Coming To Ourselves

There are a passages in scripture where people "came to themselves," and they were suddenly, even miraculously, convinced of a reality they knew was true.  This realisation is a gift of God.  One such occasion happened after Peter found himself in the street after being led out of prison, and at first he thought it was a dream or vision.  He was joyful over what had done and Acts 12:11 says, "And when Peter had come to himself, he said, "Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel, and has delivered me from the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the Jewish people."  Encouraged and excited by God's deliverance, he went to a house where he discovered Christians were literally praying for his release.

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus described what happed to a man who wasted his inheritance in a foreign land and during a famine found himself in want.  The poor man was so desperate to survive he took on a job feeding pigs and was so famished the pods he fed the swine started looking tasty.  Luke 15:17 reads, "But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!"  The realisation his father's servants ate to the full, coupled with the grim reality he was starving, compelled him to humbly return to his father to beg for a hired position.  He did not only realise he was hungry and his father was generous:  he realised his grave sin and was desperate to be forgiven and accepted again.

Divine revelation and personal realisation are required to begin the process of repentance and restoration before God.  The LORD has revealed plainly many sins in the Bible of which we have been guilty, and whether by ignorance or neglect we may not realise it.  Since God has also given us the Bible and a conscience, plus parents, teachers, government authority and laws, the majority of the time it is not a lack of revelation of what is right or wrong but our unwillingness to receive personal revelation that leads to wilful blindness.  Our sin can be clear as day, yet we are insensible to it:  we deny or deflect blame, justify ourselves, point out how others are worse than us, imagine the good we have done cancels our guilt, or we just don't care.  We can pretend sin isn't there when it has us by the throat and is choking the life out of us.  It might not be until we have suffered poverty, loss and loneliness like the prodigal before we accept God's wisdom of what is sin, realise we are wrong, and desperately need to change.

When we drift from God from carelessness or stubbornness in sin, we might wonder how it all came to this.  We are overwhelmed at the prospect of retracing our steps to try to find our way back to God over the years of disobedience, rebellion and folly.  We have no clue where or when things went so wrong.  But what did the prodigal do after realising his sin?  He realised he had sinned and humbled himself and simply went by foot to his father.  He left the pigs and his boss who never gave him anything and went with a heart willing to do anything his father asked because he had nothing.  1 John 1:9 shows the way of repentance and restoration to God for believers, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  When we come to ourselves and realise we have sinned, let us confess our sin to God and repent, knowing God promises to cleanse us from sin through the Gospel.  We are also to confess our faults to those we have wronged and pray for one another.

An incident in Ephesus made a positive impact when imposter exorcists were beaten up by a demon who knew Jesus and Paul.  Acts 19:17-20 says, "This became known both to all Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. ¹⁸ And many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds. ¹⁹ Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them, and it totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver. ²⁰ So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed."  The passage tells us there were believers in Jesus who continued to practice witchcraft, and God used this situation to reveal their need to confess and repent of sin.  Part of the process of repentance was to destroy their books, and this is a good example we should follow for anything that leads us to sin.  There are a great many things we may have continued reading, viewing or following after coming to Christ that are sinful.  These sins include (but not limited to!) habits, desires, language, attitudes and thinking patterns that have no business being in our lives because we are in Christ.  The result of burning the books of magic enabled the Good Book to expand and it prevailed--to a far greater degree than the evil spirit prevailed over the sons of Sceva.

Having come to ourselves over the realisation of our sin, let us return humbly to our Saviour Jesus in repentance.  Feeling guilty or sorry for our sin is not repentance.  If our sorrow for sin is not mixed with faith in Jesus that is marked by obedience to Him, such sorrow leads to despair.  Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 7:9-10 to believers he rebuked for sin, "Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. ¹⁰ For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death."  God and all heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents, and every Christian is a sinner.  God does not only rejoice the first time we repented but every successive time our coming to ourselves results in us returning to God in humble faith and repentance.