Jonah 2:9 “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you;

what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

           

There’s a simple truth about repentance written all throughout Scripture that tends to get treated like a secret. I mean, God wrote it in a book and it’s been published throughout the entire world, so it’s really no secret. But it’s often treated like one. Some people don’t like to talk about it because they say it’s too personal, or they’re too embarrassed, or that they don’t completely understand it themselves. But we’re going to unwrap this ‘secret’ to repentance and lay it out on the table for all to see so we can experience a spiritual breakthrough.

Jonah announces while in the fish’s belly that salvation is of the Lord. This is both a confession and an acknowledgement of a lesson learned and it’s really quite astounding. In fact, the entire theme of the Bible can be summed up in that statement, “Salvation belongs to the Lord.”

See, there are different people in the world and they have different beliefs about salvation. There are the Rebellious People, who defiantly say, “I do not need salvation.” Next are the Religious people, who stubbornly say “Salvation is of me.” Then there are the Repentant people, who humbly say, “Salvation is of the Lord”

Until you come to the realization that salvation belongs to the Lord, you cannot and will not experience spiritual breakthrough. That is true for people just coming into a relationship with Christ today for the first time, but it is also true for people that have already started a relationship with Jesus but desire a deeper spiritual breakthrough. And, by the way, everybody falls into one of these two categories: those in need of salvation today, and those in need of a spiritual breakthrough.

Both types of people cannot come to the realization that salvation belongs to the Lord on their own, however. It first requires God extending an invitation to them. He says, “Come and know me.” That is called grace. We can only respond to the invitation and start a relationship with Him. That is called faith.

So the first type of people accept God’s grace by faith. Let’s call that saving faith. The second type who have already accepted God’s grace continue in their faith. That’s called living faith.

So are you ready for the secret? Here it is in one sentence:

Grace is not just the way you have your first encounter with God, but how you have every encounter with God.

Accepting God’s grace through faith is how you are going to have a spiritual breakthrough. If you depend on your works to make you better, if you depend on your knowledge to get you closer to God, if you depend on your talent to do great things, you won’t make it. We have only one thing to depend on and that’s God’s grace.

But that’s just it. So many of us so many times rely on ourselves for our spirituality. “If I just read my Bible more I would be more spiritual.” But we have to have a change of mind; a change of dependence. And that’s exactly what repentance is. The word ‘repent’ literally means “to change one’s mind.” The question then is, “What do I need to change my mind about?” In this case, to have a spiritual breakthrough, we have to change our mind about who we depend on.

When I was teen, my friend showed me what it means to be dependent on the wrong thing. We had gone to spend the weekend at his grandparents’ cabin with his family. One day we were exploring down by the river, and we found this giant branch sticking out over the water about three stories high. So my friend says, “Hey! Let’s make a rope swing!” So he goes and gets a dog leash, he climbs the branch, ties the leash up, but realizes it’s too thin to hold on to. So he does the logical thing and grabs a log and ties it to the other end. Then he says, “Ok, who’s first!?” And the rest of us are like, “Bro, you made it, you have to do the first swing!”

So he climbs up a little and sits on a lower branch for a while trying to work up the courage. And in one awful moment he jumps off the tree trunk and puts all of his weight on this homemade rope swing, depending on it to hold him. But as it tightens, the log rolled, and he slipped. And fell. I’m pretty sure my heart stopped as I watched him plummet to what I felt strongly was his death. He fell about two stories down into about one foot of water with huge rocks underneath. I’m thinking, “Oh my soul! I just witnessed the death of my best friend!” For about two seconds, that felt like two hours, he’s underneath the water, then he bounces up and says, “Well, that didn’t work!” He was lucky to walk away with a small scratch on his knee. Needless to say, nobody else depended on the dog leash rope swing.

If you and I are going to move to a new level of spiritual breakthrough we must change our mind about who we depend on. Are you depending on your own goodness and effort for a spiritual breakthrough? Or are you ready to depend on God’s grace to give you a breakthrough? You’ll be launched to new heights with barely enough time to hang on when you let go and let God.

But how does Jesus give us His grace? I mean, what in the world is grace anyway? Next month, I’ll answer the question; What is the process by which Jesus gives us His grace?