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.

{{blog-brse="/blog-ads-storage"}}

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.

{{blog-brse="/blog-ads-storage"}}
       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.

‍

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?

{{blog-brse="/blog-ads-storage"}}

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