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.

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.