Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #225 Running to The Lord: (Part 1) Clearing our Conscience

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#225 Running to The Lord: (Part 1) Clearing our Conscience · The OneCry Podcast

0:02
Speaker1: My encouragement to the listener today is just run to the Lord.
0:06
Speaker1: If the Lord is bringing things to life in your life, don't run it hot.
0:12
Speaker1: Run to Him and run to Him in confession because it will be the biggest breakthrough you may ever have.
0:19
Speaker0: Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
0:24
Speaker0: The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
0:34
Speaker1: Hey, welcome to the One Cry podcast. We are so honored that you are here today.
0:39
Speaker1: We value your time, that you'd give us some.
0:42
Speaker1: It's a real privilege. I'm Kyle Reno with co-host here and the man,
0:49
Speaker1: I call him the Bishop, Bill Eliff.
0:52
Speaker1: Not because he is, but because he is a spiritual father, man.
0:56
Speaker1: How are you doing over there?
0:57
Speaker0: I'm doing good. I was in Denver last weekend, and the pastor got up and said,
1:06
Speaker0: he said, Brother Bill Elf is here. He said, he's like a grandfather to me.
1:11
Speaker0: And I thought, the guy's like 45.
1:14
Speaker0: I said, how is your father? And his father was younger than me.
1:19
Speaker0: I said, don't flip me to the next generation.
1:25
Speaker0: Anyway.
1:26
Speaker1: I didn't call you Papa.
1:28
Speaker0: I called you spiritual padre. There you go.
1:33
Speaker1: Well, man, listen, I know that we got some great stuff to cover today. I think of it like this.
1:40
Speaker1: There's some messages that you get early that are milk can help,
1:44
Speaker1: but then there's some meat and potato kind of messages, which got me thinking because I'm hungry.
1:49
Speaker1: What's your favorite meal, dude? I mean, like if you had one meal,
1:53
Speaker1: go-to meal for John Raven.
1:56
Speaker0: Oh, you know, I'm from the South, so it's chicken fried steak and fried taters, man.
2:04
Speaker1: Come on now.
2:06
Speaker0: I mean, pan-fried potatoes. All the people in the earth that have not had that
2:13
Speaker0: are just, they've not experienced life.
2:17
Speaker0: And there's something about potatoes. You know, you could just eat potatoes and just live on them.
2:22
Speaker1: Well, I got potatoes in mind. Listen, my mom, she lives in another state,
2:28
Speaker1: so when we see holidays and stuff, she knows that this request is coming every time.
2:32
Speaker1: And so what I want is my mom's hamburger steak gravy, mashed potatoes,
2:39
Speaker1: green beans, and cornbread. You know, like that's what I said.
2:42
Speaker1: Yeah. And I want to take the hamburger steak and I want to, you know,
2:47
Speaker1: get a little bit of it with that gravy. Then I'm going to take it and I'll rub
2:49
Speaker1: it in that mashed potato and then I'll eat it.
2:52
Speaker0: Kind of all stir around. Yeah, I just, you know, maybe we don't need to record.
2:58
Speaker0: Record any more of this podcast. We need to go eat somewhere.
3:03
Speaker0: You know, but you talk about potatoes.
3:06
Speaker0: You're not going to believe what I'm going to tell you. So there is a group
3:12
Speaker0: of potato workers that work with potatoes in Colorado.
3:17
Speaker0: This was several years back. And their job was to lift 100-pound sacks of potatoes,
3:24
Speaker0: and they were doing it all day long.
3:27
Speaker0: And so they began to have real problems and complaints, and this came up through the workplace.
3:35
Speaker0: And so we have a government agency that studies stuff like this.
3:40
Speaker0: We may not for long, but we do right now, and it's called OSHA,
3:46
Speaker0: and it's Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
3:50
Speaker0: So OSHA came in and looked at these potato workers, and after thousands of dollars
3:58
Speaker0: and study, they wrote a report.
4:00
Speaker0: And listen, here's the two-sentence summary of their report.
4:04
Speaker0: The spine is a sensitive mechanism. Isn't that profound?
4:09
Speaker0: Over time, improper lifting can cause irreversible damage that can lead to permanent injury.
4:17
Speaker0: That's their whole thing. Wow.
4:19
Speaker1: Thanks, guys.
4:21
Speaker0: My grandson could have come up with that answer. But the truth of the matter
4:26
Speaker0: is, you know, have you ever thought about, Kyle, like these pro football players?
4:34
Speaker0: They're, you know, 370 pounds, you know, 6'7", zero body fat,
4:41
Speaker0: and they break their toe, and they're out, you know.
4:45
Speaker0: So our bodies, there are certain things that our bodies can do.
4:50
Speaker0: They're incredible. But there are also some weights that we were never intended to carry.
4:58
Speaker0: And not only is that true externally, it's really true internally in our soul,
5:09
Speaker0: our mind, our emotions, and our will.
5:14
Speaker0: That there's some weights that if we carry these weights long enough,
5:19
Speaker0: things are going to break down.
5:20
Speaker0: Have you noticed, Kyle, that the kind of the mantra now, and you didn't hear
5:26
Speaker0: this 10 years ago, but the word everywhere that we talk about is mental health, mental health.
5:32
Speaker0: You know, our kids have a mental health. We have a mental health crisis.
5:36
Speaker0: And, you know, we talk about that all the time. And I agree. And.
5:41
Speaker0: So what is the cause of that, though, is really important. And what's the cure?
5:48
Speaker0: What's the cure? Because we weren't meant to live this way.
5:53
Speaker0: And I think one of the reasons in over 50-plus years of counseling people and discipling people,
6:02
Speaker0: There are two weights that people carry that they were never designed to hold
6:12
Speaker0: on to and never designed to carry.
6:14
Speaker0: And it just crushes them in their emotions. They get emotionally a wreck.
6:19
Speaker0: They're mentally in trouble because they're carrying these two weights.
6:25
Speaker0: And the two weights are unresolved sin and unforgiveness.
6:33
Speaker0: Unresolved sin, sin that the guilt of what they have done is weighing,
6:39
Speaker0: and they just live with it all the time.
6:42
Speaker0: And they haven't dealt with it God's way, so it hasn't been released.
6:47
Speaker0: And then unforgiveness, that's hurt.
6:51
Speaker0: Everybody gets hurt, but hurt that hasn't been dealt with God's way.
6:56
Speaker0: And we bear that and it creates incredible problems.
7:04
Speaker0: In fact, I would go so far to say is that 90% of the counseling I've done with
7:10
Speaker0: people and couples and discipling of men, it's one of those two issues.
7:17
Speaker0: And if I can help them resolve one of those two issues, the weight is lifted
7:24
Speaker0: and they can live with freedom and purpose and joy in their life again.
7:31
Speaker0: So both of these issues, Kyle, are found in the story of one of the greatest
7:39
Speaker0: characters in the Bible, and that's Joseph. That's Joseph.
7:45
Speaker0: He's a remarkable man. And I was preaching on part of this the other day in Genesis 42 through 46.
7:57
Speaker0: And let me just give a little quick recap of the story for those that may not know.
8:02
Speaker0: Joseph was one of the 12 sons of Jacob and Jacob.
8:12
Speaker0: And he was the next to last son. And Jacob really loved Joseph and kind of favored
8:19
Speaker0: him. He gave him a special coat.
8:22
Speaker0: And Joseph had this dream that one day his brothers and his mother and father would bow down to him.
8:29
Speaker0: And he was so naive about it, he told them about it.
8:33
Speaker0: Well, it just fueled anger and jealousy in his brothers.
8:39
Speaker0: And if you know the story, you know that one day Joseph came out to where they
8:43
Speaker0: were tending the flocks, and they took him and they threw him in a pit just to kill him.
8:49
Speaker0: And one brother said, we can't do this.
8:52
Speaker0: And a caravan was coming by. Just think of how God and his sovereignty had to
8:59
Speaker0: orchestrate the day that caravan left from wherever they were just to get to
9:04
Speaker0: that exact spot at that exact time.
9:07
Speaker0: But it came by, and they said, well, let's just sell him into slavery.
9:12
Speaker0: So his own brothers sold him into slavery.
9:16
Speaker0: He goes down to Egypt, and there he's sold as a slave to a guy named Potiphar,
9:23
Speaker0: who was an official in the Egyptian government.
9:28
Speaker0: And because God was with Joseph, everything he did prospered.
9:32
Speaker0: So pretty soon, he's at the top of the heap in Potiphar's house.
9:36
Speaker0: He's leading everything.
9:38
Speaker0: And Potiphar's wife saw him and was attracted to him, and she tried to seduce him.
9:45
Speaker0: Joseph's so pure that when she does, he just runs.
9:50
Speaker0: He does exactly what you're supposed to do with moral temptation, and that's run.
9:56
Speaker0: And he fleed. Well, she lied about what,
10:01
Speaker0: You know, he was had done and Potiphar came home and got angry at Joseph,
10:06
Speaker0: throws him in a prison. So he's been in a pit.
10:09
Speaker0: Now he's in prison unjustly both times and he's languishing in prison.
10:16
Speaker0: And there was two guys in prison that had worked for the Pharaoh,
10:20
Speaker0: the most important man in the world at that time.
10:25
Speaker0: And they had dreams, and Joseph, because he's connected to God and listening
10:32
Speaker0: to the Lord, was able to interpret that dream.
10:36
Speaker0: And sure enough, both of those dreams came true, and it put one of those guys
10:42
Speaker0: in a position where he was back as the cupbearer to the king.
10:46
Speaker0: Well, then Pharaoh has a dream that nobody can interpret.
10:53
Speaker0: And the cupbearer says, well, there's a guy in prison that interpreted my dream spot on.
10:59
Speaker0: They bring Joseph up, and Pharaoh says, well, I heard you can interpret dreams.
11:04
Speaker0: He said, no, I can't, but God can, and he's the interpreter of dreams.
11:08
Speaker0: And so you see this humble heart of Joseph, and sure enough, he said,
11:16
Speaker0: we're going to have seven years of plenty, and then seven years of famine,
11:21
Speaker0: and if the Pharaoh was wise, he would prepare during the seven years of plenty
11:27
Speaker0: so that we could make it through the seven years of famine.
11:30
Speaker0: And he said, well, I can't find anybody that's got as wise as you, so you're in charge.
11:35
Speaker0: All of a sudden, this guy that was in a pit years before, 22 years before,
11:40
Speaker0: is now the second most important man in the world.
11:44
Speaker0: He's leading through this famine, and God brings his brothers there to get grain.
11:53
Speaker0: Now, that's the setup, okay?
11:55
Speaker0: Now, before I get into that, But I want to give you three misconceptions that
12:02
Speaker0: most people have about these weights that we carry on our soul that you need to grapple with.
12:11
Speaker0: You need to understand. Here's the first misconception.
12:14
Speaker0: I'm enslaved by other people or by my circumstances, and therefore I can't have
12:22
Speaker0: freedom, purpose, and joy.
12:24
Speaker0: In other words, if I was in a different circumstance, if I had a different husband,
12:27
Speaker0: if I had a different wife, then I could have freedom and purpose and joy.
12:32
Speaker0: If I had different parents, if I wasn't in this situation in my school,
12:37
Speaker0: then I could have freedom, purpose, and joy. Now, listen, that's a lie.
12:42
Speaker0: Because with God, you can have freedom, purpose, and joy wherever you are.
12:48
Speaker0: So you have to say, okay, I'm not going to listen to that. Here's the second misconception.
12:55
Speaker0: There's nothing I can do to find freedom, purpose, and joy.
13:01
Speaker0: And that's also a lie. In other words, we just feel like, well,
13:06
Speaker0: I'm in a prison of circumstances, and I can't do anything about it.
13:12
Speaker0: Therefore, I can never have freedom. I can never have purpose.
13:16
Speaker0: I can never have joy because there's nothing that can be done. Well, that's not true.
13:23
Speaker0: And here's a third misconception. You've got to really wrestle to the ground in your mind.
13:29
Speaker0: My problems are too complicated for me to have freedom, purpose, and joy.
13:36
Speaker0: In other words, I just can't, nobody's had a problem like my problem.
13:41
Speaker0: Well, number one, that's not true. Okay.
13:45
Speaker0: Satan loves to say, well, you got it worse than anybody.
13:50
Speaker0: And therefore, you can be justified in just not pursuing God in the midst of
13:57
Speaker0: this thing. It's too complicated.
14:00
Speaker0: Well, it may be complicated, but it's not too complicated.
14:05
Speaker0: Not for God, not for his plan, not for his purposes.
14:09
Speaker0: So lay those misconceptions down. And I want to deal today with the first of
14:15
Speaker0: these unbearable weights, and that's unresolved sin is an unbearable weight.
14:24
Speaker0: It's something you were never intended to bear.
14:29
Speaker0: You say, Bill, where do you see this in this story? Well.
14:36
Speaker0: Joseph was 17 years old when his brothers threw him into a pit and tried to kill him.
14:42
Speaker0: Has that ever happened to you? I mean, is your problem worse than that?
14:46
Speaker0: That your whole family conspired against you to literally kill you,
14:50
Speaker0: and then they sold you into slavery and made money off you?
14:56
Speaker0: I don't think many people have had that, but Joseph did.
15:00
Speaker0: And he could have been incredibly bitter.
15:03
Speaker0: But what's fascinating is 22 years later, when we go through this whole story
15:10
Speaker0: and Joseph has been raised up and he's administering to this grain in time of
15:16
Speaker0: famine to the whole world.
15:19
Speaker0: Jacob's over in the land of Israel and he says to his boys, he said,
15:23
Speaker0: I hear there's grain in Egypt. Go down to Egypt and get us some grain.
15:27
Speaker0: They go down there and Joseph recognizes them, but they don't recognize him.
15:34
Speaker0: So he develops a series of couple of little tests to see what was really in their heart.
15:40
Speaker0: And one of them was he gives them the grain, but he puts their money back in
15:45
Speaker0: the sacks and they go off.
15:47
Speaker0: They get home, open the sacks, and there's their money.
15:52
Speaker0: And listen to this. This is the first thing that came to their mind.
15:57
Speaker0: This is found in Genesis 42, 21.
16:00
Speaker0: They said to one another, truly, we are guilty concerning our brother, Joseph.
16:09
Speaker0: 22 years later, the first thing is this unresolved sin that they've committed
16:16
Speaker0: and the guilt that comes from that sin.
16:20
Speaker0: Truly, we are guilty concerning our brother because we saw the distress of his
16:25
Speaker0: soul when he pled with us, yet we wouldn't listen.
16:29
Speaker0: Therefore, this distress has come upon us. And Reuben answered and said,
16:34
Speaker0: and one of the brothers said, Didn't I tell you, don't sin against the boy and you wouldn't listen.
16:39
Speaker0: Now comes a reckoning of his blood.
16:44
Speaker0: Guilt comes from the sins we commit that are not resolved God's way.
16:53
Speaker0: Let me say that one more time.
16:55
Speaker0: Guilt and this weight of guilt on our soul comes from us committing sins and
17:03
Speaker0: all of us commit sins. And that's...
17:06
Speaker0: That we don't deal with God's way. And everybody has sin, therefore everybody has guilt.
17:12
Speaker0: Now listen, guilt is not a bad thing.
17:16
Speaker0: Guilt is like pain to the human body. If you do something foolish and you put
17:21
Speaker0: your hand on a hot stove, God has lovingly designed this thing called pain.
17:28
Speaker0: And suddenly all the nerves and the receptors send a brain real quick to your
17:34
Speaker0: head and say, take your hand off the stove, you idiot, right?
17:42
Speaker0: Well, that's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. So when we sin,
17:47
Speaker0: God has this conviction that comes upon us and this weight of what you've done
17:54
Speaker0: is wrong that is a good thing that says what you've done is wrong.
17:59
Speaker0: You need to turn. You need to repent.
18:02
Speaker0: You need to respond God's way. And that's designed to help you.
18:07
Speaker0: I was with one guy one time, and I knew what he'd done, and I knew him well.
18:12
Speaker0: And he said, man, I'm just so guilty. I said, I just feel constantly guilty about everything.
18:18
Speaker0: And I said, well, you know why you feel that way? Because you are guilty.
18:24
Speaker0: You're guilty. And God's sending you a message to try to help you.
18:30
Speaker0: Now, David, you know,
18:33
Speaker0: a man after God's own heart, and we love the Psalms because they're just the
18:40
Speaker0: honest cry of a man who is walking with God. And David had sinned.
18:48
Speaker0: One day in an unguarded moment, this godly man looked over and he saw Bathsheba
18:53
Speaker0: bathing on a rooftop and he committed adultery and then literally arranged to
18:59
Speaker0: have her husband murdered.
19:02
Speaker0: And it was horrific. And finally, he repented when he was confronted by the prophet Nathan.
19:11
Speaker0: And he writes about this in Psalm 32. Now, listen to this.
19:15
Speaker0: This is David. How blessed is the man whose sin is forgiven,
19:22
Speaker0: his transgression is forgiven, and whose sin is covered by the grace and the
19:28
Speaker0: blood and the forgiveness of God.
19:30
Speaker0: But how blessed is the man whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and in whose
19:37
Speaker0: spirit there is no deceit.
19:38
Speaker0: You know, when you sin, you have to lie to cover it up. And then that's another sin.
19:43
Speaker0: And then you feel guilty and worse. And so you lie a little more and then you lie a little more.
19:49
Speaker0: Somebody says, how are you doing? Well, I'm doing great. Well, that's another lie.
19:53
Speaker0: And it just spirals down. And pretty soon you're in deep depression because of this weight of guilt.
20:00
Speaker0: Now, David describes this depression.
20:04
Speaker0: He says, when I kept silent about my sin, three things happened.
20:11
Speaker0: My body wasted away through my groaning all day long.
20:15
Speaker0: There was physical, literal, physical deterioration in David.
20:20
Speaker0: There was emotional deterioration. My body wasted away through my groaning all
20:27
Speaker0: day long. For day and night, your hand was upon me.
20:32
Speaker0: It's the hand of God's conviction, lovingly telling him to turn.
20:37
Speaker0: Spurgeon said, better a world on your shoulder like Atlas than the hand of God upon you like David.
20:45
Speaker0: Day and night, your hand was heavy upon me and my vitality was drained as with
20:52
Speaker0: the fever heat of summer. When we sin, everybody sins.
21:01
Speaker0: And we don't deal with it God's way. We don't resolve it God's way.
21:05
Speaker0: I promise you, you will experience emotional, physical, and spiritual deterioration, and things will go down.
21:17
Speaker0: I cannot tell you how many hundreds of times I've been in a counseling situation
21:26
Speaker0: or a mentoring or discipleship situation, And somebody's just,
21:31
Speaker0: they said, man, I just, I'm in this depression. I just feel terrible.
21:34
Speaker0: I just, I just can't sleep at night. And we'll go back and began to look at
21:42
Speaker0: what happened along the way. And there's some sin.
21:48
Speaker0: It's just a sin or they're, you know, they're looking at pornography every day
21:52
Speaker0: and they expect that that's not going to affect their soul.
21:57
Speaker0: And the hiding and the covering of that is not going to affect their soul.
22:02
Speaker0: But listen, you can't sin without this weight of guilt and God's loving conviction on your soul.
22:12
Speaker0: And it's a weight you were never intended to bear.
22:16
Speaker0: So you say, Bill, man, I mean, you're reading my mail. That is exactly where I am right now.
22:22
Speaker0: What do I do about it?
22:25
Speaker0: Well, look at the rest of this Psalm of David in Psalm 32.
22:30
Speaker0: He says, my vitality was drained as with the fever heat of summer.
22:34
Speaker0: Now listen, one verse, verse five of 32, Psalm 32, how simple this is.
22:42
Speaker0: I acknowledged my sin to you, God.
22:47
Speaker0: I just acknowledged it. I quit hiding it, covering it, blaming.
22:51
Speaker0: Well, it was her fault. If she hadn't been out there bathing,
22:54
Speaker0: you know, if the book hadn't been open, I wouldn't.
22:58
Speaker0: If the cash drawer hadn't been open, I wouldn't have stolen anything.
23:01
Speaker0: That's just blaming, right? You'll never get any relief. But when I acknowledged
23:08
Speaker0: my personal sin to you and my iniquity, I did not hide.
23:15
Speaker0: And I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.
23:20
Speaker0: And you forgave the guilt of my sin.
23:27
Speaker0: There's nothing that will resolve your sin but getting honest with God and others
23:35
Speaker0: if needed and seeking his forgiveness and cleansing.
23:41
Speaker0: And you know what David said in Psalm 51? Like 11 times in Psalm 51,
23:48
Speaker0: which is a psalm he wrote after he got honest about his sin.
23:52
Speaker0: He said, it was my sin. I did this. I sinned against God. I sinned against people.
23:58
Speaker0: And then he says, I said, I'm going to get honest about it.
24:01
Speaker0: And Lord, I began to know the joy of thy salvation. You saved me from that sin.
24:07
Speaker0: You delivered me from that guilt. It was lifted.
24:11
Speaker0: You know, I've been with congregations and churches all over the country,
24:17
Speaker0: and we have these moments when people start getting honest with God and dealing
24:22
Speaker0: with their sin, God's way.
24:24
Speaker0: And it's not complicated.
24:28
Speaker0: They think I got to go to 40 years of counseling to get over this. I mean, I got all.
24:33
Speaker0: Well, there may be things you need to deal
24:35
Speaker0: with and biblical training and sanctification. We call it development.
24:40
Speaker0: But I want to just tell you, you don't need 40 years to confess your sin.
24:48
Speaker0: And I encourage people so often to take a sheet of paper and write sinless on
24:53
Speaker0: the top, put a number one and say, Holy Spirit,
24:56
Speaker0: would you turn the light on in my soul and show me anything that's between me
25:03
Speaker0: and you and anything that's between me and somebody else? Show me my sin.
25:09
Speaker0: Don't make excuses.
25:12
Speaker0: Don't blame other people. when the Spirit of God brings that to your mind,
25:18
Speaker0: just write it down. Just write it down. The first time I did that,
25:23
Speaker0: When I was coming back to the Lord as a 17-year-old boy, and my dad encouraged
25:28
Speaker0: me to make a sin list like that, I had seven pages, legal size, front and back.
25:36
Speaker0: And just all this junk.
25:39
Speaker0: And I wondered why it felt like there was a wall between me and God,
25:45
Speaker0: and I couldn't get close to the Lord. I had all this junk in my life.
25:49
Speaker0: And my dad very wisely said, look, I want you to just write all this down and
25:56
Speaker0: then just go back and one by one,
25:58
Speaker0: just draw a line to those things as you confess them to the Lord and circle
26:06
Speaker0: the ones where somebody else is involved because you need to go back and clear your conscience.
26:12
Speaker0: And I'll tell you how to do that. So I did.
26:14
Speaker0: And then I just started this process of going back to all these people.
26:19
Speaker0: And it wasn't complicated.
26:21
Speaker0: It was hard at times because I was embarrassed and it was dealing a death blow
26:25
Speaker0: to my pride, which was a great thing.
26:28
Speaker0: But I had to go back and just say, you know, I'm trying to get right with God.
26:32
Speaker0: And I said the same thing every time, trying to get right with God.
26:35
Speaker0: And God has convicted me that what I did, what I said was wrong. Would you forgive me?
26:43
Speaker0: Would you forgive me? Do you know in not one instant did anybody say,
26:48
Speaker0: I don't know, I'll forgive you.
26:50
Speaker0: Are you kidding me? They could have.
26:53
Speaker0: That would have been their choice. But you see, that's not my responsibility.
26:57
Speaker0: That's between them and God. As far as it lies within me, Paul said in Romans
27:02
Speaker0: 12, seek to be at peace with all men.
27:05
Speaker0: You come to offer your offering and find out somebody's got something against
27:08
Speaker0: you, go and seek to be reconciled with them. Right?
27:13
Speaker0: I've had to do this hundreds and hundreds of times, right, to seek forgiveness
27:20
Speaker0: with God thousands of times and forgiveness with other people.
27:27
Speaker0: They ask Norman Grubb, who was a great missionary in Rwanda and was there during
27:33
Speaker0: a 20-year season for that nation.
27:36
Speaker0: The church in that nation was in revival for 20 years.
27:41
Speaker0: And he writes in his little booklet, Continuous Revival, which is a great little
27:46
Speaker0: booklet to read, how did this revival sustain?
27:52
Speaker0: And he said, well, very simple. We sought every day to keep the roof off and the walls down.
28:02
Speaker0: Roof off, walls down, nothing between me and God, no unresolved sin,
28:09
Speaker0: no hiding, no covering, no playing games, no blaming, nothing between.
28:15
Speaker0: I sinned. Did you sin? Of course we sinned.
28:18
Speaker0: But we dealt with it quickly. Listen, the Christian life is not a matter of sinless perfection.
28:25
Speaker0: It's a matter of immediate confession. And confession means to own up to it.
28:33
Speaker0: And here's what the Bible says in 1 John. John, the beloved disciple,
28:38
Speaker0: said, if we confess our sin, don't say you're not going to sin because you are.
28:42
Speaker0: And we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous,
28:46
Speaker0: so we can find forgiveness through Christ and what he's done on the cross.
28:51
Speaker0: But if you confess your sin, God is faithful and just.
28:56
Speaker0: He will forgive you of your sin and not only forgive you, cleanse you.
29:02
Speaker0: From all unrighteousness. That's a promise from a God who does not lie.
29:08
Speaker0: So you can get rid of this unbearable weight of guilt on your soul.
29:18
Speaker0: I could tell you so many stories of people who thought, man,
29:25
Speaker0: I can never overcome this. I can never get out of this depression.
29:29
Speaker0: I can never get rid of this feeling of guilt. I can never be used by God because
29:35
Speaker0: of what I did back then. And I had a man stand up in a meeting and say,
29:40
Speaker0: look, I stole a nut and a bolt from a hardware store 60 years ago.
29:44
Speaker0: And he said, you may think this is silly, but every time I got down to pray,
29:49
Speaker0: Satan would just say, well, you can't pray. You're a thief.
29:54
Speaker0: And he said, I'm not going to let that happen anymore. He confessed his sin
29:57
Speaker0: to God, went back to the hardware store and made restitution for that and cleared
30:04
Speaker0: his conscience. And he stood that night at a microphone and said, man, I am free.
30:09
Speaker0: And have you ever wondered why people, when they give testimony of dealing with
30:14
Speaker0: their sin, simply God's way and finding his forgiveness, here's what they always say.
30:22
Speaker0: I feel like a thousand pound weight has gone off my shoulder.
30:26
Speaker0: You know what's happening? They're dealing with the unbearable weight of guilt,
30:34
Speaker0: and it brings them back to joy and fruitfulness and freedom and purpose.
30:44
Speaker0: And, Kyle, I just love it when I have the opportunity to teach this to people
30:52
Speaker0: because it's just so liberating, and it shows them.
30:56
Speaker0: I mean, 90% of the time when I'm with a couple.
31:00
Speaker0: It's one of these two issues. And if we get unresolved sin cleared up,
31:08
Speaker0: and if we get unforgiveness begin to happen,
31:14
Speaker0: 75%, 80% of their problem is over. And now we can start to build.
31:19
Speaker0: But if we don't and restore right processes in their marriage,
31:23
Speaker0: they're not going to go anywhere. You're not going to give them 10 steps to
31:27
Speaker0: good communication if they've got the pile of unresolved sin and unforgiveness in their soul.
31:33
Speaker1: Yeah. Man, I was sitting there thinking how many times the Lord loved me enough to not leave me alone.
31:41
Speaker1: To not say, hey, let's get. I mean, you know, those those big moments,
31:46
Speaker1: those grotesque actions and things that God will have to.
31:49
Speaker1: But when God even starts in that sanctifying process, getting to the motives,
31:54
Speaker1: the thoughts, the ambitions, the whatever those things, and that God never once
32:00
Speaker1: in my life has shown up to condemn me, but to cleanse me, you know, to set me free.
32:05
Speaker1: I'll never forget what you just said about the thousand pound.
32:08
Speaker1: It left such a mark. I can visualize it in my mind.
32:12
Speaker1: But Steve Gaines, our buddy, you know, and he was a great man of God.
32:18
Speaker1: I was probably 21, 22, young on staff at Gardner, First Baptist.
32:23
Speaker1: And we'd pray on Sunday mornings together.
32:26
Speaker1: I knew that he was fasting and praying.
32:29
Speaker1: And he walked in and he said before the guys, he's real broken in a beautiful
32:34
Speaker1: way. And he says, guys, I want to tell you something.
32:37
Speaker1: He said, I'm real careful to say this, but I want to say it at celebration.
32:40
Speaker1: He goes, I don't at this moment.
32:43
Speaker1: And he's choked up because I don't know of one thing that's between me and God.
32:47
Speaker1: Not one thing, because the Lord's been showing me and I've been repenting and
32:51
Speaker1: making things right with people.
32:53
Speaker1: And he said, I'm just telling you, it's the most freeing place.
32:57
Speaker1: Liberating. Oh, liberating. And I watched him stand that morning and preach like a man that was free.
33:03
Speaker0: Well, you've got a pure pipe. Yeah.
33:06
Speaker0: You just got a clean vessel. Yeah. You know, that God can come through and use in an unbelievable way.
33:15
Speaker0: But if you've got unresolved sin, you're sitting there thinking Satan has got
33:20
Speaker0: a little tool. He's got leverage.
33:23
Speaker0: And he's whispering in your ears, so, well, you can't, you don't have any authority
33:27
Speaker0: to talk about this because you're lying. You're hiding. You're covering.
33:32
Speaker0: You know, Kyle, we've written a little booklet about this, and it's in the One Cry bookstore.
33:40
Speaker0: And it's called Lifting Life's Greatest Load, How to Gain and Maintain a Clear Conscience.
33:48
Speaker0: It is a very simple book. You can see it's about 35, 40 pages.
33:55
Speaker0: In this book are the 10, because I've just done this for years with people,
34:01
Speaker0: the 10 most often asked questions about clearing your conscience.
34:07
Speaker0: You know, people say, well, it just happened a long time ago.
34:10
Speaker0: Or what if it costs me money? Or what if I lose my job if I go clear my conscience?
34:16
Speaker0: And so there are stories and just biblical. The Bible has answers to all those questions.
34:23
Speaker0: And there's some people here who are listening right now.
34:28
Speaker0: And you may be you may just driving down the road and you're weeping. Yeah.
34:34
Speaker0: Because the Holy Spirit has just sat down in that car with you and said,
34:39
Speaker0: hey, man, this is the issue with you.
34:42
Speaker0: And you're not going to go any
34:44
Speaker0: farther until you deal God's way with these unresolved sins in your life.
34:51
Speaker0: Or somebody's going to say, you know, you need to confess your sin to your wife.
34:55
Speaker0: I had a guy that came to me and he said, Bill, I had a 12-year affair.
35:03
Speaker0: And it's over now, but my wife and I have real problems and we can't get close to each other.
35:09
Speaker0: I said, well, of course not, because you've got this closet.
35:14
Speaker0: You've been hiding all these years and you're afraid if you get too close,
35:18
Speaker0: she's going to ask you a question that's going to open up that closet and all
35:23
Speaker0: hell is going to break loose.
35:26
Speaker0: So preclude that by dealing with it God's way. He did, and she had to learn
35:34
Speaker0: fresh lessons on forgiveness then.
35:38
Speaker0: So both of them, though, God just used that moment of clearing his conscience
35:45
Speaker0: to transform that couple.
35:49
Speaker0: And they ended up leading marriage seminars all over Texas.
35:56
Speaker0: Wow. Even being on the Oprah Winfrey show,
36:00
Speaker0: believe it or not, this is how bizarre God takes our worst failures and use
36:06
Speaker0: them for his greatest glory and giving testimony of how you can forgive someone
36:12
Speaker0: who's hurt you that went to 25 was heard by 25 million people.
36:18
Speaker0: Now, that's that's what God you don't your sin is not going to have to be confessed
36:24
Speaker0: to 25 million people. But that's not the point. It's just the point.
36:28
Speaker0: If you'll just cooperate with God, you have no idea how he will liberate you.
36:35
Speaker1: Yeah, man. Well, Bill, let me do this, man, just to pray, because there's no
36:40
Speaker1: season where this is not needed in our life.
36:43
Speaker1: You know, there's always this live in the light as children of life.
36:47
Speaker1: You know, and I also think about our listeners today, you know,
36:52
Speaker1: the Lord showed me years ago, Kyle, there's there's there's two responses to
36:58
Speaker1: when I'm trying to show you something or I'm trying to show anyone something.
37:02
Speaker1: You'll either run and hide or you'll or you'll run to him.
37:06
Speaker1: Yeah. And and and my encouragement to the listener today is just run to the Lord.
37:12
Speaker1: If the Lord is bringing things to light in your life, don't run and hide.
37:18
Speaker1: Don't run and hide. Run to him and run to him in confession because it will
37:22
Speaker1: be the biggest breakthrough you may ever have in your personal life.
37:27
Speaker1: Let me pray for us real quick. Father, we love you. Lord, thank you for these
37:31
Speaker1: truths. Thank you for Joseph's story.
37:34
Speaker1: God, thank you for how King David modeled that same moment in his life.
37:39
Speaker1: God, thank you for every listener that you love enough to not leave us alone,
37:44
Speaker1: to not leave us in bondage, not leave us in shame, to not leave us in places
37:50
Speaker1: of unresolved state that you come and you say, no, right here, let's talk about that.
37:56
Speaker1: And so I ask Spirit of the living God, even now with each of us,
38:01
Speaker1: show us what we cannot see or help us come to a place that we're finally ready
38:08
Speaker1: to deal with it and to do the next right thing.
38:12
Speaker1: And I know that always starts with you. So I pray for moments on the other side
38:16
Speaker1: of this podcast that people would get honest with you about it and have the
38:21
Speaker1: first real conversation around that
38:23
Speaker1: sin or that bondage or that thing that finally needs to be dealt with.
38:29
Speaker1: So, Lord, I pray you do that for the glory of your name, for their own personal
38:33
Speaker1: freedom and their flourishing.
38:35
Speaker1: And I pray in Jesus name. Amen.
38:38
Speaker0: Amen.
38:40
Speaker1: Well, again, man, thank you all so much for being with us today.
38:42
Speaker1: I know that God was speaking to people today.
38:47
Speaker1: I know he's reminding me of great truths.
38:49
Speaker1: I've heard Bill teach on these things. And so a couple encouragements.
38:52
Speaker1: One, on the One Cry website is that booklet he just talked about,
38:56
Speaker1: a way to help you clear your conscience.
38:58
Speaker1: I would strongly encourage you, if you know that you need to spend a season
39:02
Speaker1: with this, get you a copy and a few other copies for some people and walk through it. Spend some time.
39:08
Speaker1: The other thing is, I'm going to ask you to be bold right now.
39:11
Speaker1: And would you share this podcast with some people because
39:15
Speaker1: you know and you can tell a great way
39:18
Speaker1: to do it instead of saying hey i know you need to deal with this listen
39:21
Speaker1: to this podcast a way to say is man this
39:24
Speaker1: really spoke to me and i'm i'm having to do
39:27
Speaker1: some hard work with it why don't you listen to
39:30
Speaker1: it and let's talk about it send it to somebody even today
39:34
Speaker1: because it's never intended to stop with you but to spread through you and as
39:39
Speaker1: always man thank you for your time and there's another part to this right here
39:43
Speaker1: so this was part one of what Bill just got through sharing so make sure to be
39:48
Speaker1: back here next week for part two and we look forward to being with you then