stick with me. I don't love the word prayer. I don't. The reason I say that is because I feel it is it almost puts it in a box and sometimes maybe cheapens it. This is just personal to me. I like saying it's a it's a daily conversation. I like to imagine not only is he king, is he lord, he is right here in this room, and I get to talk to my best friend who is with me through everything and all things. So in your daily conversations with God, ask that he brings you into the awareness of things that you may not even know that you were unrepentant for. And before I say this to anybody else, I'm speaking to me. This is something I speak with the Lord on all the time, especially soon to be dad. I have a lot of my own stuff. I know we all understand this. No one can do it perfectly. I am asking the Lord every day, God, bring into my awareness things that I'm unrepentant for, especially the light of being a husband and being a father, of being a good friend. The more I ask, the more he brings a light and the more he purifies. And he will do it, and he's faithful to do it. And it's not this terrifying, scary thing. I think maybe we often see it that way. I think maybe I have often seen it that way. Oh man, I gotta give up blank and blank, and I gotta fight for blank and blank, and I have to. The more you do it, the more you'll see how faithful he is to complete a good work in you. This is part of that. So ask the Lord, what are things in me that I am unrepentant for that I am unaware of? Bring those things to me. And maybe you have those things in your life right now. Maybe you have those those people in your life who you have heart hurt feelings for. Maybe you have stuff in your life that you know you need to be doing, or maybe you know you need to be not doing. One of the best things that I've come to understand about that, yes, bring it to the Lord. Number one, submit it to him, and he will walk with you in it. If you want to take an extra step, one of the things that has been most helpful to me is to be blatantly honest, blatantly honest with safe people in your life about things that you yourself deal with. I have many, many, many examples of this where I have had moments of true breakdown. But that's in what's the song we sing? It's it's brokenness. He renews that brokenness and he makes you stronger because it don't miss an opportunity to remove something from your life that you know you need to repent for in order to see his kingdom come. I I promise you it's worth it. It's so worth it. So, God, would you help us walk this way? Would you bring to light what repentance really looks like? Would you bring awareness to things that we do are not aware of? Would you soften our hearts? Would you open our spirit? And would you give us the strength to keep returning to you over and over and over again? In moments when we're like the prodigal son, in moments when we feel like Jonah and we don't want to obey your word, in moments when we're like King David and we have it all and we mess it up. May we come back to you and in your kindness you'll see us and you'll say yes and you'll renew us. We just thank you for who you are and for this morning. God, I just ask that you would do whatever you want to do with what has been said here this morning, with the worship, with all of us, with the words that I brought, God, that you would use them. That they would be your words and not my own, because I don't know what I'm doing. So I'm grateful. Your name, amen. Thank you guys for listening this morning. What's up?

SPEAKER_00 36:06

No, no. I just have one thing that I wanted to add. When we were talking about this, I feel like we talk about the word repentance a lot. And if you grew up in church, you've heard it, and it's usually like we think of like the big things. You're thinking the Ten Commandments, you're looking at stuff you shouldn't be looking at. You're cheating, you're stealing, you're, you know, you have your like the big things, like, well, I'm not doing any of the big things. But something when Zach was even sharing his own stories, I was like, when he was talking to Sarah the time, hilarious story. He really told the woman everything that she needed to change in order to be with him. Not a way to get a girl, just some advice. And getting to talk to her, she was laughing so hard, and she was like, I hope he didn't do that to you. Like, but at the time, believe it or not, Zach thought he was doing the right thing. Jonah knew he wasn't doing the right thing. But then he thought he was doing the right thing when he went back to Nineveh. He's acting justly, he's being obedient. Okay, I'm listening, I did what you said, and now it's not working. Um at the time, the prodigal son was like with what he had and where he was, he thought leaving and was the right thing for him. Right? You you picking up what I'm putting down? So I would like to challenge us as a collective too, especially in the climate that we live in, and how often my non-Christian friends have experienced the Christians to be the people that know I'm right, you're wrong. Like this. Well, I know I'm doing the right thing. That the way that the Father shows us his heart and all of these things is even when we think that we're right, his kingdom is upside down. And yeah, Jonah had the right to be angry because what God was doing didn't make sense. It wasn't right, it wasn't justice in the way that we think or we understand things. So I just want to challenge, I don't do this is making sense. Okay. For me and for us, walking, living like the spirit of repentance is a state of being. It's not necessarily just like an apology, right? It's living like this. Examine where am I not aligning with your culture? I might think that I'm right. Where can you challenge me? Even if it's moment by moment, in this conversation, does this person need me to listen? Does this person need a hug? Does this person need support? Does this person need prayer? Does this person need me to not say anything at all and just look at them in the eyes and acknowledge their existence? We might think that we know the right thing to do, and sometimes we're wrong. And that's part of living and no, me, me, living in a spirit of repentance because the kingdom of God comes when we walk humbly and we submit ourselves to living this way, and it's not about understanding and being right all the time. It's like getting out of your own hand. Yeah. And that's something that when we were talking about, it's like, man, we can have the best intentions and think like, oh, we know these scriptures are doing this thing, like this is what I'm supposed to do, right? And God's like, Well, are you listening to me? Are you yielded to me? Are you are you living in the space of repentance and turning from what you think you know to what I want my way? And his kingdom is so like expansive, he's God, right? So yielding ourselves to his way is is like I love that John the Baptist says, keeping with repentance. You're staying in it. It's like immersing yourself. I don't know why I like just thought of a mud bath, but that's what I thought of. Like immersing yourself in this state of repentance, actively turning from what I think I know is the right thing to do to God. What do you want to do? Examine me. And so, in this, in especially in this climate as a millennial myself, I'm asking myself all the time, I know a lot of stuff from all sides. I walked away from church. I thought I knew a lot of stuff, and then I came back. Here I am, surprise. And the whole time, even when I was outside of church, I felt like I was able to experience the state of repentance in a way that's different than um the way that church culture can approach it. You're not just apologizing for your sin, you're living in a state of surrender. You're living in a state of humility because God's kingdom comes when we say, I'm out of the way. I'll do what you tell me to do. If that's go to Nineveh, okay. If that's throw a party for the prodigal, okay. Does it make sense? Absolutely not. But I'm gonna listen to your heart and your kingdom and walk in your culture because it opposes all of our culture. It's upside down. It's so cool. And the more you read, even in the Old Testament, the more I read, I'm just like, God just flips everything on its head. The second that we think we have it figured out, he's like, Well, actually, I'm more gracious than you think. And my justice doesn't look like that. My forgiveness doesn't look like that. It's not checks and balances and X's and O's because Jesus. That's the whole thing. So, another layer. Ask the Lord to examine yourself on that layer. Where do I think I'm right? And you need to teach me your, like, teach me your culture. Teach me the kingdom culture. Where is where is a space where I need to be softened? Or where's a space I maybe need to be a little tougher? Where do I need to have more boundaries or less? Any of those, that's walking in repentance too. It's not just the uh asking for forgiveness for wrongdoing, but it's creating me a clean heart so that your kingdom can come on earth as it is in heaven. Get me out of the way. Yeah? So, Lord, I just I asked that for this house. I ask that for all the churches across the world, for anyone that follows you, whatever that looks like, um, that this morning that you would just bring a fresh, a fresh spirit of repentance over people that follow you. That you would teach us to live yielded to you and your kingdom culture. Bring to mind this morning at those of us here at the New Heart Collective. If there are areas in which we need to yield to you, renew our minds, take our heart of stone and give us a heart of your kingdom flesh, the way that you designed things to be, because your way is so much better than ours. I ask for myself for humility in places where I think that I'm right. I just I want to do things how you do things. Because your way is so much better, your love is so much better, and I want to represent that everywhere I go, even when it doesn't make sense to my logical brain. I just ask that there would be a movement of that for each of us in our individual lives. Give us opportunities to be challenged. Ooh, that's scary to pray. But yes, give us opportunities to be challenged where we need to be challenged. Bring those things to light over the coming weeks. And I just encourage you to collective to bring them forward if there's something that God brings forward for you. If there's something that comes up, share it. Because someone else might need it. We're all broken messes here and learning together. That's part of community. That's part of the restoring. So, God, we say yes to you and what you want to do. And we get out of the way and we get in the way we're supposed to be. If that makes sense. In Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you, Zach. What a guy, huh?