In the 14th message of our "Unveiling Yahweh" series, we will be learning about God’s name as “Rapha”.

Pain, sickness and suffering are all part of the human condition. When we dig into what the Bible says about them, we realize that the reasons for suffering in this life are complex and diverse. However, one thing that stands out is that God wants our trials to reveal His identity as Rapha, our healer. This week, Dustin Renz shares four revelations of God’s character and His healing power.

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? Is it possible that they have nothing more than a superficial repentance that leaves them unchanged and still dead in their sins?

Resources

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

No one can be saved without genuine repentance...but, repentance cannot be generated from within ourselves. It only comes through responding to the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

In this episode:

- Why knowing that you’ve done something wrong or feeling bad about your sin isn’t enough to bring about genuine repentance

- Why being convicted over sin doesn’t necessarily bring about repentance in a person

- How people sidestep repentance by suppressing the truth about their sin

In the 13th message of our "Unveiling Yahweh" series, we will be looking at the Goodness of God.

God’s goodness should impact the way we live our lives. But such a life is sadly uncommon within the church. Instead, many professing Christians are driven by selfish desires rather than godly ones. For this to change, we must encounter God’s goodness in our hearts. So in this week’s sermon, Steve Gallagher looks at Galatians 6 to explain how God’s goodness can make an impact on our hearts and lives.

No one will repent without being broken by the Holy Spirit's conviction over their sin. This requires courage, sincerity and a desperation to know the truth—even when the truth exposes the worst things about us. But, this is the only way to life. Every other path leads to death. In today’s show: The Valley of Decision.

Resources

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

"You’re a good person." This is one of Satan's deadliest lies, because if we believe that we're good, we will never see our need for repentance.

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In this episode, we’ll look at:

- How Satan does his utmost to convince people that they don’t need repentance

- Why people are so easily deceived into thinking that they are “good”

- Why people can sit in church their whole lives and not realize the depth of their sinfulness

- Why an honest reading of Scripture reveals that every person needs genuine repentance

In Part 2 of our short series "Absolute Surrender:" God will never accept a half-hearted surrender, but if we come to Him with a genuine desire to give Him everything, He will accept it and will accomplish it in us.

Host: Kathy, when we ended our discussion in our last program, we were talking about the reality that there are many of us who want to surrender our hearts to God and yet we see our failures. But there is an encouragement in this next section. God accepts your surrender.

Kathy: And that is just so amazing to me that He does because our surrender is so puny. There's not a lot of substance to it, but God's heart is so huge, and He wants nothing but the best for us and He gives us nothing but the best. I think a lot of our problem is that we want to give something to God. We want to present something to Him. At least that was my experience. I don't know how many others have struggled with this, but I wanted to be absolutely surrendered and offer something I had to God. But the way I should have been seeing it was “Lord, I don't have it, but I know that you'll give it to me and I accept the grace.”

Host: Andrew Murray talks about a sweetness in an interaction that we read in Scripture. He says, “Oh remember, there was once a man to whom Christ had said, 'If thou canst believe all things are possible to him that believeth.' And his heart was afraid and he cried out, ‘Lord I believe. Help thou mine unbelief.’” (From Absolute Surrender By Andrew Murray, 1895) And then of course you have the interaction between Jesus and Peter. And in that interaction you see the Love Jesus had for Peter. He knew Peter's weaknesses and He knew Peter was struggling, but also He saw his yielded heart. And Peter learned that he didn't have anything to bring to Jesus.

Kathy: Right. But also, Peter didn't know he had a yielded heart. Peter was learning the hard way like the rest of us. Jesus told Peter you're going to deny me three times. The Lord knew that and He wasn't offended or put off by that. And I think that's where a lot of Christians get so discouraged because they expect so much from themselves in some ways.

Host: Well, that's the problem isn’t it? We are expecting of ourselves while the Lord is saying, “No, expect from me for what you need.”

Kathy: Actually, it takes a lot more humility and faith to take from God and to even know how to do that. It's just so messed up in the church world, in a sense that Christians don't really know how to humble themselves with that kind of humility. Where instead of coming to God with something to hand to Him, we are receiving from Him.

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Host: Especially in America, because we've been raised to be so self-sufficient and proud about it. And that really leads us into this next section here, which is “God maintains our surrender.” And he talks about here that we have those moments where maybe we've gone to a powerful service or someone has said something to us and God has reached us in that moment. And as a result then we have humbled ourselves and we have surrendered, but then two weeks later we're back out of that surrender and living selfishly again. But this section in particular I thought was so encouraging for me. He talks about the fact that God knows if our surrender is genuine. And if it is, then He's going to maintain it. He's going to work it out in our hearts.

Kathy: Yeah, I think that anybody who's concerned about this is genuine. If you weren't, you wouldn't even care. And the truth of the matter is, you don't get it all at once. You get it in the journey and you get it as time goes. And I refer back to when I got saved. In the first 10 years of my salvation, I wanted so much to be everything that that I knew God wanted me to be. And I was striving for that. I was going to be absolutely surrendered and I was going to be an intercessor. I was going to be this and I was going to be that and what a trophy God was going to get, right? Well, I started to see some walls run up in front of me and I was banging into these walls spiritually and just getting very discouraged.

       And I'll never forget a number of years ago when I got so frustrated and I threw up my hands and I said, “God, I cannot do this in the flesh.” And I don't want to be cliche, but it was almost like He said, “That's what I’ve been waiting for.” And that has become, and is becoming, more and more real to me, that I don't have anything to offer to God, but I am so happy and free inside that He is the workman and I am His craftsmanship. I am the thing that He is creating and He's making me and He's molding me and I'm going along saying, “yes” inside. I want Him. I want to go where He's leading me. I want to be right with God, whatever that means to Him. And He's taking me there.

Host: Yeah, Andrew Murray ends on the section titled, “God Blesses When We Surrender.” And you've just described the blessing. The very things that He wants to be in your heart, He's put in your heart. That's the blessing and as you grow in your faith, you learn to discern the difference between that which God has planted and that which you're trying to manufacture within yourself. There's a sweetness and a purity to the things that God puts in our hearts. You just know that it’s from the Lord. What gratitude wells up from that! The only response I can have to those things as I see them from time to time is, “Thank you Lord. You did that.”

Kathy: The closer I get to seeing the reality of what the Lord has done, I understand a little bit better why everybody in Heaven falls down and worships. And it's not just going to be that we're in Heaven forever and ever, just worshiping, bowing down, doing this homage thing. It’s coming out of a heart of, “Thank you Lord!” It's just gratitude. And you can live out that life of God completely free in that happy place.

Host: And I know that our reaction to that can be, “We're going to worship forever and ever and ever.” And we just automatically can think about some of those worship sessions we've been in that fell flat. And inside the response can be, “I don't want to do that forever and ever.” But no, you're talking about that gratitude that just wells up from what God has done. There just won't be any effort to it at all, it'll just happen.

Kathy: Yeah. It’ll just flow out of you. And the other thing about worship is that it isn't just singing and raising of the hands and clapping and being joyful. Worship is also a lifestyle. It really is true that you worship God by the way you live your life. You can only worship that way when you have really surrendered and He's really conquering and overcoming everything inside of you.

Host: Yeah, it really does. As we started off by saying, it begins with absolute surrender. If we're not willing to surrender, then God can't do these things in us.

Kathy: You're never going to be blessed. You just won’t.

Host: Yes. And it is in His heart to bless us. He wants to.

In the 12th message of our "Unveiling Yahweh" series, we will be looking at the Righteousness of God.

In Psalm 119, David wrote, “in Your righteousness give me life!” What did he see about God’s righteousness that caused this desperate cry? In today’s sermon, we not only learn about what God’s righteousness is, but take a special look at it in God’s law, learning about the effect it should have on us and the cry it should produce in our hearts.

"You’re a good person." This is one of Satan's deadliest lies, because if we believe that we're good, we will never see our need for repentance. In the 2nd episode of our series, "Rediscovering the Gift of Repentance," we'll talk about why there is no such thing as a good person, and why everyone needs to repent.

Resources

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

In light of God’s unlimited power and glorious redemption, why are our churches filled with men trapped in pornography? Why are scandals erupting everywhere? Why are marriages breaking apart at record rates?

It’s because something crucial has been lost—something so essential that, without it, the power of God will be rendered useless in our lives.

In this episode, we’ll look at:

- Why repentance is what brings about true inward cleansing and transformation

- Why repentance is so necessary in the life of a believer

- Why repentance is demanded because of God’s holiness

- Why an inferior view of God leaves people feeling that they do not need repentance

True Christianity could be summed up in one phrase: Absolute surrender to the will of God for our lives. In Part 1 of our short series based on Andrew Murray's book "Absolute Surrender," we'll talk about what it looks like to fully yield our wills to God.

Host: Kathy, it's great to see you. Thanks for stopping by to talk with us.

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

Host: We want to begin a series of discussions in a little book called, Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray. We won't go into a lot of depth about Andrew. He was well known as an evangelist, a writer and as a preacher in the late 1800s. But he just had a deep sense of the things of God and a wonderful way of communicating them. Absolute Surrender is not only the title of the book, but it's also the title of the first chapter in the book. So, let's just talk a little bit about how he starts things off. He actually did that with a story from the Old Testament.

Kathy: Yeah, he started off telling a story about Ben-hadad when he besieged Israel and took everything. He took the men, the women, the children—everything. And the king of Israel said, and I love these words that he's saying to an enemy invader, “My lord, O king, according to thy saying, I am thine, and all that I have.” (1 Kings 20:4b, KJV) And Andrew Murray used that quote from 1 Kings to describe what our surrender to God should look like. I and all that I have are yours.

Host: He goes on to share a story about a time when he was in Scotland where he asked one individual who was a trainer of church workers what the greatest need of the church was and that individual said, “Absolute surrender to God is the one thing.” And that is so true. The most needful thing, above all is an absolutely surrendered heart to God.

Kathy: Yeah, I think it's overlooked a lot. In fact, I know it is ignored. Absolute surrender is a very difficult concept to wrap your mind around. I know when I was a young believer and I was reading books like this one I’d get so excited! I wanted to completely surrender, and I thought that I could do it, and yet I experienced continual failure to follow through.

Host: Yea. It's so contrary to how we operate by nature.

Kathy: Of course, and nothing in Christianity happens all at once. Everything happens by progress. It's such a journey. I used to try to ram down people's throats that they needed to surrender everything. And then when I started running up against the wall myself when it came to surrender, I saw that I needed to back off and be a little more gentle with people, because it doesn't just happen. Our will and our desire should be, “Yes Lord, I want to completely surrender to you, but I know I can't do this in the flesh.”

Host: Yeah. Well, we're going to look at some different aspects of surrender. Andrew Murray does really segment this very nicely. So, let's just go through some of the sections that he lays out here. He starts off by talking about the fact that God does expect our surrender.

Kathy: Absolutely. What we do know about Him commands and demands that we absolutely surrender to Him. He is the King. He doesn't allow for half-hearted surrender. He wants all or nothing.

Host: Yea. In this first section of the chapter, God expects our surrender, he talks about the gravity of who God is. All you have to do is go out on a clear cold night and look up into the heavens and stand in awe. And then you realize that as human beings, we are the only ones in the entire universe that would ever even think to question surrendering to God. That's an astounding thing.

Kathy: It is. And he uses the example of how flowers and nature bends itself to God and does what they were created to do. But the big divider in a sense is that we have a will and those other things are created. Also, we were all born with the knowledge of God, so the expectation for us is enormous in light of that.

Host: Alright. Now we are going to get to the aspect that it is God who accomplishes our surrender. Now, that seems like an oxymoron. How can someone else accomplish my surrender and it still be surrender?

Kathy: I think that for us who are sincere about the journey that we're on as Christians, we want the Lord. And I'm going to go on the assumption that the listeners really want Him. I have to go on that assumption, because I don’t have time to go off on rabbit trails. So, with that in mind, you have this desire in you, but you also have this failure right alongside the desire. You have the constant struggles of wanting to completely give over to God and completely lay down your will.

       God knows that's in us, and I believe the Lord puts that in us. He gives us that desire at our new birth. But He also knows that in our flesh dwells no good thing. We cannot accomplish this surrender on our own. God knows that. He's not blind. He's completely aware of how weak we are, how feeble we are and how incapable we are of doing this.

Host: Yea. Really what He's asking us to do is to surrender and yield to Him as He works the process of surrender in us. But He is still the one that does it.

Kathy: He is the one that does it. He’s working it out and He's putting the desire in us. We do our part by saying yes inside. And there are times when we have to actually say no to ourselves. There are times when we have to actually go against what's natural to us. But that's not how it gets accomplished.

       I know for myself that I spent a lot of time trying to be a good Christian and I don't believe the Lord is holding that or has held that against me. But I look back on it now and I realize that I can't be a Christian in the flesh. But if I walk in the Spirit, if I’m abiding in His presence and in His Spirit, then He's accomplishing those things that are making me a better Christian. And I have been baptized into the Holy Spirit and He lives in me. This God is living in me and this God is enabling me to live this miraculous life of surrender. So, it's just all a big journey. God is working it all out in us all.

Host: It is a journey. The Scripture also says that it is God that works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Kathy: Yeah, and that's wonderful news. I love that because it is His will. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. We just need to be yielded vessels, wanting and desiring Him to do that process.

Host: Yeah. And that is the requirement, that we be yielded. And that's the only requirement really that He asks of us. To be yielded to what He wants to do and what He’s promised to do.

In the 11th message of our "Unveiling Yahweh" series, we will learn about the benefits of having Yahweh as our Shepherd.

Psalm 23 is one of the most beloved psalms of the Bible. Yet many Christians who know it by heart live lives which refuse to treat God like He really is their shepherd. It’s no wonder then that addictions are common in churches, and worldliness abounds even among pastors and leaders. In today’s sermon, Nate Danser expounds on 3 lines from this beloved psalm to help us see what our life should look like when Yahweh is our Shepherd.