Finally, it dawned on me what was happening! Then once again, they ended up back on their knees at the altar - crying buckets of tears and profusely sobbing. I noticed that after they walked out the back door of the church, many of them didn’t show their faces in church again until the next year’s revival meeting. Growing up in church gives a person time to watch people and learn - and I began to recognize that many of these criers were the same people each year. Frequently the people who cried buckets of tears at the altar were the same people who came forward in the altar calls each year during revival meetings. I f you were really sincere, shouldn’t you have cried like all the others did when they repented and got saved?Īs time passed, I began to notice a very important trend.Why didn’t you cry when you came forward to give your heart to Christ?.Preying on my insecurity and fears, the devil began to torment me every day with thoughts, such as: Adults often wept and wept when they bowed at the altar, but I didn’t shed a tear the day I got saved. This doubt stemmed from watching what happened when others got saved, which was entirely different from my own personal experience. However, not long after I walked the aisle and received Christ, I began to seriously doubt whether I had really been saved. It was at one of these revival meetings that I heard an evangelist preach about hell, and I became so convicted of my sin that I committed my life to Jesus. Each year we had annual revival meetings in our church. I remember an experience as a young boy growing up in church that made a huge impact on my life and helped me understand the vast difference between two words: r emorse and true r epentance. Over the next few days, I’d like to continue to explore this all-important subject further with you, because so many don’t really understand what true repentance is or why it’s so foundational and necessary to the Christian walk. In yesterday’s S parkling Gem, I started talking about the subject r epentance. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And they said, What is that to us? See thou to that. Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.