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

In the 15th message of our "Unveiling Yahweh" series, we will be learning about God’s strength in our spiritual battles.

The history of Israel shows us something crucial about living the Christian life. When we trust and obey the Lord, He will help us conquer our spiritual enemies. But when we don’t rely on Him, we are bound to continue in one failure after another. This week, Luke Imperato provides three lessons from Israel’s history to instruct us in our spiritual battles today.

Many Christians don't realize that God never intended for repentance to be a one-time event, because sin isn't overcome all at once! It's overcome little by little, and every time we truly repent, we're given new power to overcome sin, and new power for holy living.

Resources

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

Peter was very strong in his own thinking when he declared to Jesus that He would not be put to death and then rise again. For this Jesus rebuked him sharply. We should take this as a warning for ourselves, whenever we are beaming with self-confidence and are strong in ourselves, instead of depending on the Lord and His wisdom, it will always lead us away from the Lord and His ways.

Host: Kathy, we want to continue our discussions on the book, Absolute Surrender, looking at the chapter titled, “Peter’s Repentance.” I loved this chapter. This chapter was deeply personal to me, because it spoke a great deal to me about the journey that I have been on in my own faith walk. I want to start out by reading the passage from which this discussion stems from. It reads, “And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.” (Luke 22:61-62, KJV)
         The way Andrew Murray describes this, he really goes into four points. We could almost call them 4 stages of Peter's transformation. He talks about Peter as a devoted disciple, Peter as he lived the self-life, Peter in his repentance, and lastly, he talked about what Christ made of Peter by the Holy Spirit. Let’s talk about the first one, Peter the devoted disciple of Christ. What was he describing there about Peter?

Kathy: According to Andrew Murray, Peter was a man of absolute surrender. He gave up all to follow Jesus. He gave up his boats, his fishing and his livelihood. He even gave up his family. He immediately obeyed the Lord and went out and followed Jesus. From a human perspective, that may seem like he did all he needed to ever do as a Christian. He left everything, and it was no small thing. To me that is just step one of true Christian discipleship. You've got to start somewhere. We don't enter into this relationship with Christ fully cooked. It’s a journey and this is step one. You give up all as He calls us to. Some of us hear it better than others, but it's definitely something that we have to do.

Host: It was interesting that having just painted the picture of all that what Peter gave up to follow Jesus, Andrew Murray immediately went into what sounded to me initially like a very negative thing, which was Peter living the self-life. What is he talking about there?

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Kathy: Peter was very strong in himself and had a lot of self-confidence. And Jesus was sharing that He was going to die on the cross and loudmouth Peter, full of self, declared to the Lord God that He would not die. And Jesus said, “Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” (Matthew 16:23b, KJV) Here, Peter was definitely thinking as men think. He had the world's wisdom and a strong self-confidence in that moment. He just did not understand who he was in the flesh. And that's a point that Andrew Murray brings out over and over again throughout this chapter: Peter did not know himself. He didn't know what was in him.

Host: And that's true for us too. We may have a sincere desire to follow the Lord. We might want to do the right thing. We might want to live the right kind of life. But very few of us come into our faith with the reality of how utterly and completely corrupt we are, through and through.

Kathy: Yeah, it is such a vital thing in the Christian life. The entrance for any true believer is that you come to the realization that you are utterly lost without Him. And if you haven't come to that realization, then you probably need to back up and start over again.

Host: Now with Peter, we see his response when Jesus tells him that he's going to deny Him three times.

Kathy: Peter said, though all should forsake you, I will not. I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.

Host: And he meant that. To the extent that he understood what he was saying, he meant that.

Kathy: Right. Those were his intentions. I've pondered the thought of if I would be willing to die for the Lord. I have asked myself if I would be willing to do anything for Him. And yes, I intend to and I love the Lord, but when you've got a gun pointed to your head or you're facing something difficult, you find out who you really are inside. That's an extreme example. I think we are all faced with trials that test us to the core and those testing places are where we find out what's inside of us.

Host: When I looked at Peter and I could see those denials, one of the things that became very clear to me this morning as I look back on my sin, or even look at some of the sinful ways that are still in my heart today, every time I embrace sin, really what I'm doing is denying Jesus. I actually pictured myself wrapping my arms around sin and looking up at the cross and saying, “No. I want my sin.”

Kathy: Actually, I had a similar thought, but more along the lines of embracing the enemy—the enemy of my Lord.

Host: Yes. Well, he makes the point that this self that is in Peter, the root of that is the same thing that caused Satan to fall. I mean, there he was the leader of worship in heaven and what was his sin? He wanted to exalt self.

Kathy: Right. And that is the problem with all of us wherever we're at in the journey is this strong self-life that leads us away from God all the time. It always will. It will never point us to Christ and it's the hardest thing for us to deny. We can deny all kinds of things, but when it comes to denying self, our nature, our goodness, what we think about ourselves, that is the hardest thing for us to deny.

Repentance and brokenness sound like negative things, but not when you’ve experienced the spiritual benefits that come from them.

In this episode:

- We look at the Apostle Paul’s life (a man who was a great repenter)

- We contrast worldly sorrow (which brings forth death) with godly sorrow (which brings forth life)

- We examine the beautiful things that come out of repentance and brokenness

Repentance and brokenness might seem negative...until you experience the spiritual benefits that flow from them. For example: a true fear of God that destroys the love of sin. A deep resolve to pursue restoration in our relationships. A zeal to be right with God, no matter the cost. In this show, we'll look at some of the beautiful fruits that come from repentance.

Resources

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

According to Jesus, the pathway into the Kingdom of God is marked out by two inseparable things—genuine repentance from our sins and a real choice to put our faith and trust in Him. But, in our church culture, many seem to think that repentance is unnecessary as long as you "believe."

In this episode:

- Why there is no such thing as saving faith apart from genuine repentance

- Why faith is deepened through repentance

- Why true faith is displayed through obedience

Our prideful self-sufficiency chafes against any sense of weakness or helplessness. We strive and strain to accomplish things on our own. But if we will learn to pray and wait on the Lord for His direction, the Spirit will give us His power.

Host: Kathy, we want to continue our discussions in a book by Andrew Murray called Absolute Surrender, and today I want to focus on the chapter entitled “Separated unto the Holy Ghost.” In this chapter he quotes from Acts 13:1-4 where Barnabas and Saul are being prepared for the ministry that they've been given. And he quotes this part of the verse, “And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. So, they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed unto Seleucia.” (Acts 13:3-4a KJV)) And he comments on this passage saying that in this story we find some precious thoughts to guide us as to what God would have of us and what God would do for us. Why don't you read the great lesson that he pulls from that passage in Acts.

Kathy: Yeah, it's a blessing. “The Holy Ghost is the director of the work of God upon the earth. And what we should do if we are to work rightly for God, and if God is to bless our work, is to see that we stand in a right relation to the Holy Ghost, that we give him every day, the place of honor that belongs to Him, and then in all our work and (what is more) in all our private inner life, the Holy Ghost shall always have the first place.”

Host: Now let's take what he wrote there and just kind of pull this apart, starting with his first statement there, that “the Holy Ghost is the director of the work of God upon the Earth.” When we look at what our life is about here on the earth as Christians, we can get very busy and we can be all about doing a lot of things. But if we're looking to the Holy Ghost to empower us, what is it really that He's empowering us to do here on the earth?

Kathy: His work. He's empowering us to follow His program. He's got a mission. He's got goals. He's got a plan.

Host: I want to zoom out real quick, because when we look at the life of the average Christian and when we look at the men and the women that are coming to us whose lives are falling apart, one of the common threads that we see is that many people who are professing to be Christians aren't seeking God's will at all for their life. They may be going to church on Sunday. They may even be reading their Bible. But when it comes to living out their life, they're pretty much doing what they want to do.

Kathy: Yeah, that's very true. And examples abound of people that are just doing their own thing and adding God into it.

Host: Yeah. And I think a lot of that is because Christians haven't been taught that they ought to be seeking God for how they're living their lives.

Kathy: Yeah. That is definitely a huge problem. But we have an inward teacher, and He will lead us. But I think the problem with some people is that they struggle with thoughts like, “Why isn't God speaking to me? Why isn't he leading me?” And the problem is because they don't know how to wait.

Host: He mentions next Kathy that once we've nailed down the reality that the Holy Ghost is the director of the work of God upon the earth, we ought to be seeking the Lord for what His will is for our life on the earth. He mentioned what we should do if we are to work rightly for God and if God is to bless our work. Talk a little bit about what he's saying there.

Kathy: Well, what I think is that we are very prone to be doers. Americans are producers. And we can work “for God,” but not be working the works that He has laid out for us. We can go completely off the rails with what we're doing. So again it’s so important for everybody to know, no matter who you are or what your position is in life, that God has a will for your life. What is God’s will in your life? What does He want you to do? And is that important to you? Is that in the forefront of your mind? Are you seeking it out and in your seeking are you able to wait?

       That is so important for me to keep in the forefront of my mind because how impatient are we? I'm saying that because I've been that way. I get these ideas and I think, “OK, so that's it, I’ll do that.” And so many times I have just taken off assuming that it was something that the Lord wanted me to do, and it never was. So, there was no blessing on it. I would trip and fall and stumble and just run into walls. So He’s been able to lead me more directly over the past few years because I am learning how to wait, how to pray and how to care more about what He wants than what I think He wants. One of the things that Andrew Murray says in here that I really love is, “Our great Commander organizes every campaign, and His generals and officers do not always know the great plans. They often receive sealed orders, and they have to wait on Him for what He gives them as orders.”

Host: That’s neat the way he says that.

Kathy: Yeah, I love that. And I know from my own experience that it's very frustrating to wait.

Host: Yeah. That really leads me to the next thing I want to ask you about that Andrew Murray talked about which is that in order to do these things you have to be in a right relation with the Holy Ghost. He said that we have to give him every day the place of honor that belongs to Him. He has to have preeminence in our inner world, not just when it comes to the religious things of our life. I mean religious things in the good sense, the right sense of religion. But He has to have the preeminence in our inner life always. And when you think about it, when we allow that to happen, it changes everything.

Kathy: Yeah, it changes the way you do ministry. My whole Christian life I've known about the Holy Spirit. Almost as soon as I was saved, I was filled with the Holy Spirit and I know what it's like to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. To have my life radically transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. So, I've known that, walked in that and my ministry life was that. But somewhere along the way, you grow up. And I mean that in a negative way. You grow up out of need, and the busyness, the needs around you and just the pressures of life kind of take you away from where you need to be, which is at the foot of the cross pleading with the Lord for help. You kind of start depending on yourself. And I know that I'm back at the place where I know I need help.

       And I want to say this to listening ears, you will never get to a place where you don't need God. You will always need Him desperately, whether or not you're in the reality of your desperate condition for Him. And I don't mean just, “Oh, I hate myself” and all of that self-loathing. I'm just talking about being where you understand that you can do nothing apart from Him, and that through Him you can do everything. And being in that place is a powerhouse for your spiritual life. I mean, look at the things that the disciples were able to do once they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Before the Spirit came, they kept failing and failing right up to Calvary. But after the cross, when they went into the upper room and they prayed and waited, the Lord sent the promised Holy Spirit and then they had what they needed to do ministry, and it doesn’t seem like any of them went crazy. They all stayed.

Host: Well, they went crazy, but in the right way.

Kathy: In the right way. That's right. They were filled with power. People were being healed. Demons were cast out. It was an amazing thing, but that came through the power of the Holy Spirit and from them waiting for Him to come. And Jesus did what He said he would do through their lives. And Why wouldn’t He do that through our lives?

Host: Yeah. And if we really want Him to use us, if we really want to walk in His will and be a blessing, then we have to yield in every aspect of our life. Just as he titled the little booklet here, we need to have, “Absolute Surrender.”

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

According to Jesus, the pathway into the Kingdom of God is marked out by two inseparable things—genuine repentance from our sins and a real choice to put our faith and trust in Him. But, in our church culture, many seem to think that repentance is unnecessary as long as you "believe." In this episode, Steve Gallagher will address this fatal error by showing that there is no such thing as saving faith apart from repentance.

Resources

• Check Out Our Residential Program
• The Walk of Repentance (Bible Study) By Steve Gallagher

According to Jesus, everything that comes with eternal life—power over sin, a renewed heart, a changed life—comes through repentance. So what is going on with professing Christians who do not seem to have that kind of spiritual life?

In this episode:

- Why superficial repentance does not bring people into true salvation

- How genuine and false repentance manifest in people’s lives

- Why it’s so important to make sure that our repentance is genuine

God is love, which essentially means that He is completely selfless. He takes nothing for Himself and gives everything away. So, if we are truly filled with His own Spirit, we will display this selflessness as well.

Host: Kathy, it’s good to see you again. Thanks for joining us.

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

Host: Kathy, we're going to talk about something that we acknowledge we know so little about. But what little we do know about it we have discovered is a very wonderful thing. That is, the love of God. So, let's talk about a few aspects of the love of God. Let’s start out with this phrase, “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” Now those of us who have been around the Word of God or around the church have read that, but I don't know that we've pondered it much. What does it mean that the fruit of the Spirit is love?

Kathy: Well, when Paul listed out the fruit of the Spirit, the first thing he said was, “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” This is vital in the Christian's life, and I think that we all take it for granted. We look at it like a package deal that when we get the Lord, we get the fruit of the Spirit, but I really do believe that it's something we have to cultivate in our lives. And lately I have really been seeking the Lord to fill me with love for Him and for other people, because if I don't have that love, which I don't come prepackaged with or prewired with, I am not going to live out God's glory in this earth. I can't. And I'm so aware of that. It's just been so real to me how vital it is to be filled with the Spirit of love. I'm hungry for that love. I've tasted it, but I want more of it.

Host: I think one of the things that we struggle with as believers is that so much of what we're lacking, just because it's our nature to do so, we try to generate in and of ourselves. And you've said several times that it's the “Spirit” of love. We look at the disciples for instance, when they were walking with Jesus, they did not have this, but something dramatically transformed their lives.

Kathy: That would be the Spirit of love that came down. And I love to think about that because it's such a picture of our lives. Also, before we're filled with the Spirit, we're bumbling and walking into walls.

Host: And we’re unloving.

Kathy: Yeah. Mainly. But once the Holy Spirit came to the disciples, how different those men were. They were changed forever.

Host: You have said in the past that God is love. Expand on that a little bit. What does that mean? We can easily say flippantly, “God is love.” What does that really mean?

Kathy: God is literally and completely selfless, and I believe that's one of the main characteristics of true love. And God is a complete and total giver. He takes nothing for Himself, and He gives everything away.

Host: Yes. We have such a distorted idea of love. Aside from the fact that by our very nature we are different than God's love, we've been raised in a culture that has so contorted the meaning of love, that it has become difficult for us to grab hold of what the Bible describes as agape love. It’s that selfless giving to the unworthy. We see that in the reason that God sent Jesus His Son, the fullness of agape love. Talk a little bit about mankind's need for love and maybe give us an example or two of how we can see that need in mankind.

Kathy: Well, right off the bat, the main thing that you see in mankind is how utterly self-centered we are by nature. When Adam and Eve were with God daily in the garden, they were in the presence of perfection. Not only in the Earth, but in relationship with each other. I can't even fathom what that would be like, and for them to choose sin, I don't know if anybody can even come close to answering, why did they step down from that eternal love into this chaos?

Host: Yeah. And we see the need that was created by that decision on two levels. The love for God was lost in that they turned from God to themselves. They became utterly selfish. But also, they lost their love for one another in that immediately Adam blamed his wife for the sin. There was no love in that action. One of the things that God has so deeply instilled in this ministry is the understanding that the only thing that can conquer the selfishness of our hearts is the love of God. Talk about how love conquers selfishness.

Kathy: Well, this is kind of an elementary thing to say, but I just pray that the Spirit of God will make it real to people as they listen. When Jesus bore our wretchedness in His body on the Cross, God could not do anything else to demonstrate His love to us in that while we were yet sinners, He died. That's the love that won me when I was 18 years old. When that was made real to me, it changed everything about me, about my life, about my motives and about my goals. And it's true of every true believer that love conquers selfishness. So, as we grow in love, we become more God like. We become more forgiving. We become more generous. We become more selfless. We become more filled with God.

Host: Andrew Murray encouraged us in this chapter, “Do believe that the love of God can be shed abroad in your heart and mind so that you can love all the day.” For the listener out there who has experienced God's pull on their heart, they understand that they don't have the kind of love that God has, what do they do with that? Where do they go from there?

Kathy: It's a good question. Well, if you're talking about a believer, I can definitely answer that question because I find myself in that situation all the time. I'm not full of God's love. I'm not anywhere near it, and that's why I find myself weeping in my time with the Lord in the morning and throughout the day. I hunger for that love. I also see how much I don't have it and it grieves me. Yet I know that it's His desire to give that to me. I don't know what the issue is, but He knows, and I really have to come to the place in my own life where I am really trusting Him with that and I understand that it is in His hands.
       As for people who are on the outside looking in and they've tasted it, maybe got a little glimpse of it, all I can say is keep going toward it because you can't do this on your own. You've got to surrender. You've got to come into it. You've got to lay down. You just have to abandon yourself to this love that you have come close to, but you haven't actually entered into.

Host: And I would just add this little tidbit to that. God draws us with cords of lovingkindness. And if you are even sensing the love of God, then you can know that's the Lord and He's drawing you. But to underscore what you've just said, you have to respond, and what He's asking of you is to lay your life down and pursue Him.