Rediscovering Repentance Ep. 07: Sin isn't overcome instantly, so true repentance isn't a one-time thing. It's a lifestyle that we live.
Absolute Surrender: Peter's three denials of Jesus broke him, leading to freedom from self and readiness for God's purpose.
In the 15th message of our "Unveiling Yahweh" series, we will be learning about God’s strength in our spiritual battles.
This episode: Sin is never overcome all at once, and so true repentance is not something we do one time. It's a lifestyle that we live.
Despite all my rebellion and the crimes I committed, I can see how Jesus was pursuing me throughout my life.
Growing up with a mother whose faith impacted his youth, Frank brazenly turned away from the Lord in his teen years. Rejecting the Light, he embarked on the dark path of self and pleasure. What he thought would bring him lasting fulfillment only left him more and more empty. Frank’s story is one of rebellion and lawlessness, but the Good Shepherd was after another lost sheep behind the scenes. Watch how the Lord was able to reach a soul through the Pure Life Ministries Residential Program and be amazed at the power of mercy.
If you want to live a life of freedom and righteousness, then you do NOT want to miss Part 1 of our discussion on Galatians.
Do you want to experience the freedom that Christ bought for you?
Do you want to be free from legalism and purified from sinful lust?
Do you want to be empowered by the Spirit to live a truly righteous life?
Then you do NOT want to miss Part 1 of our discussion on the powerful book of Galatians.
When God disciplines us, it is not because He rejects us. Rather it is part of His love and acceptance.
In part 2 of an interview from our Babylon podcast series, Gabriel, Ken and Nate discuss a crucial lesson they've learned in their walk with God: God disciplines those He loves. (from Podcast Episode #500 - Satan's Kingdom of Pride)
Click here to check out part 1 of this discussion.
Nate: As believers in Christ, we all experience His hand of discipline and correction in our lives. But I don't think that any one of us could say that we always deal with His discipline perfectly. There are a lot of ways to respond to His correction that are wrong and don’t actually make us more life Christ, but actually just come out of our self-life. So, let’s talk about ways that we've responded to God's correction that we realize now, was not how we should have done it.
Ken: Since I tend to be in my head a lot, one of my default responses to God’s correction used to be morbid introspection. I would always be looking at myself and saying, “God is pointing out something in my life. God is bringing correction or His discipline to bear in my life.” But when I did this, I was missing something crucial. I should have seen His correction as first and foremost the loving hand of my Father wanting to spur growth in me, and wanting me to grow spiritually. I also should have seen it as an invitation into a closer relationship with Him by removing any obstacles that were getting in the way. But when I don’t see that, and when I simply look at myself, I see His discipline as Him putting His thumb down and condemning me.
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That's my default mode and I’ve had to get out of that mindset and realize that God disciplines those He loves. He's not out to get me. He would have already squashed me if He wanted to. It's not like He has to figure out how to do that. He could do it in a millisecond if He wanted to. But it's His kindness and His goodness that leads me to repentance. As I humble myself and embrace the process, even though it's painful to die to self, there's something better on the other side. And it’s ok when God disciplines me because He loves me, and He knows what He's doing. If I had to try to figure out things on my own, I wouldn’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fix myself. And even if I could, it would just foster the very pride He's trying to undermine and destroy.
Nate: How long did it take you to start to gain that kind of perspective?
Ken: I would say it definitely took me a few years after coming here and I'm still working on it. Because that's my default mindset I’ll gravitate towards that way of thinking if left to myself. But the Lord is helping me to get out of that mindset and instead focus on Him and the reality of what's really going on, not what I would naturally think is going on.
Nate: What about you, Gabriel?
Gabriel: Love and discipline. I really had a hard time with those, and I wanted to know how those went together. Alongside that, looking back, I did not respond well to my spiritual authority. That's one of the things I learned over time as my mind was being renewed. It took time for me to see God's love through my spiritual authority correcting me. I had to see that I wasn’t going to be able to do things on my own and the people that God surrounded me with are the very people He's using as instruments to shape me up and to sanctify me. And, you know, at times I've been critical and even bitter. I've had to work through forgiveness because I’ve felt offended. I’ve felt totally misunderstood. And my thoughts were, “If you would actually take some time to get to know me, you wouldn't be correcting me on this issue.” Those are thoughts that I really dealt with. And the Lord knew all those things and still was very patient and loved me through it. Getting to see that in Him was very special.
Hebrews 12 is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. It wasn't always that way, but it has become that. I can see where I was compared to I am now and it has put faith in me to believe that the discipline I have experienced was all His love. I'm not abandoned. I'm not left alone. I've got markings of God's love through His discipline in my life. And it's taken several years, but I have grown to love the Word of God because when I'm corrected or I'm disciplined, I can go there, and I can get right. It helps me understand why correction is happening, and I don't have to be left on my own trying to fix myself. Oftentimes I don't get it right still and I continue to struggle with understanding the combination of God’s love and discipline. For example, I'll be in the middle of going through discipline in my life and I'm not kidding you, it won’t be until the next day that I realize that’s what I was really going through. I'm still learning and I'm still figuring this out and it's going to take some years ahead before I really understand more and more of God's love in that.
Nate: Yeah. I have one story in my mind that kind of illustrates often how I handled discipline. And let me be clear, I did not handle it well. I had this pattern in my life where I would start feeling pretty good about my spiritual life and about my progress and my growth, and I would start going, “Man. I think I'm actually getting this.” You know, because when God really shows you how messed up you are, that kind of sticks with you for a while and you just don't know internally if you will ever really know how to walk with God. But at this point I was really starting to feel like, “I think I'm getting this.” And it was like, as soon as I started feeling that way, somebody would call me out about my pride. So, at one point, I said, “All right, God, let me get this straight. Whenever I feel good and happy about my progress in my walk with you, you just knock me down. Why God? Do you just want me to feel miserable about myself all the time?”
OK. That's not my finest moment. But probably a couple of years after that, I started seeing the pattern and started realizing that God is saving me from myself. He's not trying to hurt me. He was trying to save me because that self-confidence and that self-assuredness and that sense of thinking I was doing pretty good was not glorying in Him. That was glorying in myself. And then, on the flip side you get corrected and you're just like, “I'm miserable, I'll never get it. I'm just a loser. I'm a failure.” But that's just my wounded ego wanting to glory in itself and being frustrated because it can't. So looking back at how I’ve handled discipline, I just feel like I have done so much of it wrong. But I think it's very similar to what you were saying Gabriel, that the discipline of God is the love of God. It's a clear manifestation. God is saying, “I love you and I accept you.” It's not rejection, it's acceptance. But that reorientation process to see His discipline correctly takes a long time.
How will we ever find the strength to bear good fruit in a wicked world? There's only one way. By abiding in the Vine.
The disciples of Jesus knew that He had big plans for them. They were called to stand for truth in a world that loved lies. They were called to preach the Word of God in a world that hated the Message and the messenger. How would they find the strength to fulfill their calling? There was only one way... by abiding in the Vine.
In this bonus segment, Josh Rowand talks with Nate and explains how he uses the Bible to connect with God in a meaningful way.
In this bonus segment, Nate sits down with biblical counselor Joshua Rowand to discuss the methods and resources he uses to study the Bible.
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Methods we discussed:
- The daily office (01:20)
- Pray-read scripture to the Lord (04:15)
- Use a Bible without chapter or verse markings (08:27)
- Go through an annual Bible reading plan (11:46)
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Resources we mentioned:
- The Walk Series (Devotionals) by Steve Gallagher
- The Immerse Bible by Tyndale
- Psalms in 30 Days by Trevin Wax
- Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus (Devotional) by Dick Brogden
How will we ever find the strength to bear good fruit in a wicked world? There's only one way. By abiding in the Vine.
The disciples of Jesus knew that He had big plans for them. They were called to stand for truth in a world that loved lies. They were called to preach the Word of God in a world that hated the Message and the messenger. How would they find the strength to fulfill their calling? There was only one way... by abiding in the Vine.
Do you want to live a truly fruitful life? Don't buy into plausible sounding opinions. Set your mind on Christ alone.
So, maybe you’re a fairly new believer in Jesus. You know you've been called to live a noble life, full of wisdom and good fruit. But you just aren’t quite sure how to attain to that. And what’s worse, everyone around you seems to have an opinion about what it takes to get there. And now you're confused. If you can relate to some of these feelings, this episode is for you.
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Resources we mentioned:
Without the (real) grace and love of God, it's impossible to live the Christian life. The counterfeits are worthless.
There is no way we can live an overcoming Christian life without the (real) grace of God and love of God. So maybe that’s why the apostles gave really strong warnings about things that sounded like grace and love, but were nothing less than demonic counterfeits that destroyed people’s lives.
Do you want to live a truly fruitful life? Don't buy into plausible sounding opinions. Set your mind on Christ alone.
So, maybe you’re a fairly new believer in Jesus. You know you've been called to live a noble life, full of wisdom and good fruit. But you just aren’t quite sure how to attain to that. And what’s worse, everyone around you seems to have an opinion about what it takes to get there. And now you're confused. If you can relate to some of these feelings, this episode is for you.
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Resources we mentioned:
In this bonus segment, Nate sits down with counselor Ken Larkin to discuss some of the methods and tools he uses to study the Bible.
In this bonus segment, Nate sits down with biblical counselor Ken Larkin to discuss some of the ways he studies the Bible, as well as some really helpful tools.
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Methods we discussed:
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Resources we mentioned:
Without the (real) grace and love of God, it's impossible to live the Christian life. The counterfeits are worthless.
There is no way we can live an overcoming Christian life without the (real) grace of God and love of God. So maybe that’s why the apostles gave really strong warnings about things that sounded like grace and love, but were nothing less than demonic counterfeits that destroyed people’s lives.
We can be completely oblivious to our self-centeredness and pride until the Lord comes in and shows us how He sees us.
When God saves a person, He will begin the process of sanctification in them. He will remove old patterns of thinking and behavior and reform the person into the image of Christ. One of the biggest areas of indwelling sin that must be dismantled is pride. In part 1 of an interview from our Babylon podcast series, Gabriel, Ken and Nate all talk about areas where pride and self-centeredness were still active in their life after their conversion and what the process of sanctification looked like for them.(from Podcast Episode #500 - Satan's Kingdom of Pride)
Nate: Ken and Gabriel, I want to read a quote by Pastor Steve from Episode 500 of our podcast entitled “Babylon: Satan’s Kingdom of Pride:
“I want to welcome you to Satan's world of pride, where everybody is constantly encouraged to outdo each other. To rise up over the top of each other – even to despise each other. The mantra of the satanic Bible is, ‘do as thy will.’ In other words, you need not concern your inner self with God's desires or demands for your life. You need only be concerned about living life exactly as you wish. You only need be concerned about satisfying your self-life and all that is involved with it.”
So, what I thought we could talk about today is coming out of that kingdom of self and that kingdom of pride because we all can relate to the truth that just because you come into the Kingdom of God doesn't mean that all of your pride is gone.
I mean, we learned many ways of thinking and many ways of acting that flowed out of Satan’s kingdom of pride. So, as we come out of Satan’s kingdom into God’s Kingdom, we have to totally unlearn a lot of stuff and relearn, or even learn for the first time, a totally different kind of a life. So, I thought maybe we could talk about how our self-life has been dealt with by the Lord over the years and how he's brought us through painful breakings and corrections to kind of teach us how to be true followers of Jesus. Let’s discuss a specific time after we were converted where the Lord revealed an area of our lives that was not pleasing to God and real change needed to take place.
Ken: For me, it was coming out of the whole lifestyle of self-centeredness and pride. I was looking down on others. I was being judgmental and critical in my heart toward other people. And I think I was for the most part oblivious to it before the Lord dealt with me on those things.
Nate: What about you, Gabriel?
Gabriel: Well, I think for me, there was so much that the Lord dealt with in the beginning. There was a strong mentality of self confidence in me, especially in what I was capable and able to do. And I had a wrong sight of how the Lord viewed weakness. So, when I began to see that my weakness is actually God's strength, that for me was where I began to see differently. A lot of things about the Kingdom of God came into a new perspective in my mind once I saw that.
Specifically, my speech was one of the key areas that the Lord really revealed to me He wanted to change because it wasn't pleasing to Him. It wasn't so much cursing or worldly music, because all of that had been dealt with by this time. At this point I was beginning to see, there's a lot of flattery and gossip being spread through my speech. There were many things that I thought were okay, especially coming from the world in a business mindset. Flattery, gossip, and manipulation were ways of getting around things and helping yourself climb the ladder. So, for me, I never would have called those things what they were until the Lord really began to expose and put His finger on those things.
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Nate: One of the things that I was reflecting on for myself was when I became a manager back in 2015 here at Pure Life. And I think I knew intellectually that I was supposed to go into this with the mindset of being a servant, but over time I started realizing that I didn't believe that in my heart. What I really believed was that being a leader was all about getting other people to do what I wanted, as if they were my servants and it's all about them doing my will. So, if people didn't do what I told them to do, I would get frustrated. Or if I told them to do something a specific way and it came out differently than I expected, I would be upset or I would judge them. I would micromanage all kinds of decisions because I was like, “You're going to do what I want you to do.” I definitely thought that other people's decisions and ideas were way below mine.
So, the Lord started to really resist that in me. And probably my first year and a half to two years of being a manager were so painful because God resists the proud. And He made it hard for me to be like that. Most of the time it was in leadership meetings where I would bring all my ideas and plans and it was just like they kept getting shot down one after the other. It was really, really hard. And Gabriel, you already mentioned something I wanted to get into with this. When we let the Lord start to expose some of those things, the realities of the Kingdom or important spiritual principles can become precious to us because of what we're learning. Ken, you had talked about having self-centeredness. As you started to let the Lord deal with you about that, what became real to you about the Kingdom?
Ken: Mine specifically came out in just being critical or judgmental of other people. So, I remember I was walking near the dumpsters on campus, and something had happened recently where I was just being critical of someone. And of course, I'm justifying myself in my mind, you know, I'm right, they're wrong or whatever and I heard a gentle whisper. I believe it was the Lord saying, “Right now the only thing that really matters is if you’re loving that person.” The issue doesn't even matter. Who's right or who's wrong doesn’t matter. All that matters is, am I loving that person.
And He showed me the reality that if I'm going to live the Christian life, it's got to be a walk of love. It's got to be humility and esteeming others above myself. And my unloving reaction of not living in that love can be more of a sin than anything that I'm judging someone else for. So that was a huge wake up call for me and a huge revelation that that's what God is like. God's not up there judging me, but I'm sitting around judging everyone else. And that was a big turning point of realizing it was something in me that was wrong. It wasn’t the other person. My heart was not right. The posture of my heart was not a Kingdom heart, but it was that old self life just wanting to exalt itself at the expense of other people. Instead of humbling myself and just loving the person, whether I agree with them or not.
Nate: And it could manifest in a way that seems very spiritual.
Ken: Oh, yeah. I would even say to myself, “It's the principle of the thing. I'm not mad at them.” But I was mad at them, and I was full of myself and full of pride.
Nate: Ok. What about you, Gabriel?
Gabriel: My understanding of weakness and strength were not like God's understanding of them. And I really tried to mix a lot of Christian principles like poverty of spirit with my understanding of success. And I had a very worldly mindset of success. For example, I would look at being able to preach to multitudes as a goal and something that I would see as a successful accomplishment. And I mixed a lot of what the world was offering and success along with being able to share the gospel with people. I had to really wrestle through the mentality of success and being able to be confident and strong, because I was so convinced about my way of thinking.
I had to unlearn so many things that I had learned in school and from being in business with other people who were of the worldly mindset. It was no one else's fault, but it was what I was literally drinking in every day. And so hearing Jesus’s words in the beatitudes is what rocked me because I was really trying to compress everything that I knew from a worldly influence into the beatitudes and it just didn’t work. I really struggled through the whole aspect of being poor in spirit. Honestly, it frustrated me because I didn't want to be poor, and I didn't understand that. I was confused how I could be poor and be blessed. I wanted to know though, so I wrestled through that and especially when it came to weakness and it led me into a process of surrender. I had to give up my knowledge, my thoughts, and my intellect. I just came to the conclusion that I needed to be comfortable and content with not knowing and not understanding. And my faith began to grow from that point.
Nate: Yeah, I think the thing that I started to learn as I started to experience some brokenness over the way that I was leading was just that Jesus never leads from a place of pride. And I think we could all say that even as these truths have become real to us, it's not like we've perfected them. We're still learning how to do this. But it still really astounds me that He doesn't ever lead from a place of pride. He never counsels from a place of pride. He never helps other people from a place of pride. I don't even know if this makes any sense, but in His heart, He doesn't think that He's better than other people. Which is crazy because He is better.
He's better than all of us in every way, but He doesn't exalt Himself in the way that we exalt ourselves. He just is better. But He's lowly in his heart. And I started to see some of that and I started to want to be like that. Because in myself, I don't think your idea is better than mine. I don't think you're more talented than I am. In myself, I think I'm better all the time. That's who I am. So, it’s amazing to me that if He came and He was doing what we would do, He would look at someone else's work and He would say, “Man, that's amazing. You did a great job. I value what you did. I value your opinion. I value your perspective.” That's amazing to me.
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