Before Awe Comes Examination-Biblical Preparation for Repentace

What the Biblical Call to Repentance Teaches Us About Preparing the Heart

2026 Elizabeth Shulam

Biblical Preparation of the heart is especially visible in the season leading toward the Jewish High Holy Days. In Jewish life, the month of Elul traditionally serves as a period of reflection and repentance before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The purpose is not to manufacture a spiritual mood. It is to take seriously the reality that human beings live before God, answer for their conduct, and need His mercy.

Many believers have lost this kind of deliberate preparation. We move quickly from one event to another, one sermon to another, and one crisis to another. We may confess sin in broad terms while avoiding the specific habits, words, resentments, and divided loyalties that require attention. Scripture gives us a slower and more honest way.

Search Me and Know My Heart

Psalm 139 ends with a prayer that is both beautiful and unsettling:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me,and lead me in the way everlasting.”—Psalm 139:23–24, NRSVUE

David does not ask God to confirm that everything within him is healthy. He asks God to search him. He places his inner life before the Judge who sees without distortion and the Shepherd who leads without cruelty.

That prayer requires humility. We do not always understand our own motives. We may call something wisdom when it is fear. We may call it discernment when it is suspicion. We may defend harshness as truthfulness or excuse pride as conviction. Jeremiah warns that the human heart is difficult to understand fully. Psalm 139 teaches us to bring that difficulty before God rather than trusting our own explanations without question.

Preparation for awe begins here. We stop assuming that our first interpretation of ourselves is always correct. We allow the words of Scripture to name what we have softened, excused, or ignored.

Remembering and Returning

The prophets frequently connected repentance with the language of returning. Through Jeremiah, God told His people, “Return, faithless Israel” (Jeremiah 3:12). Hosea pleaded, “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity” (Hosea 14:1). Joel called the people to return to God with their whole hearts, trusting that He is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love (Joel 2:12–13).

The Hebrew word teshuvah, commonly used for repentance, comes from the idea of turning or returning. Repentance includes sorrow, but biblical repentance cannot be reduced to feeling bad. It is movement. We recognize that we have wandered, and we turn back toward the God whose ways give life.

This return often involves remembering. Israel was repeatedly commanded to remember the Lord, remember His works, remember the covenant, and remember what disobedience had produced. Memory helps repentance become concrete. It asks where we have been, how we arrived there, and which choices moved us away from faithfulness.

Our culture trains us to move quickly past discomfort. Scripture teaches us to stop long enough to learn from it.

Repentance Has Visible Fruit

Yeshua’s teaching continues this biblical call to return. At the beginning of His public ministry, He proclaimed,

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17).

His words belong within Israel’s prophetic story. God’s reign was drawing near, and the proper response was a reoriented life.

Repentance in the teaching of Yeshua reaches into relationships, possessions, speech, mercy, integrity, and obedience. He warns against outward displays of religion that conceal inward corruption. He calls His disciples to reconcile with others, forgive, abandon hypocrisy, care for those in need, and obey the words they have heard.

John the Baptist expressed the same principle when he told the people to “bear fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). Repentance becomes visible. Words of confession should eventually produce changed conduct.

This may include an apology. It may require returning something, correcting a false statement, ending a dishonest practice, or admitting that resentment has been allowed to grow. Some changes happen slowly, but genuine repentance moves in the direction of obedience.

Making Room to Examine the Heart

Preparation for awe requires room. Noise and constant activity allows us to feel responsible while neglecting the quieter work of the soul. We can remain busy with ministry, family, work, and religious obligations while leaving serious questions untouched.

Where have my words caused harm?

What am I defending that Scripture confronts?

Whom have I refused to forgive?

Have I neglected something God has clearly placed before me?

Where has fear become disobedience?

What have I allowed to shape my thinking more than the Word of God?

These questions are not tools for self-punishment. They help us come into the light. Conviction is a mercy when it leads us back to God.

The apostle Paul writes in Romans 2:4 that God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance. His kindness does not make sin insignificant. It assures us that confession does not take place before an indifferent or reluctant God. We return to the One who has already shown His mercy through Messiah.

Awe and the Fear of the Lord

Biblical awe includes reverence, wonder, humility, and the fear of the Lord. It recognizes that God is holy and that we are accountable to Him. Yet the fear of the Lord does not leave the faithful hiding from God. It teaches them to walk in His ways.

Proverbs describes the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom. Isaiah portrays it as delight. The Psalms connect it with trust, obedience, and hope in God’s steadfast love. Healthy awe produces attentiveness. It teaches us that our choices matter, our worship matters, and the condition of our hearts matters.

We do not prepare for awe by trying to create a dramatic emotional experience. We prepare by paying attention to the God revealed in Scripture. His holiness exposes us. His mercy sustains us. His faithfulness gives us courage to return.

A Time to Return and Prepare

The Jewish season of repentance offers a valuable reminder to believers from the nations. God’s people have long understood that repentance deserves more than a hurried sentence offered after the damage is done. It requires remembrance, confession, repair, prayer, and renewed obedience.

We should approach this pattern of preparation with humility. Christians are not called to borrow Jewish practice as a decorative spiritual trend. We can, however, learn from the seriousness with which Jewish tradition has preserved the biblical call to examine one’s life before God.

The question is simple enough to understand and difficult enough to occupy us for some time: What needs to be brought into the light?

Preparation for awe begins when we stop running from that question. We ask God to search us. We listen to His Word. We confess what He reveals. We make repair where repair is possible. Then we return, trusting the mercy of the God who has called His people back to Himself for generations.