God truly wants to deliver us from sin, but He will often patiently use our struggles and weakness to bring us to the end of ourselves, where we finally say from the heart, “Lord, I can't do this! Please save me!”

Host: Kathy, it's great to see you again. Thanks for coming in to talk with us.

Kathy: Thanks. It's wonderful to be here.

Host: Kathy, we're going to continue our discussions in Andrew Murray's wonderful book Absolute Surrender, and in today's chapter he starts out with this title, “O Wretched Man that I Am!” He takes that from Romans 7:24-25, and I'll just read that real quick. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 7:24-25a, KJV)
       He talks about the reality in this chapter of what it means to come to the place where God can have true freedom to work in us, to move through us and for us to have freedom from our own wretchedness. And using Paul’s writing here, he divides the process of coming to that freedom into four stages for the man who comes to that place. A regenerate man, a weak man, a wretched man and a man on the border of complete liberty. Let's go through those one at a time. Let's look first at the regenerate man. I will just say I thought this was one of the most balanced and well written perspectives of what it means to be a regenerate man and why the regenerate man still struggles with being a wretched man.

Kathy: I want to read Romans 7:17. “Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.” (KJV) Andrew Murray says here, “That is the language of a regenerate man, a man who knows that his heart and nature have been renewed, and that sin is now a power in him that is not himself.”

Host: Yeah, he talks about the regenerate man being one who has a desire to do the will of God. And I love the way he brought this out that if you have a sincere desire to do the will of God, then that is evidence that God has put something in you. I just find too many people stuck in that thing of, “Oh I've got sin in my life. I don't belong to God.” And I think the enemy uses that to keep us from moving and growing in our relationship with the Lord.

Kathy: Absolutely. He definitely capitalizes on it. That was my story for many, many years, that I was seeing what was wrong with me and thinking that because I wasn't doing better that there was something wrong with my relationship in Christ. And I learned—and we'll read through this—that I don't have the power to live the Christian life, I can't do this. That’s all part of God’s process that he takes us through. He doesn't rescue us from that. I know many Christians are in this phase of, “Why am I still struggling with this sin and why isn't there any deliverance?” Well, there is deliverance, but it's not going to come with the snap of a finger. The problem is so many of us want to get free so we'll feel better about ourselves spiritually. But that is not God’s end goal for us.

Host: Yeah, God's got something much more wonderful that He's bringing us to. Well, really, he begins to answer that very question when he talks about the weak man. He says, “Here is the great mistake made by many Christian people: they think that when there is a renewed will, it is enough; but that is not the case.” Talk a little bit about what he's saying there.

Kathy: Paul said, “I will to do what is good, but the power to perform, I don't find it.” This whole process of overcoming, of being delivered, of trusting in Christ is a lifelong process of finding out that we don't have what it takes to live the Christian life. We feel like we're insane half the time because we have the desire to do His will and love Him and serve Him and yet we've got this other thing going on that's constantly opposing that. That is difficult to work out in the brain, but it's a reality in the Christian life that I have been born again, I belong to God, but I cannot obey Him without coming to this place where I know I am a wretched, wretched man.

Host: And that really is his third point. Talk about what that means.

Kathy: The whole idea of, “I am a wretched man,” is coming to an end of self and it's a process again of realizing I have nothing good in myself. There is nothing to commend me to God. Nothing. And I'm not saved, cleaned up and born again because I did anything. It was total mercy that came to me and met me. And I think I learned this maybe ten years ago, I threw up my arms in the air in frustration and some amount of anger, just feeling the futility of trying to work out my salvation. But in the end, I believe I came to the point of saying I am a wretched woman. My heart is black. I can't do this. Lord, I cannot serve you. In my flesh, it's impossible for me to do this. And it was at that point things started to change for me.

Host: You know, we talk about the wretched man, and I know when I first saw this verse, I'll just be honest, my reaction was, “Oh, great, I'm a wretch. I don't have to worry about changing.” That's a dangerous place to go.

Kathy: Yeah. That's very dangerous and I think a lot of people are in that. You can get to a point in your Christian journey where you get tired of fighting and what we've said up to this point isn't that you quit fighting against sin. The point is that you're not going to overcome in your flesh, but you have to keep doing battle. And this is the battle. You get tired of it. You want to say, “Okay well, Paul said it. I'm wretched. This is all you can expect from me, so plop down in my mire of self-pity and just give over to it.”

Host: Yeah. And they never move into Chapter 8 of Romans, which is the great hope. They've missed the great hope that's being offered to them by the revealing of their wretchedness.

Kathy: Right. And that is where you just keep plowing, you just keep going and you don't settle down into the wretched man place. That’s not where God's taking you to, He’s taking you past that.

Host: Yea. Andrew Murray refers to this man that has chosen not to make that mistake but has seen his wretchedness as the “almost delivered man.” Bring us the good news, because this is the glorious news of it all.

Kathy: I'm going to just read what he said. “The man has tried to obey the beautiful law of God. He has loved it. He has wept over his sin. He has tried to conquer. He has tried to overcome fault after fault, but every time he has ended in failure.” And another quote, “It is the man who is conscious of his own weakness as a believer who will learn that by the Holy Spirit he can live a holy life. This man is on the brink of that great deliverance.”
       It's the power of the Holy Spirit living in us. When you finally throw up your arms and say, “Lord, I am a wretched man. I'm weak. I can't do this. Please, help me!” In that cry, I don't know what the time frame is—for me it was a long time—but that cry invites the Holy Spirit and so the Holy Spirit starts to come. And that is when you are receiving the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t come by having somebody lay their hands on you every three months. It's not like that.

Host: It's walking in the Spirit.

Kathy: It is a constant cry inside and if you don't have that cry, ask for God to give that cry to you. Ask God to make it real to you that you have to have the Holy Spirit living in you. The more that you are walking in His Spirit, the less conscious you are of yourself altogether. You're not measuring yourself anymore by doing good or doing bad, you’re just flowing with the Lord and you’re in love with God. I think the main characteristic of walking in the Spirit is just loving the Lord. The Holy Spirit brings such a freedom inside.

Host: Yeah, Paul says in Romans 8:13 that what the Holy Spirit does is give the victory. “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” (Romans 8:13b, KJV) And it's the Holy Spirit who does it. He is helping me every day and that's the great victory.

Kathy: One other thing that Paul said in Romans 14:17 is that the Kingdom of God is joy in the Holy Spirit. That is true and until you've come into that fullness, you won't know what that joy really is. There are other maybe minor tones of joy, little joys, but that joy carries you through life. Through all the suffering, through all the ups and downs.

Host: Yeah. I know people will hear us talk about this and they'll say, “Man, I don't have that.” Well, neither do we. But God knows you don't have it. Cry out to God for it. He wants to do this in us. If you have a desire to do God's will and you find yourself continually failing, God is allowing that to bring you to the end of yourself so that you can be opened to the filling of His Holy Spirit. Don't fall into despair over your failure any more than the sense that God is using it to bring you to the end of yourself as you said.

Many people assume that when we preach the gospel, the first thing we should tell people is that God loves them. But New Testament preachers like Jesus and His apostles actually did something very different: They first told people about their need for repentance.

In this episode:

- A survey of repentance in the New Testament

- Why the message of repentance is actually a very loving message

- Why the message of repentance is as much for believers as unbelievers

In the 17th message of our "Unveiling Yahweh" series, we will be looking at the Day of the Lord.

Are you ready for the Day of the Lord? Descriptions of that day permeate the Bible. It is described in the prophetic books and is made most clear to us in the book of Revelation. In today’s sermon, Steve Gallagher surveys these passages and challenges us to be ready for Jesus’ appearing, which is much closer than we think!

The theme of this year's Annual Conference is "Watch and Pray." Steve and Kathy Gallagher join Nate Danser to talk about why this theme is of urgent importance for Christians.

**Get all the details about our Annual Conference at conference.purelifeministries.org**

Many people assume that when we preach the gospel, the first thing we should tell people is that God loves them. But New Testament preachers like Jesus and His apostles actually did something very different: They first told people about their need for repentance.

Resources

• The Walk of Repentance (Bible Study) By Steve Gallagher

With so many conferences to choose from, what makes the Pure Life Ministries Annual Conference worth attending? What is the spiritual value for our guests? Steve and Kathy Gallagher join Nate Danser to answer those questions.

**Get all the details about our Annual Conference at conference.purelifeministries.org**

Repentance is an ancient concept—one could say it is as old as sin itself. From the very beginning, whenever God's people have been separated from Him by sin, repentance has been the key to restoring their relationship with Him.

In this episode:

- A survey of repentance in the Old Testament

- Why the Old Testament accounts are so relevant for our own lives

- How the preaching of repentance throughout the Old Testament reveals the patience, mercy and justice of God

Jesus said that things that are impossible with men are possible with God. If we fully believe this truth, we will cry out to Him with great faith to do impossible things in our own lives.

Host: Kathy, thanks for coming in. Good to see you again.

Kathy: It's good to see you.

Host: Kathy, as we continue our discussions in Absolute Surrender, we want to look at a truth that is so true and so wonderful to learn and most of us learn it the hard way. The chapter is titled, “Impossible with Man, Possible with God.” Andrew Murray starts out with a verse from Luke 18:27, “And he said, the things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” (KJV) Let’s talk about what Jesus said here, “It is impossible with man.” What do we really know about what's impossible for man?

Kathy: Salvation. Man can't save himself and that's the story Andrew Murray started this chapter off with. He was talking about the rich young ruler and Jesus told him what he needed to do which wasn't, “If you go sell your stuff, you're going to get saved.” But he was trying to make a point to this young man about following Christ and what it meant, and he turned away sad and he left. Those who were there asked Jesus at the end of that, “if it is so difficult to enter the Kingdom of God, who then can be saved?” And Jesus said, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” (Luke 18:27b, KJV) And we get a lot of confidence in God when we come to the place where we know we can't, but He can.

Host: You started off by saying that man cannot save himself. I think that's probably pretty obvious to most of us who have given any consideration to it that we can't save ourselves. But what I really got out of this whole teaching is not only can we not save ourselves, but once converted, we can't even keep ourselves on the right path.

Kathy: Right. A lot of us think that what we do helps the Lord save us. Now the Church is divided on this I think, because a lot of people believe that they don't need to lift a finger. They think they can do whatever they want and it's all covered by God's grace. That is a perversion of the truth. But there's the other side and I would put myself in this class, people that think they have to do something to keep themselves in the faith. And you can get just as perverted in your “religion” as the other group. We don't earn our way. We don't work our way, or fast and pray our way into fellowship with God. And if that's what religion is to you, then all it will be is “religion” and not a relationship with the Lord. And I think a lot of Christians are not enjoying their walk with God. They’re not joyful. They're doing all the work. There's no trust.

Host: I want to approach this from the perspective of our ministry here, the men that come into our Residential Program, some percentage of them have tried to get free from the power of sin. They've gone to the Sunday School classes. They spent time in their Bibles. Yet they find it impossible to get free from the power of sin and they come here and they are confronted with the reality of how sinful they really are. That's probably the first stage that God has to bring us into is, “Hey, by the way, you don't just have this little problem. You're totally a mess.”
       And it is natural to us that as we get a sight of that then we just want to try harder. “I'm not going to do this thing anymore. I’m not going to think this way anymore.” And it lasts for about 3 weeks and then we fall on our face again and we are still not free from the power of sin. And part of what Andrew Murray is describing here in this chapter is that we keep thinking that we can do it. Our thinking can be that it is either that we haven't done enough of something, or we haven't done the right thing, or we haven't learned something. We may think we need some new doctrine or some new theology.  But the problem is that it keeps coming back to the fact that we’re trying to do it in our own strength.

Kathy: Right. And in the process what we're doing is pushing out God without really knowing that's what we're doing, that's exactly what we're doing, because you have to embrace the fact that you are utterly and completely fallen. And really a lot of Christians stumble on the fact that they are corrupt through and through. There is no good thing in them. And all that effort that we put in to trying to prove to God that we're worthy of forgiveness and His acceptance shuts Him out. There is no way to come to the Father except through the Son. Not through your good works and not even through your repentance alone can you come to the Father. You come through Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth and the life.

Host: Yeah. It's like going back to one of the possible responses of these men in our Residential Program. “Okay, I'm going to try harder, and I really need God to help me.” If that’s your response then you've missed it again. The point is that even the desire to do what is right, God has to put in me. I don't even have that in me. The truth is, the sin that I do, I do because I want to.

Kathy: Yeah, the ugly reality is you love your sin. I love my sin.

Host: Yes. And the point that Andrew Murray is making is that I can't generate in myself the will to do the right thing. It's God that must do that and I think this is where we see the disciples. They've gotten a picture of it. When they're saying who then can be saved, they're starting to get the picture here that our heart is so corrupt that we don't even desire in our nature to serve God and we can't change that in ourselves. So I'm left with the second point of Andrew Murray's teaching here. With God, all things are possible. He can give me a new heart. I must have something that I don't have, and He's the only place I can go to get it.

Kathy: The Holy Spirit is what we're missing. That is why there is no victory. The Holy Spirit is not ruling and reigning. All these things happen over the course of a lifetime, but this is an important truth. We have to surrender to the Holy Spirit living His life out through us. I'm not going to overcome the sin in me. I'm not going to get better. Jesus is not into self-improvement. He's not going to make me a better version of me. The self-life has to die. Even all your good efforts to put to death the thing that you do, it has to come from God living in you. God gives you the power to do that. You're not going to have what you need to overcome your sin.

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Host: Also, one of the things he brings out here is the omnipotence of God. When we talk about being filled with the Holy Spirit, we're talking about the omnipotent God indwelling us, changing us and empowering us to be overcomers. So, when we say that it's impossible with us, but possible with God, we're saying a huge thing. There is nothing impossible to Him. I don't quite understand how we somehow can get in the way of God accomplishing what God wants to accomplish. I don't have all that figured out, but there's nothing impossible for Him.

Kathy: Remember in the upper room when the Holy Spirit came and filled them with tongues of fire? Peter became a new man. There were 3000 saved that day. I don't know how many he preached to, but 3000 responded and the life that he lived after that was a miraculous life. It wasn't Peter anymore, it was God living his life out through him and that is for us now. He is giving His Spirit to those who want him, who will humble themselves, who crave Him and ask for that hunger if they don't have it. And He is going to perform that in those that are humbled before Him and hungry for Him.

Host: Yeah. He's going to bring us to absolute surrender. Everything that Peter didn't have, God gave Him. Everything that Peter was, He took away and gave Him Himself. He did it all. He brought Peter to absolute surrender. It wasn't in Peter and it's not in us. And I know there are so many Christians in the church today that are just hungry. They're in the church and they just feel like they're starving to death because they're not surrendered.
       They haven't gotten a sight of the fact that they just don't have it. O if they do have a sight of it, they don't want to admit it or acknowledge it. In the church we think we’ve got to be strong. For those listening that are in that place, they need to admit, “No, I'm not strong. I'm weak. But in Christ, I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”

In the 16th message of our "Unveiling Yahweh" series, we will be looking at the Humility of God.

The humility displayed by Jesus in His earthly life is not just something He ‘put on’ while He walked among us. It is foundational to the character of Yahweh. And when we look at the beautiful, humble way Jesus interacted with those around Him, we see how God works in our lives today. But our hearts should also be enraptured by His lowly character. As we behold the wonder of His lowliness, it should compel us to be lowly like He is.

Repentance is an ancient concept—one could say it is as old as sin itself. From the very beginning, whenever God's people have been separated from Him by sin, repentance has been the key to restoring their relationship with Him. In today’s show, we’ll explore repentance throughout the long history of God's dealings with Israel.

Resources

• The Walk of Repentance (Bible Study) By Steve Gallagher

If sin isn’t overcome all at once, then true repentance is not a one-time event; it’s an ongoing lifestyle! Every time we truly repent, we're given new power to overcome sin, and new power for holy living.

In this episode:

- Why true repentance always makes a radical difference in a person’s life

- How ongoing repentance keeps our spiritual lives healthy

- How repentance works in the process of sanctification

When Peter denied his Lord 3 times, the Lord looked at him. And that look from Jesus broke the heart of Peter. Through the devastation Peter went through and the godly sorrow he experienced as a result, he was prepared to be emptied of himself and to be used for the Lord's purposes.

Host: Kathy, as we continue our discussions in a book by Andrew Murray called Absolute Surrender, we started in last week’s program talking about Peter’s repentance. We looked at Peter as the devoted disciple of Christ, Peter living the self-life, and we stopped just short of looking at Peter’s actual denial of Christ and the role that played in his eventual repentance. Let’s pick up and talk about that.

Kathy: It's so powerful. I don’t love what Peter did, but I love what Jesus did through it. Andrew Murray said, “Peter denied his Lord three times, and then the Lord looked upon him; and that look of Jesus broke the heart of Peter, and all at once there opened up before him the terrible sin that he had committed, the terrible failure that had come, and the depth into which he had fallen, and Peter went out and wept bitterly.” I believe he wept because he saw who he was, what was in him and what he was capable of.

Host: And he saw who Jesus was really for the first time.

Kathy: Yeah, that's right. Those two things would have collided together in his mind. Andrew Murray talks later on in this chapter about what it must have been like for Peter to face himself in that moment and also see the King of Glory. He knew who Jesus was, but I think in that moment he got the full impact of what and who he had been dealing with and what he did with it.

Host: What really stood out to me is that he brought out that there was this moment of weeping, but it didn't end there. It was just shortly after his denial of Christ that he had to witness the crucifixion. I like the way that he wrote this, and he is expressing what must have been going on in Peters heart. He says, “My Lord is gone, my hope is gone, and I denied my Lord. God have mercy upon me!” And you know, that really is where that moment of weeping brings us.

Kathy: Yeah. And that's why as painful as it is, it is so important for us to have that dark night of the soul more than once in our journey. I know I have. I can point at milestones in my journey. I can't look at mountaintops and say, “Man, you know what, that mountaintop was it for me.” It was in the valley when I was getting devastated. And what's becoming really a blessing to me in life are those valleys. I'm learning how to love them. I'm in the knowledge when I'm going through those dark nights of the soul that Jesus is there with me. The reality is, He knows how I feel. He knows the devastation. He's not looking at it indifferently. He is in it with me, going through it with me and knows what to do with me as I am processing through it. I'm not alone and Peter wasn't alone.

Host: And we can know it to be true mentally. But for what you’re describing to be in our hearts, we only learn that by walking with Him.

Kathy: Yeah, and you can't teach it into somebody. They just have to live through it.

Host: Yeah. In this chapter, I just kept seeing my life at every one of these stages and steps. And of course, that's why the Lord gives us the wonderful example of Peter. I think He knew that we were going to need somebody that we can relate to. Someone with great failure, because we're going to have lots of failure. We needed to see that Jesus works in and through that. I love the way that Andrew Murray brings out that Peter was transformed. He talked about how later on at Pentecost, they would all be filled with the Holy Spirit and the great difference that made in their lives.

Kathy: One of the things that Andrew Murray said was that after all this devastation that Peter just went through, now Peter was prepared for deliverance from self. And that is a very powerful truth in the Kingdom of God. You can't deliver yourself from you.
       You cannot do this anymore than you can’t baptize yourself in the Holy Spirit. It’s not possible. That's why the Lord takes us through these things and prepares us to be emptied of self. And what caused Peter to deny Christ is in all of us to some degree until the Lord deals with it. And only God knows how to bring up and out of us what's in us. We don't even know who we are.

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       But this experience prepared Peter to be delivered from self so that the life of God could be manifested through him and in him. The verse that has been going over and over in my mind for days now is Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (NKJV)

Host: Yeah, I like the reason Andrew Murray makes for having shared this story of Peter. He says, “That story must be the history of every believer who is really to be made a blessing by God. That story is a prophecy of what everyone can receive from God in Heaven.” He points out two lessons that we can learn from this Chapter as he closes. Why don’t you share those with us?

Kathy: “You may be a very earnest, godly, devoted believer in whom the power of the flesh is yet very strong.”

Host: Man, that's so true.

Kathy: Yeah. We all fit that description.

Host: Yeah, but you have to come to understand that. I only understood it after massive failure in my life and in my ministry. I was in ministry for 14 years and didn't know that.

Kathy: A lot of people will relate to that. I think a lot of people will relate to my side of things too because I didn’t have a massive failure. But you know you can really prop yourself up on your goodness and you can prop yourself up on an untarnished record, or on how giving and selfless you are in your daily relations with other people. But you know what? If that is not done by the power of the Holy Spirit, it's nothing. It will all burn. And the Lord knows how to get at all those props. All those things you so unjustly love about yourself.
       That's my testimony. God did that for me, and He's been doing that for me. He is just stripping away all the false things in my heart that I didn't even know were there. And He can show you through just simple things, it doesn't have to be an earth-shattering denial of Christ. It can just be the way you treated someone or the way you've been acting. The Lord just knows how to bring it out and show you what you're like.

Host: Amen. He ends with this other admonition. He says, “If you want this, what does the Lord ask of us?”

Kathy: To humble ourselves.

Host: Yes. To humble ourselves or I would put it this way, to yield to Him. To yield to what He says is true about us and to yield to what He wants to do in us. And that requires that we humble ourselves. We have to come, as Peter did when he wept, realizing that we're nothing and that we have nothing.

Kathy: We don't bring anything to the table.

Host: And how freeing it is to learn that.

Kathy: It is. And the whole grace movement has so obliterated the beauty of God's true grace. His true grace gives you the power to overcome, but we don't overcome. You're never going to overcome sexual sin. You’re never going to overcome bitterness. You're never going to overcome anger. It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that you will overcome any of that. But if you humble yourself, God will do that in you. That’s His desire.

Host: Yes, And Christ will be glorified in us.

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All quotations taken from Absolute Surrender By Andrew Murray, Public Domain