One time a college student dropped by my office and said,

“I made a decision to give my life to Christ last summer at a camp meeting, and this time I really thought I was converted. But within a few weeks, I was farther from God than ever. This has happened to me time and time again. What’s wrong that my conversions never last?”

Conversion is not supposed to last longer than one day! This student’s dilemma wasn’t a problem of being converted too often-it was a problem of not being converted often enough!

We don’t believe in once-converted, always-converted. If you are really converted today, you still need to be really converted tomorrow. Conversion must be a daily matter.

One summer I worked as a student colporter in the sandhills of Nebraska. I expected that the experience I had with God during the summer would continue right through the school year. But when the busy school schedule hit me and, surrounded by my friends, I no longer felt such a need to seek God, the high experience of the summer quickly faded. Spiritually, it turned out to be one of my worst school years.

Even the most spectacular manifestations of God’s power quickly lose their power to influence us. It was true in the time of Christ. He had fed 5,000 men, plus women and children, from a few loaves and fishes. Heaven had seemed to come down to earth. The people were ready to crown Him king. You can read about it in John 6.

Just twenty-four hours later, when He refused their request for new and greater miracles, the people were just as ready to turn away from Him in disgust. They had no patience to eat the mysterious Bread of Life of which He spoke. So many of them turned from Him that day that He finally asked His disciples, “Are you going away too?” Apparently His disciples were about the only ones left.

If you haven’t discovered the necessity of daily conversion, it can be a major breakthrough in your life.

Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, page 101, makes this promise:

“If you will seek the Lord and be converted every day … all your murmurings will be stilled, all your difficulties will be removed, all the perplexing problems that now confront you will be solved.”

Conversion and repentance are closely linked together, and I’ve included repentance in this thesis as I make the transition into the theses concerning repentance. But repentance is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It, too, is to be a daily matter.

When I speak of repentance as a daily necessity, I’m not talking about repentance for wrong deeds. You have probably heard the story about the man who said to his pastor, “I’ve asked God to forgive me for this particular sin a thousand times.”

And the pastor responded, “That’s 999 times too many!”

I’m not campaigning for an endless recital of our faults and failings. God has promised that

“if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” - 1 John 1:9.

Instead I’m talking about repentance in the sense described in The Acts of the Apostles, page 561:

“None of the apostles and prophets ever claimed to be without sin. Men who have lived the nearest to God, men who would sacrifice life itself rather than knowingly commit a wrong act, men whom God has honored with divine light and power, have confessed the sinfulness of their nature.”

This is the repentance which is needed daily, the repentance brought about by a renewed realization of our sinful condition which makes the grace of God a necessity. This is the repentance of which it is said,

“At every advance step in our Christian experience our repentance will deepen.” - Ibid.

Are you converted? Have you been converted today? Have you come to God for repentance today ?