Wonderful is the work of your hands.
For I was going fourth through the way of the unknown,
and as I was wandering here and there, filled with terror, hopelessness, and fear,
I saw your hand stretching down from heaven to reach out to me.
And I saw myself standing up, feeling strengthened.
It is not I who was becoming stronger.
It is not I who was becoming more faithful.
But it was your gift of faith that was increasing in me.
No matter how the way ahead of me looks, it is you, Lord, who has raised me.
You are my strength and my shield in the time of trouble and in the time of sorrow, in the time of joy and in the time of victories, and in the time of failures.
Today I see your faith, your work, your spirit, your character, your ways growing in me.
Yet it is not I who is growing, not I who is making these things grow. It is your gift, for you yourself have placed your hand over me.
Great is your work in my life! Wonderful are your deeds!
Even on the road of the unknown, I have found refuge to hold on to, and yet it is not I who is holding. It is you who are holding. Great and amazing is your faithfulness.
It takes courage. It requires boldness. Faith is inevitable, and yet it looks like a weakness.
The Same Fight, Again and Again
There was a time when I kept saying sorry, feeling sorry, but it kept repeating anyway. I found myself fighting the same battle over and over. I was losing my peace. I was losing my strength. I could see the darkness nearing, surrounding me, consuming me. I could see it. I knew what was right, I wanted to do what was right, and yet I kept falling. I was trying so hard. I was giving all that I had. I was doing everything I could, and yet I was falling short.
The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t desiring it. The problem wasn’t that I lacked confidence. The problem wasn’t that I was unaware. It just felt like this wasn’t a battle I could win by fighting harder.
We’re All Fighting Something
Now i can say that this wasn’t an exclusive challenge, that it isn’t only a Christian thing. It really doesn’t matter what you believe or what you don’t. Everyone is fighting with all that they have.
I remember walking on the street here in Kathmandu, near a small local shop or restaurant. There was a group of people sitting there: some young men, some older, drinking or eating. A song was playing from a speaker nearby, something about trying to break free from addiction, from drugs and alcohol, about a mother and father hoping their son would do something good, but he was looking at himself and seeing how far he had fallen. That song was playing while they were drinking, and I could tell it wasn’t just background noise to them. People don’t play songs at random. They play the ones that resonate with them, that speak to their situation.
And I realized it wasn’t so different from what I was experiencing. Just a different side of life, a different point on the same pendulum, but the experience was similar. They were fighting addiction to drugs or alcohol. I was fighting something else. But it’s common. We all fall, all of us. We all end up in some kind of bondage, enslaved to something. It’s not that we don’t want to do good. Everyone wants to do good, and tries hard at it. The real question is: can we actually do it? It’s not that we don’t want to change. It’s that we fail, because we don’t have what is actually needed to change.
Repentance Is More Than Feeling Sorry
Saying sorry, or telling yourself you won’t do it again, or feeling a little remorse, that’s not enough. We have to actually turn around.
But can I really turn around on my own? No. If we could do it by our own strength, we would have done it already. That’s the point. We can’t. That’s why we need to turn to the Lord. He is the one who leads us to true repentance. Faith alone isn’t enough either, and let me give some clarity on that part too.
Faith in the Right Place
Do we really have faith? I think we all have some kind of faith, but a distorted view of it. We treat it like a kind of magical inner feeling: if we hold onto it hard enough, if we feel confident enough, then the thing we’re hoping for will happen. And when it doesn’t happen, even though we felt so sure, it’s because our faith wasn’t placed in the right thing. It wasn’t correctly directed.
In the Bible, Jesus said that by faith you can move the mountain. He wasn’t talking about that kind of feeling-faith. He was asking: faith in whom? Faith over the Lord God. Faith in him is what changes everything. That was one correction I had to make in myself.
I’ve always been a fairly confident person, since childhood. I don’t fully know where it comes from. It’s not manufactured, it just naturally comes out of me. But before I understood this, that confidence had blinded me a little. I thought that feeling itself was sufficient: if I really felt it, or pushed myself to feel it more, whatever I desired would happen. That’s not the faith the Bible is talking about.
Faith, Then Repentance
Whatever slavery or addiction you might be in right now, and I’ve found myself falling short here too, we have to put our faith in the right place. Faith on its own, as a feeling, isn’t sufficient. It’s when we place our faith in Jesus that things begin to change, and repentance follows.
After placing my faith and my whole trust in Jesus, he leads me toward true repentance. It doesn’t happen immediately. It takes time. It’s a journey where we come to know who God is, what he has done, what we have done, what kind of bondage we’re actually in, and where we come to realize the true strength and power of God to set us free. Somehow, he lifts us into that freedom. That’s how we experience true repentance.
I can’t fully put it into words. Yes, there’s crying, there’s sorrow in it, but it’s not just about feeling something. It’s about complete change, and that doesn’t happen by my own effort. It happens because the Lord changes our heart, changes our mind, changes our actions, changes the way we think and the way we see everything around us. That’s what repentance looks like.
True Joy on the Other Side
After that phase of repentance, there’s a true joy, a real moment of joy, of happiness that’s hard to describe. We start seeing the world differently. We start laughing at ourselves, at what we were doing. It feels like a miracle.
I wanted to share this journey, this reflection. This whole topic came up a few weeks back in a city to city class discussion on faith and repentance, and I’ve been meditating on it since. This is how I see it now.
To Whoever Is Reading This
Brother, sister, whoever you are reading this, I want to leave you with an encouraging word. It is not that we have to somehow be faithful on our own. The faithful one is the Lord Almighty God. He himself is the faithful God, and we have to put our faith in him. Not in people. Not in ourselves. Not in material things, or positions, or skills, or talent. In him.
Jesus is the rock, the foundation. When we lay the foundation of our faith on Jesus, our faith becomes unshakable. So many times we fall short. Some people show it, some hide it, but whatever you’re going through, or have been through, it’s okay. Just take that to God. He will lead you to true repentance. You don’t have to try so hard on your own. He will guide you. He will tell you what to do. You’ll still have to take action, but you just have to obey him, and repentance happens naturally, almost effortlessly. And when you experience that, you’ll experience true joy, real freedom, and a miraculous transformation in your life.
Thank you for reading. I appreciate your time.