Repentance is Valuing Jesus Above All Else

But we can only walk away from something for so long. Eventually, just walking away wears us out. We get tired. We get bitter. We get angry. A moment must come when we aren't just walking away from something. At some point, we have to catch a vision, a breath, a taste of something that turns our attention and focus in a new direction. Only then can we truly leave things in the past and get excited about the future.

In order for repentance to hold, for it to "stick", we must be convinced that we're choosing something better than what we're leaving behind. Our motivation has to be turning toward something rather than just walking away from something else.

And this wraps it up:

Repentance is about choosing life with Christ over life with anything else. So repentance isn't about stopping what we're doing; it's about valuing Jesus more than what we're doing. That's why we turn; not just because our old ways are self-destructive, wrong, or immoral, but because of how much we value Christ. And how much we believe He's better than anything else.

- pp 45-46 "Holy Vocabulary" by Michael Kelley