What Living in Africa Taught Me About Real Repentance

Flashback: Peace Corps, 1982. Tamale, Ghana, West Africa.

Recovering from a severe malaria attack, I sat in the living room of my bungalow watching geckos hunt flies on the pink and baby blue walls. Shirtless, I looked down at my concave belly, I hadn’t eaten in five days, and saw scores of white, mini crabs crawling across it and maneuvering around the beads of sweat pooling here and there. Scabies, I thought. What fun.

Africa was supposed to be difficult. I knew that. But this? My first thought was to quit. But when I tried to think about leaving, I realized I didn’t know how. The Peace Corps office was 350 miles away in Accra. I couldn’t call a cab. I had no phone. There weren’t any buses that I knew of. I’d have to go into town and discover some way to get there, I had no money and I was too weak.

Everything was different from home. English was the official language, but few spoke it in a way I could understand easily.  If I were home, I could call a friend and get help. I had no friends here. If I needed medical care, I could drive to an emergency room. Here, I had no car and no idea where to go. I was stuck.

In those first weeks of my service, I had one obsessive question: How could I possibly live here for another two years?

When I was first dropped off at this new home, I didn’t have the luxury of easing into this life. I was removed from the one I knew and placed into another that, despite training, I didn’t understand.  The habits that once served me were useless. The assumptions I made about life were almost always wrong. The small comforts I relied on to manage stress were gone.

Every decision mattered. What I ate. How I ate.  How I dressed. How I went to the bathroom. When I spoke. When I stayed silent. How I managed time. How I defined contentment. Africa didn’t allow me to keep my old life and add a new location. It required that I change nearly everything about me in order to survive and still carry out my mission.

But it taught me something special.  It prepared me for what came years later, when I became a Christian. Christian repentance, I learned, works the same way. Repentance isn’t a moment of regret or a verbal apology offered to God. It isn’t making a few adjustments to habits or lifestyle. It’s a complete change. A clean break from one way of living toward another. A reorientation to a new location.

The Greek word metanoia, used twenty-four times in the New Testament to refer to repentance, doesn’t mean to improve a little. It means a change that affects every part of life and results in a new direction.

John the Baptist didn’t tell Israel to feel bad about sin or just make a few changes to their lives. He told them to stop and change altogether. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 3:2, NKJV). That call is disruptive. It demands decisive and complete action.

In Africa, I learned that trying to live as though I were still in America was futile and, at times, dangerous. If I measured everything by American standards, everything looked deficient. If I held on to American schedules, American food, American ideas of privacy and efficiency, I was frustrated.

However, life started working when I stopped my old ways and actively submitted to what was required. I watched how people walked, cooked, greeted one another, rested, and endured hardship. I unlearned habits and behaviors that no longer worked. The sooner I accepted that, the sooner life became livable, and even enjoyable.

Repentance places a believer in a similar position. Many people want forgiveness without change. They want Jesus added to an existing life, not a new life formed under Him. But the Bible is clear that following Jesus requires death before resurrection.  “Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.’” (Matthew 16:24, NKJV).

Denial isn’t symbolic but practical. It touches money, time, relationships, desires, and identity. You can’t live under the values of a worldly kingdom while claiming citizenship in a heavenly one.

Africa didn’t care how I or any of the other volunteers felt. Eighteen months after my arrival, of the 140-plus volunteers in Ghana, only twelve remained. The sun didn’t care how anyone felt about the heat. Sickness didn’t wait for a convenient time. Broken infrastructure wasn’t a moral offense. The economy didn’t care that people were starving. These were facts. Survival required attention and adaptation, regardless of feelings. Most volunteers quit.

Repentance works the same way. The new location is the Kingdom of God.  God’s commands aren’t suggestions meant to support emotional comfort. They’re instructions grounded in the reality of the Kingdom you want to enter.  Sin works against us whether we acknowledge it or not and repentance requires commitment to truth, not management of feelings.  “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” (Proverbs 28:13, NKJV).

Eventually, Africa felt like home. Not because it changed, but because I did. What once felt impossible became routine and what once exhausted me became normal. The change wasn’t sudden, but it was real. At the end of my two years of service, I extended for another year and after that stayed on as a contractor.

Repentance works this way. It begins with a decisive turn and that’s sustained through daily practice. Prayer replaces self-reliance. Scripture replaces instinct. Community replaces isolation. Obedience replaces negotiation.  “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NKJV)

Repentance is not a resolution.  It is a relocation.

Questions to Consider as You Enter a New Year

• What parts of your old life are you trying to carry into a Kingdom that doesn’t operate by those rules?

• Where are you asking God for forgiveness but resisting change?

• What habits once served you but no longer fit the life Christ is calling you to?

• If repentance is relocation, what are you refusing to leave behind?

• What would full obedience require of you this year?