Kindness leading to Repentance

There is a scripture in Romans 2:4

"Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?" NKJV

I spent the day yesterday playing video games and felt horrible about it. Actually it doesn't quite go like that. Late night, unaware of what is going on around me. Let me give you some advice: "Let him who glories, glory in the Lord" I want to be far more honest, humble, and real about it but I really struggle with that.

So in the morning while talking with Him, I heard the Lord say something. I knew it was Him, but it sounded like he was pulling His punches. He said "What if you don't test me" to which I replied "I am going to test you!" Because this is an issue of Him keeping covenant with me, I can be as politically uncorrect as possible. Basically, His kindness emboldened me to test Him more. To which I felt horrible about what I had done, and apologized, and he accepted my apology. God was pulling His punches because He knew that I do love Him. As I sit here writing, the favor of God is on me, and I can choose now to follow Him, what a glorious feeling!

This makes me feel rather interesting. The thing is, God does not share His glory with another one. When David was repentant about Bathsheba, the motivation was a pursuit of God's glory. You might ask me, "So why can you be free after doing something that grieves the Lord's heart?" to which I would reply "Because he's better" what stuns me most about David is that He chose to go through the whole ordeal. Yeah, that's right. But the underlying theme here is God's love for me, because I don't think I would place the most importance on anything I've done, but what God has done for me!

When you are repentant like this, there are no "what ifs" because you are sincere and apologetic which means there's no worldly sorrow attached to it. I feel a little like Zion, whose unfaithful behavior grieves her, that her Lord still receives her. One thought that I had during the whole thing was this: "I'm no different from anyone else, like Peter, I cry out to the Lord 'depart from me, Lord, for I am a wicked and sinful man'" to which he has graciously shown that His love covers, purifies, protects and helps me even when I am weak. For anyone not convinced of his love, I just want to encourage you, that you are not like them. God has set his seal of love on you. He does not see you the way that He sees the world. For anyone that does not know His love, Jesus Christ has demonstrated God's love, when you make Him your ruler, you become His (because He knows that you want Him even before you come)

This makes me feel a mixture, of happiness, joy, and overwhelming love. This is the way of God which leads to repentance. To finish up, I would like to say this, I do feel horrible about it, NOW.