How does repentance happen?

David Eddy explains in this video that to learn more about the relationship between faith and repentance, it is important to realize that grace is the beginning point of both repentance and faith. Grace creates faith and repentance. We cannot somehow gain or merit faith or repentance - it is a gift of God. Grace leads to both faith and repentance. 

Ephesians 2:8-9 (NKJV) - "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."

Well, so, first of all, and Ephesians 2 is a great place to go when you're talking about the relationship of faith and repentance. I think Ephesians 2 is eight and nine, that's a great place to go because it's grace is the beginning point. And The grace creates the faith and the grace creates the repentance. So both of them, and this is a Protestant theology that turned everything all upside down in the Reformation, the grace was the beginning point, not a semi-good man trying to seek God's approval on his own power. It was an abject sinner falling before an all-holy God because God had called him into his presence.

A very different way of looking at things. And once you change things around, it's grace that creates repentance, it's grace that creates faith. And sometimes when people are like, well, which is first, the faith or the repentance, the repentance or faith? I think that sometimes that argument is you can for different situations you can kind of see it coming from different ways. The main thing that we need to understand is that it's grace that creates both and therefore you could say in certain situations they both happen simultaneously.

The reason you repent is because grace caused the faith to repent and the repentance is an act of faith in your mind in some ways.