What is a good example of repentance?

Mike Davenport explains in this video that repentance can be compared to a baby taking its first breath. That one-time breath – it is a beginning. It has never happened before. The baby who takes its first breath continues to breathe for the rest of its life.

If there was no continued breathing, that child would die. Repentance can be compared to this. Repentance has a starting point but we also see a continuation of repentance. It is natural for a Christian to repent as it is for a child to continue breathing – it is a sign of life. Repentance does not only occur one time in the life of a true believer. 

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV) – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

When we consider repentance, we can actually view repentance in two ways. Is it a one-time thing? In one sense, it is a one-time thing. In this sense, it's like a baby that comes into the world. It has not taken oxygen into its lungs.

It has existed there in its mother's womb. But there is when a baby is born into this world that first breath, that one-time breath. Is it a one-time? It is in one sense a beginning, and in that sense it's something of a one-time thing because it has never existed before. The baby that takes that first breath goes on breathing for the rest of its living days.

If there is no more breathing, then we would consider that child dead. It is not living. And the same with repentance. There is a one-time repentance in the fact that this person who has been dead and trespasses and sin is now alive, has never been before, but now is alive. But we see a continuation in this repentance, in a continual breathing as it were, and it's as natural to a Christian to repent as it is natural for a child, even as it grows into manhood, to continue breathing.

It's a sign of life.