To believe is not to repent......
This is said often today but its not the case.
If believe and repent are the same thing, why not just say "Believe and believe the gospel"? instead of "repent and believe the gospel"?
Repenting and believing is all one work of faith (Christ's )
I would offer to repent, comfort or ease oneself is to be drawn towards or turned by the voice another believe . It would like saying. No man can come unless the father enables them .As always God must do the first work by which we can believe .It is the work of God that we can believe Him who has no form (John 6) Not after ones own fleshly imagination.
Remember we start with "no faith" or no way to believe by seeking after God. Not little faith but none.
It the work of the living abiding word of God that can cause us or draw us to turn from unbelief (no faith) to a faith not of our own self.
Jerimiah 31 defines best what it means to repent or comfort one self .If God does not do the first work giving ears to hear or draw us towards His voice then no man could believe. Having been turned or drawn so that in turn the person who errored can ease the pain and continue to walk by faith.
Jeremiah 31:17-19 King James Version (KJV)And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border. I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke:
turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God.
Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth.
Turn thou me, and I shall be turned (this is the first work of God) No turning as a work of God no believing.
Surely after that I was turned, I repented (the fruit of the first work believe God )