Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P584 (10-30-20)
Synopsis
When you become born again, all things become new. Yes, there is growth, a renewing of the mind that has to occur, and will occur. We have an enemy, called Satan, that speaks through to our flesh. We learn to recognize the voice of God and what truth is, so that we can demolish those strongholds, those lies of Satan, and begin to walk in the new life God has given. God is tender toward us, and we have been given a new identity, called a child of God.
That new identity we have, a child of God, not a sinner saved by grace or an ex-convict, but a child of God, and when you grasp that truth, that is the starting point in which growth occurs. When you realize that God will never leave you or forsake, and loves and accepts you unconditionally, then that is an anchor to your soul. If error is what binds you, then truth is what sets you free.
So listen now as Bob shares truth with a believer who came to Christ while in prison and is now finding himself struggling with feelings and thoughts in his mind, having been released and out of prison for a year or so. Listen as Bob shares practical truth and encourages this brother in Christ.
Listen also as Bob shares the truth of the gospel to now an older lady who has been enslaved to this painful, and heart-breaking memories of continual sexual abuse from a father in her childhood years, that she has carried with her and is crippled in functioning today with any peace and joy. She is just so broken-hearted and you can hear her tears and pain. Listen as Bob tenderly shares with her practical answers with truth of scripture, and shares with her the unconditional love and grace and comfort of God, as she is led to become a new child of God, a sister in Christ.
Transcript
Rob from Bay City, TX
Rob: I want to thank you personally for the book you sent, Classic Christianity. I am still reading through it. My wife had called in and had talked to you and she began to describe me, and you kind of cut her off and then began to fulfill what she was going to tell you anyway, like you kind of knew me.
Rob: That was more real to me that way rather than have her describe my walk with Christ. I came out of a heavy life of crime. My conversion was after total rejection of people and friends and family. I was saved behind prison walls. When I came out, I was definitely a different person. I felt differently now. It has been a year that I have been out. It is totally tapered off that now I just have a lot of strong doubts. I do not mean that I do not have information. The information is there and I believe it. But I doubt who I feel about it any more. It is pretty scary. I do not deny Jesus Christ and I do not deny the Holy Spirit. I have seen Him move and I know He has moved in my life. But it is like the fire is gone. I feel like I am losing the battle now. Things in the past are coming back and every day is getting worse. I have a handle on it but there is no guarantee because the handle I am holding onto may not be there strong enough months from now. I am fine today and I may be fine tomorrow. I have a guarantee in Christ. I knew I would make it. But it feels like I lost my guarantee. Do you follow what I am saying?
Bob: Rob, the thing is you know full well you cannot depend on how you feel. You have to walk in the newness of life. Most of the time, Rob, in your life, especially when you have gotten into crime. That is one of the ways you get into that is by listening to your feelings. I feel like I deserve this. I feel like I ought to get this. I feel like I am not going to get caught. No one goes out and commits a crime with the thought you are going to get caught. You find out your feelings deceive you because you will get caught. We have to function not on the basis of feelings, Rob. We have to function on the basis of what truth is.
John 14:6
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
John 8:32
32 “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Bob: That truth is found in Christ. Your identity is so important, Rob, to where you are. You can get out, and many times, you say, “Who are you?” You think to yourself, but I am not going to say, but really, “I am an ex-con”. God is not calling you that. That is not who you are.
2 Corinthians 5:17
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
John 1:12
12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
Bob: If you are in Christ, you are a child of the living God. When you come to grips with that truth of your identity, that is what changes your life. You can never expect your life to change until you experience the exchange. Many times, we have presented the gospel like come and give your heart to Christ. I understand that. I am not saying that a person does not experience salvation at that time but you can remain impotent until you understand that it is not just giving my heart to Christ but the real excitement is He gave His heart to me. That is the exchange. It is not a changed life but an exchanged life. That is why Paul could say, “it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me”.
Galatians 2:20
20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
You, Rob, cannot do anything apart from Christ. We are zeros. There are not any heros just zeros as far as Christ is concerned. He said that. “Apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15:5
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Bob: So your dependence is not upon you gutting it out or your self esteem or your self discipline. Your only hope of glory is Christ alive, living in you. That is your hope of glory. That is where the understanding that who you are in Christ as a child of God, totally forgiven, totally a joint heir with Christ Jesus.
Colossians 1:27
7 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Romans 8:1-2
1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.
Bob: That is good news. Your destiny is secured. You know how you are. That is your compass, Rob. If you do not have a compass, which is the Lord Jesus Christ pointing you to the word of God, you will get off course. All of us do. So it is getting back to walking by faith in who you are in Christ. Because once you understand your identity in Christ, now everything that you are tempted to do can be bounced off of who it is that is being tempted. If I know I am a child of God and someone is tempting me to go steal something, I am going to bounce that temptation off of who I am. Who is it that is being tempted? A child of God. That makes no sense to do that.
Bob: Okay, Rob?
Rob: Okay. I do have a question. Most of my problems come from within my mind. That is where the battle is at. I have heard so many friends and family and even people I did not know. Most of them were not Christians. They retaliate against me in a lot of different areas. Once I got saved, I had to forgive for that to come back on me. For a year, I actually believed that I had forgaven them all. The things that are attacking me now are the hurts that were put on me. And we are talking about things over a year or more. It is like they are all over again. I am losing the battle because of that. I go through pity parties due to the hurts brought on me. That is where I am really seeking you for counsel in that area. I really thought I had forgiven people, even my wife. It seems to haunt me now, and I cannot seem to get rid of it.
Bob: Rob, not understanding exactly what you are saying. I understand you have got hurt. That is just down to Christ saying forgive one another just as Christ has forgiven you.
Colossians 3:13
13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
Bob: We all get hurt. Christ got hurt. That is not an unusual thing. We have to be. As a child of God, I have to look at that and say, “What am I going to do with that?” I have an option. I can hang onto that. I can respond to that hurt with fear, anger, depression, self pity or I can say, “Well, what else is new?” When Jesus said, “in this world you are going to have tribulation” and a part and even most of tribulation will come from people.
John 16:33
33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Bob: So that should not shock anybody when we have tribulation. I am not saying it does not hurt. It does. You cannot belabor on that or camp on that. You have to get to the point of saying, “This is not doing me any good. I am enslaved to people who are not even thinking about me.” That is where releasing that to the Lord. “Lord, this is your deal and not mine.” It is not that I need to forgive, just forgive them. People have forgiven you. You forgive them. That is all a part of life. If you do not do that then you are going to get bitter. So has Christ Jesus forgiven you for everything?
Rob: Certainly.
Bob: So, he says forgive one another. As a child of God, forgive one another. How? In the same way Christ forgave you. When Christ forgave you, did you deserve it?
Rob: No.
Bob: No, you did not deserve it. They may not have deserved it either. But that is okay. Forgiveness is not whether you deserve it or not. As a matter of fact, it is really not forgiveness if you do deserve it. If you deserved it, it would not be forgiveness. That is like people who say, “I exercised grace to that person.” The only way you could exercise grace to someone is if you are totally innocent. The only person who can exercise grace is a totally innocent person, for grace is unconditional. That is what the Lord says. “If you are without sin, cast the stone. If you are not without sin, do not cast the stone.” We have to get down to the point, Rob, of understanding our lives that if people are going to hurt us that is a part of life. We cannot walk around with an unforgiving spirit. The thing of it is, forgiveness is not just forgiveness by itself. Forgiveness is a result of a desire for reconciliation. If you are not willing to reconcile then you have not forgiven somebody. What you have to be concerned about is there a willingness of my heart to be reconciled. If there is, then why then forgiveness is a natural flow of that.
Matthew 18:21-22
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
Rob: I thought I willed to forgive it so I can put that out of my mind and not have to deal with the past. I do not know where to start. I do not know where it is coming from?
Bob: That is coming from the devil. You have two sources of input in your mind, one comes from God and another one from Satan. If you have any thoughts coming in contrary to God then that is from the devil.
2 Corinthians 10:5
5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
Rob: Whether I feel it or whether thoughts are there or not?
Bob: Rob, what Satan does is he puts thoughts in your mind. He puts it in there using your voice with a Bay City, TX accent and it sounds just like you. You are sitting there thinking it is coming from me. It is not coming from you at all. It is coming from him. That is where the battle of the mind is coming from. You did not conjure up thoughts of God, that had to come from outside to within. You also do not conjure the other thoughts. They come from out to within.
Bob: Helen Keller was blind and deaf. She could not see anything, hear anything and speak anything. She was a little demon. Where did that come from? From input. There was nothing to input. She could not see anything or hear anything. Where does that come from? It comes from within. That is why it says there is nothing good within me.
Philippians 3:3
3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh
Romans 7:14-20
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
Bob: In my flesh, I have the desire to do good, but I cannot carry it out. There is nothing good in my flesh. Those thoughts come in and appeal to the desire of the flesh to hold bad thoughts to people and everything else. So you have to realize that it is Satan talking to my flesh. I am not in the flesh any more. I am a spiritual person. I am a brand new creature.
Rob: So I should ignore that?
Bob: Yes, you just totally ignore that. Satan is beating you to death with those thoughts and those feelings follow. We are designed by God so our feelings predictably respond to what we are thinking. So all Satan has to do is put a thought in your mind and then you go on with your feelings involved with it and that solidifies it.
Rob: That is surreal.
Bob: Yes, so you match up every thought that comes in your mind and match it up against truth. Rob, if you were working in a bank and you were going to be a bank teller. As the owner of the bank, I would not teach you what counterfeit looks like. I would teach you what a real bill looks like. When you know what the real looks like, you would immediately recognize the counterfeit. The same thing as you learn out of the word of God what truth is regarding the word of God so then thoughts come into your mind and they are contrary to Him and His thoughts. Then you know where they are coming from. There are only two sources, God and Satan.
Bob: Rob, I would like to send you a tape series we have on depression, titled Victory over Depression, and it is not that whether you are depressed or not, but truth in there will absolutely deeply affect your life. It will help you understand where some of this is coming from, how to deal with it and who you are in Christ. I believe it will be life changing to you. It will keep you away from a life of struggle. God did not call us to struggle. He called us to rest.
Rob: I sure thank you.
Bob: Alright, Rob. Good to talk to you.
Dee from Monterrey, CA
Dee: I have a question. Just in the past three or four months, I have been having a lot of emotional problems. I found out one of my parents came for thanksgiving. A lot of things when my parents left, a lot of things came flooding into my head, a lot of depressed feelings. He abused me when I was a girl. Since this happened and since thanksgiving, I felt like I cannot pray any more.
Bob: Dee, let me ask you a question. Please realize that I am just asking for information. I am certainly not doubting what you are saying at all. Are you talking about sexual abuse as a little child? Is this something that you actually remember or is this something you were told that must have happened?
Dee: No.
Bob: You remember. You remember those things happening. Those are terrible things that happen to people. They really are. Do you think as a child that you had anything at all to do with that? In other words, did you bring that about in any way, shape or form?
Dee: No. I do not think so.
Bob: How could you as a child? Is there anything a child can do to bring a man or another woman to sexually abuse a child? There is nothing a child can do on that. That was the case of someone doing something to you when you had nothing to do with that. So you see what I am getting at? So you cannot assume responsibility for that occurring to you. How old are you, Dee?
Dee: Thirty nine.
Bob: Now, you are thirty nine. Let ’ s say that happened. Did that happen to you through your youth or just a couple of times?
Dee: It happened when I was eight and continued on until I was nineteen.
Bob: You see, Dee, on those kinds of things, that is what Satan does, and says to you that is what you are responsible for.
Dee: Yes. (Tearing up)
Bob: And he tells you that you are a low life thing and that is a lie.
Bob: God came to heal those types of things. That was a sickness. That was a sin on the part of your father and had nothing to do with you at all. Even in your older years. If that would have happened when you were a little child and ended, you would know you had nothing to do with it. What caused the problem to be accentuated is that continual abuse when you were older. A lot of bitterness can enter in. But, Dee, you cannot live with that. When you are thirty nine years of age, there is a time that must come and say, “I am going to get on with my life.” Dee, I have asked other girls the same question. Do you think in your life that you are going to run into some other women or other girls who have gone through the same thing? Do you think there are other people out there who have gone through the same thing?
Dee: Yes.
Bob: There is no person in the world, Dee, who is able to be of any more comfort to people who have gone through those same things than someone who has been through them.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
Bob: So Dee, in this world in which we live, as long as man was given a will, with the only option to that from God, would be to make robots out of us. The gamble was that sin was going to reign in some people’s lives and people are going to be hurt, killed and abused. All of those are possibilities as a result of man’s choice to act upon a lie. That is what Jesus said.
John 16:33 (KJV)
33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
Bob: But He came to bring comfort to the broken heart.
Dee: He could love me.
Bob: He not only can. He does. He loved you through that entire ordeal. You see, God, if for Him to intervene, and what I am talking about, to stop every ill that is on this earth today and that is just one of millions, He would literally have to put us through another flood. All of us have sinned and fallen short in one form or another.
Romans 3:23
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Bob: God has never stopped loving you, Dee. He demonstrated His love for you and He came to die for you, coming to die for you so raised from the dead, He could come to live in you. That is His desire to come to bring you peace to your heart.
Romans 5:8
8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Bob: Dee, have you ever come to the point in life of just accepting by faith the living Christ and the love of God into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior?
Dee: I used to go to church. I thought I knew. I guess I do not.
Bob: Well, honey, that is a start, Dee. Recognize there is a God who loves you more than anything in the world. As Paul said, “nothing can separate you from the love of God.”
Romans 8:38-39
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Bob: It is the love of God that has brought you to this point right now. He wants you to recognize that you, Dee, your sins and the sins of the world were taken upon Him. He literally became sin for you so that you would be able to become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21
2 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Bob: Then he was raised from the dead in order to give life to us. Until we have life living in us we are just out struggling on our own. We do not have any strength to overcome the very things you are talking about. So what you are looking for today is new life and to be able to experience that love of God that you heard about.
Dee: Yes.
Bob: Dee, we can do that right now. It is merely accepting by faith the living Christ to come into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior, to be your life, your love, your best friend and to give you a life eternal. I would like to pray with you if you would like to do that tonight.
Dee: Yes.
Bob with Dee repeating after him: Lord Jesus, I need you. I thank you for dying for all of my sins. I thank you for now offering me your life. I accept you into my heart. I exchange all of that rejection of the world for all of the acceptance from you, to be loved by you and forgiven by you, and to have a friend that will never ever leave me or forsake me, in Jesus name. Amen.
Bob: Now Dee, the living Christ has come to take residence in your heart. He has come to be with you to live in you, to give you forgiveness, to give you love, to give you comfort and now it is the process of being able to know what all that means and growing in it, Dee. You live in the northern, California area, dont’ you?
Dee: Yes.
Bob: A couple of things I want to do. First of all, Jesus says that if anyone is in Christ, is a new creation. You are a new creation. Now old things have passed away and all things become new. He says you are a child of God. I too am a child of God. So what does that make us? That makes us brother and sister. So you have a new family member. So, Dee, there are some people out in California, in those areas that I think I can try to get you in touch with. If you like, they can help you through these things. Dee, what you will find in your life, as traumatic as these things have been in your life, what you will find is that God will give you a heart of love and forgiveness and be able to reach out to others with the same compassion He has reached out to you. You are in for a great adventure.
Bob: Dee, I could not be happier for you. I will send you what we call a new believers packet to let you work through that. I will send you a book of mine you can read through but the main book to read through is the bible. Do you have a bible?
Dee: Yes, I do.
Dee: Thank you.
Bob: Hang on now. You keep in touch, will you.
Dee: I will. Thank you.
Bob: Bye. Bye.
