I’ve noticed lately that we don’t hear much talk about repentance anymore—at least, not the way I did growing up.

I came of age in an era where we analyzed the “repentances” of pastors, politicians, and public figures with a fine-toothed comb. In hindsight, it was often done in unhealthy ways. We were so obsessed with measuring the sincerity of a powerful person’s “I’m sorry” that the actual victims of their trespasses were often sidelined. In that rigid environment, the pursuit of justice was frequently lost, and grace and compassion were in short supply.

But today, I believe the pendulum has swung dangerously far in the opposite direction.

We’ve moved from over-analyzing repentance to barely mentioning it at all. We rarely see it modeled in our public squares or our private communities. When we do witness an apology, it usually feels like a tactical maneuver—the reaction of someone who got their hand caught in the cookie jar rather than the response of someone whose heart has been broken by their own actions.

True repentance isn’t “damage control.” It isn’t about protecting a brand or regaining a platform. It is a deeply personal act of realignment.

We Need A Healthier Understanding of Repentance

I think it would be good for us to develop a healthier understanding, practice and ongoing commitment to repentance. When we talk about repentance, we need to realize that it is an act that forces us to come face-to-face with God, with the will of God, and with our true selves.

Repentance also requires vulnerability. It requires us to face the deceitfulness of our own hearts, to admit where we have failed, where we have hurt others, and where we have resisted the way and will of God. This is what makes repentance the most hard for us to practice.

I think true repentance also causes us to look at the places in our life where it has been stripped bare and admit, “I did that.” I am in this “wilderness moments,” because of what I did. In our best Steve Urkel voice, we are learning to ask God, “Did I do that?”

Repentance Is The Way of Dependency in Lent

But this is exactly why the church has always talked about repentance during seasons like Lent. At the start of Jesus’ ministry, he entered the wilderness. Jesus spent forty days there, facing temptation, struggle, and testing. Where humanity had repeatedly failed, Jesus remained faithful. The wilderness became a proving ground where Jesus showed complete dependence on the Father. Through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus overcame the world and death itself. Because of that, we must learn to see our wilderness moments differently. They are not simply hardships we ask God to remove. We aren’t praying, “God get me out of this.” Rather, we look at them and realize that they are often places where God deepens our dependence on him. We pray, “God, what am I to learn in this?”

As Jesus reminded us in his wilderness moment, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

One way we remain dependent on God in those moments is through repentance.

Repentance is not a side note in the Christian life. It is the ongoing activity that should define our relationship with God. It needs to be a habit, a discipline, and a practice. In the wilderness, repentance brings us to the end of ourselves so that God can be restored to the center of our lives.

The Threads of Repentance All The Way Through

From the start of Jesus’ ministry, we find the way to discover the rule and reign, the will and way of God, the presence and promises are through repentance.

• Matthew says, “From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’” (Matthew 4:17).
• Jesus also tells the crowds and his disciples, “But unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:3).
• Jesus gives this as a mission manifesto for his ministry, telling us, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32).

The way to live like Jesus is the way of the cross. The way of the cross is experienced through repentance.

The word used for repentance carries the idea of pouring ourselves out, coming to the end of ourselves, changing our minds, and turning our lives back to God. We are turning from self-rule, from power and position, from control and domineering. We are no longer seeing things through our own paradigms and perspectives.

In Matthew 4:17, the way Jesus uses the word is an imperative verb. It carries the sense of continuing on, a continual way of life—an ongoing reconsidering, changing, and turning. It is an urgent, continuous command for our whole lives to be reoriented. Not just our spiritual lives, not just our hopes for life after death, but for a reorientation of every area of our lives—our minds, relationships, emotions, physical health, and even our sexuality—is to be turned and centered on God, because God’s rule and reign are breaking into the here and now.

Repentance is one of the primary ways we enter and experience the rule and reign of God.

Even Before and After Jesus

Repentance was not new to the life and ministry of Jesus.

Prior to the start of Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptist tells us the same thing: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 3:2).

Same challenging call. Same root word. Same anchoring reason.

This didn’t stop with the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The same call, root word, and anchoring reason show up in the early church.

Paul will continue this challenge, telling the church in Rome that “God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance” (Romans 2:4).

Long before Jesus walked toward Jerusalem and walked the way of the cross, the prophets were already calling the people of God to this same turning of the heart.

Rend Your Hearts As An Act of Repentance

I invite you to spend some time in Joel 2:12–14 this week. Now, if you don’t remember where Joel is, feel free to use the Bible app on your phone. It’s faster that way, and no one will look at you like you don’t read your Bible. We get an honest look at who God is in this passage, but also what sort of heart wrenching, repentance and rendering he desires for us.

“Even now,” declares the Lord,
    “return to me with all your heart,
    with fasting and weeping and mourning.”

Rend your heart
    and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
    for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
    and he relents from sending calamity.
Who knows? He may turn and relent
    and leave behind a blessing—
grain offerings and drink offerings
    for the Lord your God.

Joel is one of the Twelve Minor Prophets in the First, or Old, Testament. They are sometimes called the Minor Prophets, but that term is not particularly helpful. There is nothing minor league about them. They are called that simply because their books are short and to the point, but what they give us is profound and far from something to be overlooked.

In this passage, God’s people were in a serious wilderness moment. They were experiencing a locust plague. This plague came with force. In Joel 1, we see that the elders could not remember anything like it before. It came in stages as the locusts chewed their way through the land. They swarmed, crawled, and consumed everything in their path. It affected every part of life for God’s people.

It was just one thing after another. You have felt those in your wilderness moments.

Some see a prophetic dimension in this, pointing to how God’s people would later be ruled by other “plagues” in the form of world empires—Babylon, the Medo-Persians, Greece, and Rome. Others see it simply as a description of the locust invasion’s life cycles and waves. Either way, we know the plague affected far more than just farmers, and it affected everyone in every walk of life, in every way possible.

The Response Needed In Wilderness Moments

How we respond in these moments matters. The drunks drank. The priests gave up. Joel calls us to something better and more effective. Like Jesus, Joel calls us to repentance.

The name Joel can be translated, “Yahweh is God.” It is a confession built right into his name. And fittingly, the prophet who bears that name calls God’s people back to that very truth. Through his message, Joel invites us—much like Jesus later would—to turn back to God and to find restoration by returning to his ways.

The nation is called to repent, to fast, and to pray. Everyone.

In this story, the locusts had stripped the land so bare that there was nothing left even to make sacrifices to God. Joel recognizes the level of destruction and understands this as a day of the Lord—destruction meant to bring correction. Joel becomes an intercessor, speaking on behalf of the people of God. He cries out for mercy from God—for the land, for the people, and even for the animals—because the land has become a wilderness.

Joel describes it as an ongoing problem, a continual wave of destruction. The older locusts are bad enough, but then the younger ones come and consume even more. Joel seems especially troubled that the vines used for wine have been destroyed; he mentions this three times at the beginning of the book. I think he misses the wine. Because of that, he even calls the drunkards to repent with him.

He calls the people to cry out like a widow who has lost her husband in the betrayal stage.

What is interesting is that when Joel calls the people to gather, to blow the trumpet, and to cry out to God, the language echoes something familiar in Scripture. Old Testament scholar John Goldingay—a professor I was blessed to study under—points out that the kind of cry Joel calls for resembles the cry Israel made under Egyptian oppression. It is the desperate cry of a people who have reached the end of themselves and are calling out to God for mercy. In other words, life had become so desperate it felt like Egypt all over again.

The way forward, Joel says, is the same as it was last time.

A Deeper Look at Repentance

This way of life—of repentance—in the wilderness moments is more than just an outward show of worship. It is more than ripping one’s clothes or offering a sacrifice. It requires all of who we are. It calls for the turning of the inward person. It means fasting, weeping, and lamenting from an authentic and transparent place. It involves the whole person, inward and outward.

We are called to rend our hearts. I love that language. The word in Hebrew for “rend” speaks to open by ripping, to tear apart and open, to split apart in a way that exposes the heart, not just the flesh. In Hebrew thought, just as we often use the brain as an image for thinking today, the heart was the center of the person. The heart represented the seat of the will, the mind, the emotions, the intellect, and even identity. It is from this central place that repentance must come.

We also find in repentance a readjustment to who God is in our lives. The people in Joel’s day would have been struggling to see any goodness left in life. However, Joel calls them to focus on a good God in a hard time.

Joel reminds them why we repent, why this kind of inward and outward confession is needed.

Correction, suffering, and struggle may be part of life, but that does not mean that God is full of wrath and anger. We do not repent because we are trying to appease a distant parent in the sky who wants to punish us, defeat us, or crush us.

We repent because God is a God of love.

Joel does not focus on explaining the disaster as punishment. Instead, he focuses on calling the people back to God. He speaks in a way that anticipates restoration, almost as if what God is going to do has already happened. In this sense, Joel speaks prophetically.

This continual call to repentance—this returning to the heart of God and to the goodness and love of God—is also the way of Jesus. It is the same continual practice that Jesus calls us to be defined by. It is the message we see in the preaching of John the Baptist and in the ministry of Jesus himself. It is why Paul tells us that God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance.

To return to God, and to turn away from life as we have shaped it on our own terms, requires our whole hearts. It involves our actions, our emotions, and our willingness to face both God’s goodness and our own brokenness.

I think we also learn something about Joel himself. He walked with God in an intimate way. He speaks about these things with clarity and confidence because he lived them and experienced them himself. His words are lofty and pure, yet they are practical, not formulaic. They come life-tested.

What the people were experiencing was a wilderness moment. It does not seem to be tied to a particular sin, such as idolatry. Rather, it appears to be a moment of correction—a readjustment from God to bring their priorities and their hearts back into alignment. It is a wilderness moment meant to remind them how dependent they truly are on God.

Our wilderness moments are often the same.

Later in the book, Joel speaks of a future time when God will pour out his Spirit. Christians understand that promise to be fulfilled in Jesus and seen clearly at Pentecost. Yet even then, as now, that life with God is experienced through the rending of our hearts.

Repentance is Hope

There is also hope in Joel’s words in verse 14, he says God may even leave a blessing. It echoes the hope we hear in Psalm 90, a cry that says, “Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble” (Psalm 90:14–15). Joel has confidence that God will restore what has been lost, even bringing back more than what was taken.

We suffer, we go through wilderness moments, but repentance brings us back to the true heart of God because we trust that God is still at work. As Paul says, “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).

The land may be destroyed, but it is never too late to return to God. It only requires a heart that is turned toward him.

Historically, this passage has often been read during Lent, especially on Ash Wednesday, in the Book of Common Prayer in the Church of England. It shows us what repentance looks like.

We see a pattern throughout Scripture: when people turn toward God, God responds. We see it in Jonah, we see it here in Joel, and we hear it echoed in James, who writes that if we draw near to God, God will draw near to us.

Repentance As The Way Forward

The way forward is not about working harder, being tougher, becoming bolder, or simply performing better outward acts of worship. The way forward in these wilderness moments is to recognize our need for God and allow them to move us toward repentance.

For Joel, we don’t repent out of fear or punishment, we repent because of what we are turning toward—the goodness and the character of God.

In fact, in this passage, we encounter what many scholars recognize as a creedal statement about the character of God. This description of who God is appears at least eight times elsewhere in the Old Testament. It is the nature of God that we are meant to wrestle with in the wilderness.

In this passage, Joel reminds the people who God is.

• God is gracious—he meets us with kindness, not indifference.
• God is compassionate—like a loving parent toward a child.
• God is slow to anger—patient, giving us time to return.
• God abounds in love—faithful even when we are not.
• And Joel says God relents from sending calamity—he does not delight in destruction; he delights in restoring his people.

Repentance is about focusing on the character of God.

How To Render Our Hearts

I do not know what wilderness moment you may be in right now. Maybe it is something natural, maybe something spiritual. Maybe it is a moment that feels unlike anything you have experienced before. Perhaps you are lamenting. Perhaps, like the drunkards in Joel, you are tempted to escape the pain because the reality of life feels too heavy to carry.

Three things to remember in this season:

1. We find God through repentance. In moments where land has been stripped bare, because of life’s suffering moments or because of our sin, repentance is the doorway back to God and the way we experience his presence and kingdom.
2. We repent with our whole lives. Repentance is not just words or rituals. Wilderness moments are a time to inventory our hearts, search for the wayward things, and repent of them; repenting involves our hearts, our choices, and the direction of our lives.
3. Repentance remembers who God is. We do not repent out of fear, or because we have to; we are repenting because we are turning toward a gracious, compassionate, and loving God.

Maybe you are in a season that feels like everything had been stripped away. Maybe life feels like a wilderness season—uncertain, painful, exposed. The good news of Joel’s message is that the wilderness is not the end of the story.

God refuses, in his goodness, to leave us there.

Joel reminds us who God is: gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love. He is not eager to destroy his people. He delights in restoring them.

That is why repentance matters.

Repentance is not about appeasing an angry God. It is about returning to a good one. It is how we come back to the heart of God when life has been stripped bare.

So if you find yourself in a wilderness moment today, remember this: repentance matters. It is an ongoing, continuing act that should define our relationship with a gracious and patient God.

And in that place, we discover that the God who calls us to repent is the same God who welcomes us home when we repent.

Thanks for reading. I’m Jeff McLain, and I write the Lead a Quiet Life blog on Patheos, exploring Christian spiritual formation and the call of 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12 to lead a quiet life in a noisy world. If this post resonated, share it, leave a comment, or connect with the Lead a Quiet Life page on Facebook. You can also learn more about me at jeffmclain.com.