What True Repentance Means and How to Answer God's Calling
True repentance is not about cleaning yourself up enough to be acceptable. It is about turning 180 degrees, away from the thing that has been running your life and toward the one who has been waiting on you the whole time. That is what God's calling looks like in practice: not a program, not a performance, but a direction.
Most of us have tried the other version. We make a resolution at the start of a new year, hold it for three weeks, and quietly go back to the same habits with a little extra guilt on top. The problem is not willpower. The problem is that we are trying to fix something from the inside that was always meant to be handed over. Luke 1:57-66 and Luke 3:1-6 tell the story of two people; Zechariah and Elizabeth, and then their son John the Baptist; who had to let go of their own plan entirely before anything God had promised could actually begin.
How Surrendering to God's Plan Moves You Forward When You Are Stuck
Zechariah and Elizabeth waited. That is the part of the story nobody leads with, because waiting does not make a good opening. They had been promised a child, then silence. Years of silence. Zechariah's inability to speak — after he questioned God's word in the temple — was not just a consequence. It was a container. He had no choice but to sit inside God's timing instead of running his mouth about it. Surrendering to God's plan is like that. It is not passive resignation. It is the active practice of trusting that the waiting itself is doing something you cannot see.
When the moment finally arrived — when Elizabeth gave birth and the neighbors showed up to celebrate and the argument broke out over what to name the child — Zechariah did not try to manage the situation. He asked for a writing tablet and wrote, simply and without debate: "His name is John." And immediately his voice came back. He was restored the moment he affirmed what God had already said.
Surrendering to God's plan does not require understanding it first. Zechariah did not understand. He just wrote the name. That is the whole thing, really. You can spend another year negotiating with the circumstances, or you can pick up the tablet and write the name. One small honest move in the direction God is pointing tends to open something up. This week, try naming one area of your life where you have been holding the pen but refusing to write. Just name it. That is where surrendering to God's plan begins.
If you want to understand what that surrender looks like lived out over time, explore it here.
What Does Following God's Calling Actually Require of You?
John the Baptist did not end up in the wilderness by accident. He was called there. And the wilderness, Aaron pointed out, is lonely and it is hard. John was not in the temple where the respectable people gathered. He was out in the country around the Jordan River, preaching to whoever showed up. Following God's calling in Luke 3 did not come with a comfortable assignment. It came with a direction and the expectation that John would go.
The question Aaron kept returning to throughout the sermon was simple and maddening: to what extent will you go? The wise men from the Epiphany story traveled months, maybe years, navigating language barriers, short rations, and a paranoid king — following a star that made no rational sense. What drove them was not certainty. It was wonder. Albert Einstein, of all people, said it plainly: the person who can no longer wonder and stand in awe is as good as dead. Following God's calling begins with recovering that capacity for wonder, and wonder does not wait for you to have everything figured out first.
There is a practical dimension to this, too. John was not wearing fine clothes or living inside the system he was sent to shake. He was in the wilderness. Following God's calling sometimes means going somewhere inconvenient, or saying something uncomfortable, or naming yourself as part of a movement that society does not fully validate yet. The application is almost annoyingly simple: identify one step in front of you that you have been avoiding because it does not make sense yet. Take it anyway. God equips the called. He does not call the equipped.
When you are ready to hear more sermons that ask the same hard questions, find it here.
Living a Life of Repentance Is Not About Being Good — It Is About Being Different
Aaron was clear about this and said it more than once because it is the part we tend to get wrong. We do not repent to make God happy. We do not repent to become a better version of ourselves in the self-help sense. Living a life of repentance means we have acknowledged that we are burdened by something we cannot remove on our own, and we want to live differently — not to perform goodness, but to stay close to the one who has already declared us spotless.
In Luke 3:3, John goes out preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Aaron slowed down here and unpacked the grammar: the word "of" shows relationship; the word "for" shows purpose. The baptism is the relationship between repentance and forgiveness. It is not a one-time cleanse that you then have to keep re-earning. Living a life of repentance is more like the metaphor Aaron used: you shower every night because the day leaves grime on you. You repent because the world is constantly pulling you somewhere that is not where you said you wanted to go.
The story Aaron told near the end of the sermon lands here. Two men in a room: one is drinking gin he hid in a toilet tank, one is sober. The drinker asks how the other is managing. "I got religion," the sober man says. The drinker rejects that immediately. You know who those two men were? Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was the sober one. He died a God-fearing man. Living a life of repentance is not about religion. It is about a personal relationship with Jesus that changes what you actually reach for when things get hard. The practical step today: the next time you feel the pull toward whatever you usually reach for, pause long enough to ask one honest question — is this the direction I said I wanted to go?
What Luke 1 Says About Purpose, Preparation, and the Name You Were Given
Luke 1:57-66 ends with a question the neighbors were asking about John: "What then is this child going to be? For the Lord's hand was with him." That question is still alive. It is the one underneath every version of "I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing with my life."
The structured answer that runs through both Luke 1 and Luke 3 has three movements:
1. God Equips the Called
What it means: Zechariah and Elizabeth were too old. There was no natural path to the child they had been promised. God did not wait for the conditions to be right — he made them.
The invitation: Stop waiting until you feel ready. You are already called. The equipping comes after you move.
2. The Wilderness Is Where the Work Begins
What it means: John did not operate from a position of power or comfort. His ministry began in the hard places, among ordinary people, outside the structures that gave others their credibility.
The invitation: Following God's calling may take you somewhere inconvenient. That is not a sign you are doing it wrong.
3. Repentance Prepares the Path
What it means: In Luke 3:4-6, Isaiah's words are quoted: every valley filled in, every mountain made low, crooked roads made straight. This is not a landscaping project. It is the interior work of confession, self-examination, and surrender that clears the way.
The invitation: The path becomes straight through honesty, not through effort alone.
From Huntsville to the Conroe Corridor: The Call Is Regional
Walker County and the surrounding region — from Huntsville through Conroe and across the communities between them — are full of people who have tried church and moved on, or who have never tried it and are not sure they should. If you are somewhere in that stretch of Texas, driving the same roads and asking the same questions you were asking last year, what Aaron preached is not for people who already have it together. It is for the ones who are tired of pretending they do. At The Well gathers Sunday evenings in downtown Huntsville, two blocks from Sam Houston State University, for a shared meal and a conversation that does not require you to perform faith before you have it. Whether you are in Walker County or driving up from Montgomery County for a reason you cannot fully explain, there is a seat at the table.
You Were Made for Something You Have Not Named Yet
The question Aaron kept asking is worth carrying out the door: to what extent will you go? Not to guilt you into something. To wake up the part of you that already knows the answer. True repentance is not self-punishment. It is orientation. God's calling is not a burden. It is the truest thing about you, waiting for you to stop arguing with it and pick up the tablet.
Come see what a table looks like when nobody has to earn their seat; join us here.
If you are ready to go deeper into what this community is built on, get involved here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What does true repentance really look like in my life?
A: True repentance is not about feeling bad enough or saying the right words. It is the decision to turn 180 degrees away from the behavior or pattern that has been driving your life and toward a different direction. Aaron describes it this way: we repent not to make God happy, but because we want to live close to him. It is less a one-time event and more an ongoing practice of honesty and reorientation.
Q: How do I surrender my plans to God's will when I don't know what that will is?
A: Zechariah did not get a detailed explanation. He got a name to write on a tablet. Surrendering to God's plan often starts with the smallest honest move in the direction you already sense you should be heading, without waiting for the full picture first. Trust tends to grow in motion, not in advance of it.
Q: How do I follow God's calling even when I'm uncertain?
A: Uncertainty is not the opposite of calling — it is almost always part of it. The wise men in the Epiphany story followed a star with no GPS and a hostile king in the way. John the Baptist ended up in the wilderness. Following God's calling even when uncertain means leading with wonder instead of waiting for certainty, and taking one step before you feel ready.
Q: Is this kind of faith only for people who have hit rock bottom?
A: Not at all. Aaron was clear: this is for everyone asking the question "to what extent am I willing to go?" That question belongs to the person who has lost everything and the person whose life looks perfectly fine from the outside but feels hollow on the inside. The sermon was aimed at anyone who has ever suspected that what they have been chasing is not actually what they are looking for.
Q: What is the difference between religion and a personal relationship with Jesus?
A: Aaron told the story of two men in a room — one sober through a spiritual experience, one who "got religion" and died drunk. Religion is a set of behaviors and affiliations. A personal relationship with Jesus is the thing that actually changes what you reach for. The 12 Steps, the Beatitudes, the table at At The Well — these are tools in service of that relationship, not the relationship itself.
