Your Definition of "True Repentance" please

[Esaias]

Originally Posted by NewbieMisfits

So, if true repentance is;
(the following is from our home bible study powerpoints)

1.Choose to turn from actions that lead to death.
^^ Check

2.Surrender our self-rule.
^^ I would say "Check", but do not have a clear understanding of?

You surrender 'self rule' by allowing God's rule to direct your decisions. You choose what God would choose based upon his word rather than what you prefer. You choose to follow Christ.

3.Call upon the Lord; confess and forsake sins.
^^ I would say "Check" except I still feel guilt, if not even more guilt towards them. Does one still feel guilt or increased guilt or should we not even be recalling the past? What I've witnessed in my life have been many testimonies where the person was in-fact not ashamed of such sins???

If one thinks back upon one's previous sins, one will not feel 'happy', one will often feel ashamed and 'guilty'. However, one who has had their sins forgiven by God should always keep that forgiveness in mind, and try not to dwell on one's previous guilt but rejoice in one's pardon. This does not mean forgetting completely where you came from, but it does mean acknowledging that Christ's work is supreme, rather than your past.

4.Promise to love, serve, and obey Him.
^^ I would say "Check", except my current knowledge on how to do so is limited to that of only what I've recently come to learn from Apo's, and what I had previously learned from Menno's (even though my limited Menno teachings are all under review.)

God doesn't want you to promise to love him, he wants you to love him. don't 'resolve to love God', instead choose to love him! Prefer his ways to yours.

To love God means to keep his commandments, to prefer His ways to ours, to prefer His honour to our own, to glory in Him not in ourselves, to delight in the things of God rather than sin or worldliness or self, seeking to please Him as the highest and ultimate choice of our heart. To love God is to be devoted to Him, to follow Him, to appreciate what He has done and how good He is, to prefer His well-being to our own, His will to our own, to seek that which glorifies him as the ultimate goal of our life, to justify Him in all his decisions, to take His side against all comers (including our own flesh), to render allegiance to Him as our King.