In his series about Heaven, Pastor Daniel Brown asks, in the world to come, will we be who we were?

There are two kinds of death—spiritual and natural. Death is not a state of oblivion or non-existence; it is, rather, a separation from the life that was meant to be. Spiritual death cuts people off from relationship with God in the spirit realm, and our physical death will cut us off from relationship with the people we love here on earth. Death is the state we are in after we have been cut off from the life we would have had, and from the people who love us.

Physical objects can exist in different states on earth. Most of us learned years ago in Science class that physical matter can exist in three states—solid, liquid and gas—without altering its fundamental organic composition. H₂O is a good example. It can be steam, water, or ice. Water freezes to become ice; it boils to become steam. Steam will not quench thirst, water will not reduce swelling and ice cannot help remove wallpaper. Each physical state has its own qualities, but each of them is H₂O. When we die physically, we merely change states. Our metamorphosis takes us from one form to another, from one dimension to another. Though we change states, we remain essentially who we are.

Our reborn spirit already exists in us in the same manner that it will exist after our bodies die. Even now our spirit inhabits the dimension to which we will be fully translated upon death. Though we are not that cognizant of our spirit in the present earthly life, and though our spirit will have a new body in Heaven, it is fundamentally as it will be after death. We will simply be more conscious of it in Heaven. As we learned earlier, our soul is comprised of our thoughts, emotions, will-power and consciousness. Our awareness of the world around us, as well as of our inner selves, comes from our soul. The good news is that our personalities will be “refined” like gold from base ore, but who we are before we die is who we will be after we die. So, our souls/spirits remain intact and essentially the same.

This is why birth is such an excellent analogy for death. As surely as a newborn baby dies from the womb-world into this world, so will our passing from life on earth be a rebirth into another. Jesus said, “You must be born again.” (John 3:3) Babies do not cease to exist when they pass down the birth canal, but they no longer live in the womb. Until we grasp this basic truth—that death is changed existence—we will stumble over what the Bible tells us about life after death. Our conscious existence will be extended, not exterminated. Our state will be transformed, and we will shift dimensions, but we will not lose our identity:

Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.1 Corinthians 15:51-53

In our life after death, we will not become new (different) people. We will be ourselves, with the same fundamental qualities of personhood that we have now—minus any wrongs, distortions, wounding or bondage. God calls Himself “I AM” (Exodus 3:14) If this quality of being and remaining the same is so central to God’s identity, then it makes sense that His children, made in His image, will also always be who they are. When the offspring of “I AM THAT I AM” transition from the earthly plane to the heavenly dimension, their identities are not going to be “I AM DIFFERENT THAN I WAS.”

Image: Tom Barrett

We are like expensive antique bureaus finely detailed and handcrafted by a famous wood worker many years ago. Since our creation, though, we have been gouged by many things; we have been spilled upon, burnt by hot wax, water-stained and repainted in garish colors. Our hinges are loose, the drawers do not slide like they used to, and one of our edges has been stripped of its molding. When such antique pieces get restored and refinished, they are not fundamentally altered; rather, they are renewed to what they have always been despite the wear and tear.

The human soul/spirit is not immortal in the sense that it is not subject to death. Neither does the human soul/spirit exist as an eternal entity on its own. Only God, who has neither beginning nor end, is truly immortal and eternal. (1 Timothy 6:15-16) He is never subject to death, change or dependence on anything outside of Himself. The human soul/spirit does not have an eternal nature of its own. He grants us eternal life, but we always depend on Him for our life in eternity, which is why Paul exclaims:

Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. 1 Timothy 1:17

We will retain our original God-given personality and character when we rise from the dead. Everyone will live after death—either experiencing eternal death (separation from God and His life) in Hell, or eternal life in Heaven. We will all rise again, and though different eternities await us depending on how we respond to Jesus Christ, we will exist forever—either with God or without Him.

PR

Originally from www.coastlands.org. Used with permission of the author.

Further Reading:

Daniel Brown, “Will I Have A Body In Heaven?”

Daniel Brown, “How Old Will I Be In Heaven?”

Daniel Brown, “Heaven: Will I Recognize My Loved Ones?“

Pastor Daniel Brown says that when it comes to organizing a local congregation, “structure” should be a verb, not a noun.

Sometimes the most obvious truths escape our attention until we find ourselves in a new setting. For instance, even though I had been taught the truth of God’s word from boyhood, it was not until after I began attending a Pentecostal church during my college years that I realized how often the Bible exhorted me to “Praise the Lord.” The non-charismatic church culture from which I came made me inherently suspicious of borderline danger points that might carry me away into emotionalism—like lifted hands, spoken praise and hymnal-less worship. I still do not know how I had missed such an obvious theme in Scripture, but “Praise God” suddenly made sense to me as a personal encouragement, rather than as mere words or an emphatic (verbal) punctuation mark.

Perhaps that is why I’m always on the lookout for obvious truths that unintentionally become hidden behind well-meaning spiritual attitudes. Take for example our passion and earnest prayers for God to “do something”; as Pentecostals we celebrate spontaneous interventions, miraculous and sovereign activities of the Spirit. And well we should. But a simple reading of the Bible reveals that what God does on earth almost always happens through the agency of individual human beings; He does almost nothing all on his own, without using some person’s staff, hand, lips, etc. People are God’ss tool of choice, and that is why Jesus told us to pray for laborers, rather than for the harvest (Matt. 9:37-38).

I’m not suggesting that it is wrong to pray for revival—just that it is an incomplete understanding of how God “moves” unless we have a corresponding passion to mobilize workers for the Harvest: intercession and discipleship; seeking God and sending people. One way to think about why God employs us fallible creatures, is that He wants us to share His excitement by involving us in the very process of rescuing and transforming His children.

In the same way that an overly spiritualized view of God’s activity on our planet can cloud a complete picture of how He does things, so too can our feelings about natural vs. spiritual—especially when it comes to subjects like administration and structure in our churches. We who rely on fresh leadings of the Lord in our personal lives and ministry are suspicious of any barriers or limitations that might get put in His way. The very mention of structure frightens many Pentecostal leaders—usually because they fear it will unduly “quench” or interrupt the free flow the Spirit.

But God is not constrained by order; a river with narrower passage flows faster, and a river that overflows its banks is called a flood. Just as God uses flesh and blood people as vessels for His activity, (subjecting the spirit of a prophet to the prophet), so He often makes physical arrangements to sustain spiritual breakthroughs; “God is not a God of confusion” (1 Corinthians 14:32-33). From the very beginning of Creation we see God bringing order to chaos, setting up boundaries to distinguish night from day, developing (eco)systems, job descriptions (“Be fruitful and fill?”) and arenas of responsibility (Caretakers of the planet).

The Book of Numbers is essentially an administrative handbook on duties and arrangements for God’s people, and throughout the Old Testament we find series after series of record-keeping, boundary-defining, tribe-distinguishing, people-deploying and assignment-giving. Whatever their spiritual meaning or implication, these are administrative activities—the stuff of structure and logistics.

In his series about Heaven, Pastor Daniel Brown asks, in the world to come, will we recognize our loved ones?

God is the God of the living, not of the dead. (Mark 12:27) We do not cease to exist after death on earth; we pass into the realm of spirit—but we retain enough distinctive essence of our true selves to be easily identified by everyone else. At the transfiguration, the disciples recognized Moses and Elijah who had lived hundreds of years prior to Peter, James and John. Though the disciples had never met Moses and Elijah on earth, they were able to recognize them for who they were. This has exciting implications for us. Not only will we recognize our friends and loved ones in Heaven, it seems likely that we will also “know” all the other inhabitants, and everyone else will know us, too.

The Bible speaks of several distinct groups of redeemed people in Heaven, such as the twenty-four elders, (Revelation 4:10) the hundred and forty-four thousand who go through the “Great Ordeal” with the Anti-Christ, (Revelation 14:1-3) and the great multitude that “no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues.” (Revelation 7:4-9). Without recognizable bodies, these groups of heavenly residents would be impossible to identify, so it is safe to conclude that we will have features in Heaven to distinguish us from one another. We will recognize others in Heaven.

Here on earth we know one another more than just by our looks. For instance, we converse “over the phone” with a voice—knowing it is our friend or spouse. Just by the sound of their voice, we know who they are, and it does not seem the least bit odd to relate to them without seeing their physical form. Likewise, when we read a letter from a dear friend, we actually read it with their voice echoing in our mind. We mimic the sound of it as we read the letter silently.

We get a feel for people we know, a sense of their personality and humor and presence. When we happen to think of them, we can do so as easily in terms of their personality (what they are like) as we can in terms of their physical features (what they look like). If you were to tell me that one of my golfing buddies went into a rage and broke the Clubhouse window because of a missed putt, I would tell you that there must be some mistake; my friends are not like that.

Our clay bodies are like an old set of clothes. My wife used to wear a blue and white, ankle-length gingham skirt. I loved how it looked on her—just as I love particular outfits she has now. None of her clothes have lasted as long as our marriage. Different ensembles; same wife. When the clothes are bundled up in the bag she takes to the dry cleaners, I can recognize her dresses and blouses, and say they are hers. But just because she is not wearing a particular outfit does not mean I have trouble recognizing her! So it will be when you and I put off our earthly outfit and put on our heavenly one.

Pastor Daniel Brown discusses the roadblocks and complexities that keep church leaders from inviting others alongside to help shoulder the burdens of ministry.

• Pastors sincerely want to serve the people in their churches, and that servant heartedness sometimes forgets that giving others opportunity to serve is one of the most loving things a leader can do. Jesus explained that the pathway to significance is through the servants’ quarters. Pastors who do not want to “bother” others and ask for their help are unintentionally barring the doors to those rooms.
• Pastors are sometimes worried that the delegated task will not get “done right,” which is to say, exactly like the pastor would have done it. Perhaps because of faulty notions of “authority,” on every subject and type of activity from decorating to worship to retreat-planning to budgeting to graphic design, etc. Aren’t we glad God does not espouse, “If you want something done right, do it yourself”?
• Many pastors confuse delegation with dictation. If a leader spends all the time to think a job through, and spell out how it is to be done, the leader has already missed the point of delegation. Jethro’s advice for how Moses ought to delegate ministry to others contains a simple, but often overlooked detail: let others be the front line; let them be the first to deal with situations, and whatever they decide they cannot handle should be brought to Moses-not the other way around.
• Pastors have been ‘burned’ by previous experiences with delegation, and they are not eager to be disappointed all over again. It only takes a few dropped balls by volunteers to condition pastors not to trust the quality of quantity of others’ work. Actually, most of the disappointments in delegation happen because leaders: miscast people in unsuitable jobs; fail to give enough information or support; choose not to deal with preexisting attitude problems; or, unintentionally prevent people from really taking ownership of the job.

Image: Markus Spiske

• Pastors fall into the whirlpool of being too busy to look for, disciple and enlist more workers. Since it takes longer (initially) to adequately delegate than it does to do a job themselves, pastors, who are already crunched for time because of all the things they are doing themselves—because it is quicker, have a hard time justifying the “lost time” that delegation and follow-up require. Eventually, the church ends up only able to produce what one extremely busy leader can accomplish.
• Pastors can fear losing importance if many other people start doing lots of great things. Pride urges leaders to keep the credit (thereby the work) for themselves; the truth is that unless they have a pride problem themselves, people will respect a leader who delegates significant responsibility far more than they will regard a leader who does not.

PR

Used with permission of the author.

Foursquare Pastor Daniel Brown continues his study about the final reality.

That brings up the question, How old will we be in Heaven—will everyone be the same age, regardless of their age of death on earth? This is most often asked by mothers who have lost a child in the womb or very early in childhood. Understandably, parents want to know the nature of their future relationship with a child lost in infancy or early adulthood. Many mothers and fathers have been disallowed from carrying a child through infancy, or enjoying a child for all the teenage years, or developing the unique friendship that can form with adult-children. Death has deprived us of so much on earth! Even when we have enjoyed our children fully, we still taste a degree of death (impending separation) in the tears we cry at their graduation or wedding. Our hearts long to recapture the moments and the memories stolen from us by the thief, the prince of this world, (John 12:31 and Ephesians 2:2) whose whole agenda is to steal, kill and destroy. (John 10:10)

In the tender book I’ll Hold You in Heaven, Jack Hayford writes that parents who lost an unborn child “will meet him or her some day, and will simply ‘know’ who they are.” After death we are not “airy ghosts floating somewhere in space.” We can only speculate about the age and the features of such children as they will appear in Heaven. As Dr. Hayford continues, their appearance “is as unpredictable to you now as it was before [their] birth, but it is very possibly like the body his or her genetic code would have dictated had the child lived” on earth.

Though the Bible does not give an exact age for the inhabitants of Heaven, we will be changeless like the Lord, and probably look like adults—before they begin to age [on earth]. The earliest inhabitants of the earth, like Adam and Eve, and their nearest descendants lived hundreds of years. (Genesis 5) Seth, Cain and Abel’s younger brother, lived a total of nine hundred and twelve years. Did he look appreciably different at age ninety-four than he did at six hundred and twelve? A very long life tends to make one age look very much like another. Eternity makes age a moot point! Our heavenly bodies will be ageless.

Image: Sam Schooler

PR

Originally from www.coastlands.org. Used with permission of the author.

Further Reading:

Daniel Brown, “Will I Have A Body In Heaven?“

Foursquare Pastor Daniel Brown offers useful tips for approaching God’s Word.

All of us have encountered verses and statements in the Bible that confuse or alarm us because they seem to be saying something that sounds so unlike the Lord, so different than how we have experienced Him in our personal life. When that happens, what can we do to at least begin to look at those passages from a more helpful perspective?

Here are a few suggestions for better understanding the Bible:

1. Relax in the assurance that what you do not understand now, you will understand in the future. Don’t get “stuck” on something that you do not fully understand. Just keep reading, and focus on verses that make obvious sense to you today.
2. Read the Bible in light of God’s goodness, kindness and graciousness. Any understanding that paints God in a different light is an incomplete or an inaccurate interpretation.
3. Everything in the Scriptures, if understood correctly, will “build you up”—encouraging and strengthening you—and add to your awareness of all the spiritual resources and provisions the Lord gives as your inheritance (Acts 20:32)
4. Be sure to read the passage in its full context—looking at what has happened before, and what transpires afterwards; those bookends explain a lot.
5. Be careful to catch all the details of the text; what the Bible actually does and does not say is often quite different from what we infer or imagine it says.
6. Look at the cross-references; they will take you to similar or parallel passages elsewhere in the Bible. The whole Bible is the best lens through which to look at any portion of the whole.
7. Get the literal story firmly in your mind before you start drawing conclusions or trying to generalize from a single episode. What happened in one historic situation does not necessarily imply anything about the future situations.
8. Maintain a posture of humility. There may be things that you cannot understand about what God does/says; His plans and activities are often too deep or too high for us to grasp with our limited human brain (Psalm 92:5; Isaiah 55:8-9). Count on the fact that God knows more, loves more and does more that we could ever fully realize.

Image: Aaron Burden

In addition to these specific suggestions, it is hugely helpful to simply pray, asking Jesus to give you the understanding and awareness you need for your walk with Him today. As obvious as it sounds, remember that we cannot learn/know everything at once, right away. We grow in our spiritual understanding; a steady diet of Bible reading will absolutely guarantee that you will digest all the spiritual nutrients you need for a healthy life.

Lastly, train your heart to echo David’s prayer, as he was trying to understand spiritual matters: “Make me know Your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths; lead me in Your truth and teach me for You are the God of my salvation” (Psalm 25:4-5).

Originally from www.coastlands.org, used with permission of the author.

Pastor Dan Brown offers practical suggestions for taking your church to the next level of significance.

Most of us have been stuck somewhere, somehow—in the desert sand off the main road; up a tree we climbed in our pre-adolescence; or, on a tricky algebra problem. But somehow, someway we got unstuck. When our tires spun uselessly in the sand, we tried different approaches; when the algebra equation withstood one thought, we assaulted it with another.

Getting stuck forces us to adapt our approach to life. In fact, one theory of learning says the brain is wired to solve predicaments, and true learning only happens when the mind tries to figure something out. God designed us to keep at it—knocking, seeking and asking—but to do so in close counsel with Him.

Image: Chris Potter

One of the shame-inducing truisms floating around the Body of Christ goes something like, “All healthy organisms grow.” Pastors of smaller or plateaued churches feel the implied jab: lack of growth is symptomatic of underlying sickness. That’s not very helpful in the real church-world. To begin with, there are limits to the size any organism can reach (Trophy trout are rare-especially in small streams), and if you keep growing after the legal age, it’s called getting fat.

We may find more solutions to what hinders our churches from growing larger if we think in terms of getting unstuck, rather than just getting bigger. Mega-congregations are the exception, not the rule, but they—like the oversized athletes who play in the NBA—get far more coverage than the many-times-more-numerous weekend warriors in leagues sponsored by local leagues.

Significance

Besides, the point is not, I hope, just to grow bigger congregations. Our true aim ought to be to grow more spiritually significant people. Rather than trying the latest sure-fire program emphases just to attract more people, we can actually focus our church growth strategies on the very things that make for bigger people. If we remember that the goal has never been to put on church per se, but to develop people with the tool called church, we can still find several ways to get our people unleashed and our churches unstuck.

Image: Vierdrie

The statistics are clear: 80% of all churches in the U.S. average fewer than 200 attendees each weekend. Without major change in leadership style, congregational dynamics, ministry vision, or some other significant aspect of church life, churches that have existed for more than 5 years will most likely stay the size they are now, with only moderate growth over time. Studies on church growth have sought to identify possible elements that accompany increases in the size of congregations. Some pastors mistakenly criticize church growth statistics, claiming that numbers do not tell the whole story: one’s passion for Jesus, one’s radical obedience to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, one’s diligent study of the scriptures, etc. cannot easily be translated into numbers for analysis. That is true, but if we presume that every pastor is equally diligent and committed, then other differences can tell us something interesting about what elements may promote or retard church! growth.

Pastor Daniel Brown talks about being led by God in contrast to the persistent nagging to follow the crowd.

Where God leads isn’t the same for everyone.

On a recent trip to Norway, I heard of a newly married couple who spent their honeymoon with in-laws building a small chapel in eastern Europe—using materials they had purchased with the “wedding gift” cash they requested instead of toasters and bath towels. Their home church was pioneered by a friend of mine in Oslo, far away from the doctrinal preoccupations in North America and seemingly unconcerned with the prominent locations where we are told God is moving.

Whenever I learn of sacrificial ministries like the young couple or my friends who have labored to build a church in post-Christian Scandinavia, I have a mixed reaction. Mostly, I celebrate their obedience to their calling and enjoy the thought that I’m a relative of theirs—much like my daughter’s friend who wore a big smile the week after her uncle, Mike Holmgren, won the Super Bowl.

My other feeling is sometimes one of doubt. Marveling at others’ ministry causes me to second-guess the legitimacy of my own. I don’t mean that I am especially tempted to compare my labors with theirs in terms of whose is greater—maneuvering for carnal bragging rights—though that is an occasional trap set in my mind by a vain question: Whose work for God is better? But that question isn’t the one I am primarily tormented by as a pastor. There is another question that I really do care about: Have I missed what God had for me?

A Sincere Question

It is a question born of sincerity, not insecurity—a desire to be and do everything God has in mind for me. The less my ministry resembles the details of another’s testimony, the more I wonder if I am wasting my time or missing the boat. I try to remember the cloud of witnesses—spiritual patriarchs and matriarchs who accomplished so many different types of things by faith (see Hebrews 11). I know we receive both God’s approval and a testimony by obeying His unique set of instructions to us. Not everyone gets told to build an ark.

But when I hear about someone building an ark, I secretly wonder if I should, too. When I go fishing, I want to find out what bait everyone else is using. Maybe it’s normal to think others know better than I do.

I suspect church and ministry leaders everywhere face the pressures of that nagging uncertainty. Because we know our labors are vain unless they correspond with what God is building, we are desperate to know what He is building. We want to get it right. So we seek and pray and study and look for any clue that will help us align our hearts and hands with His. That’s why books about God’s will for your life are so popular, and why we attend so many seminars about church. We want to discover His will for our ministries and for ourselves.

When I re-entered the U.S. after my Norway trip, I waited in a large room with several hundred passengers from various other flights while the customs agents checked passports. At one point there was a commotion on the far side of the room, and everyone turned to see what was happening. That’s how crowds work. Individuals spontaneously respond to the movement of the crowd. If the crowd starts going in one direction, most everyone goes along. Crowds have a natural momentum.

According to Jesus, it is intolerable for any spirit to be without a body-home. (Luke 11:24) Part of what makes us frightened about dying is that we do not want to be left unclothed, without a body. (2 Corinthians 5:4) Our uneasiness about whether or not we really will have a body to be in, coupled with understandable curiosity, gives rise to the questions, “What kind of body will it be? What will it be like”. The exact kind of answer we would like to have to those questions is not given in the Bible. When we think of the sort of body we would like to have, we tend to think in terms of physical features. Our heavenly bodies are not described in the Bible, at least not their appearance or outward features.

But we can surmise several facts about the bodies we will have after death.

Since we were made in God’s image to begin with, most likely our heavenly bodies will resemble our earthly bodies—only in a more glorified manner. This view is supported by Jesus’ appearance after his resurrection. Before He ascended out of physical sight and into the [invisible] third heaven, His glorified body was similar to His earthly body. The main difference between His earthly and heavenly bodies was not in appearance but in capabilities. In His spirit body He could function in the earthly realm—speaking, walking, eating, etc.—but He also moved in the realm of the spirit—vanishing from sight, (Luke 24:31) walking through walls, (John 20:26) and being received up into the third heaven.

Several of the people who saw Jesus on earth after He had risen from the dead thought He was a ghost, not a real person:

But they were startled and frightened and thought that they were seeing a spirit. And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. And while they still could not believe it for joy and were marveling, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; and He took it and ate it before them. Luke 24:37-43 One of His disciples, Thomas, who had not seen the resurrected Jesus with his own eyes, conjected that the other disciples had only seen a spirit. After Jesus appeared to all the disciples again and allowed Thomas to touch the places on Jesus’ body that had been wounded by the spikes and the spear during the Crucifixion, Jesus says to Thomas, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (John 20:27).

Lose your folklore and gain biblical insight about this misunderstood gift from God.

Jesus is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. Acts 5:31

Introduction

The subject of repentance is widely misunderstood and misapplied even by sincere believers who want to participate in everything the Lord has for them. Part of the confusion about repentance comes from so-called mature Christians who wrongly imagine that spirituality is measured by how little sin is in a person’s life. Because they want others to think highly of them, they try to maintain a facade of near perfection; or they consider repentance as something they already did at the time they were converted.

Although we should be making steady progress in turning away from the sins God has already pointed out in our lives, we should also be increasingly aware of additional sins He is presently uncovering in our minds and hearts. If we claim that we have no sin left in our lives, we are calling God a liar because He says we do (right now) have sins over which we should repent (1 John 1:8-10).

Repentance is not something to dread and avoid, but a spiritual activity to embrace. Once you understand how fruitful repentance operates, you will want to repent as often as you can. According to Mark, the beginning of the “Good News” is the invitation to repent. Admitting we have been wrong and welcoming the Lord to straighten out our thinking is a lot better than trying to pretend that we are just fine and dandy the way we are!

Fruitful repentance says, “Oh Lord, I’m wrong again.”

Bad Taste in Mouth

I felt unspiritual and unworthy because the roots of habitual or “personality” sins (in my case, laziness, willfulness and selfishness) seemingly went too deep for my meager attempts at repentance to get at and dig out. In my futile attempts to live up to my promises to God “not to ever do that again,” I heard an echo of my father’s instruction about how to weed our garden when I was a boy: “You have to get the roots, or the weeds will just grow back.”

The usual repentance scenario in my life used to be a cycle of the same sin, followed by repentance (I’m sorry), followed by asking God to forgive me. Over and over. As I continued to commit the same sin I had only recently repented of, my succeeding attempts to repent became ever more earnest and filled with incredible promises of how I would never again do that sin. With every imaginable adjective, I described my sorrow again and again, and I began to require of myself certain religious rigors—punishments, if you will—vainly trying to protest to myself and to God that I really meant I was sorry, and I really did repent, even though I had few fruits of repentance to show for it all.