Are you stuck? Do you fear that you will never be able to change, never break free from the sin that has you in its clutches? You can change! I promise. No matter what the sin is, you can break free from its clutches.
The most rewarding gift pastors and biblical counselors receive is the treasure of watching God transform hearts. God has blessed Angel (my wife, a counselor at Whole Hope Christian Counseling) and with the opportunity of seeing many break free from the shackles of sin.
Let me share with you one story of change. Kimberly (she has given me permission to share her story and her words, although I am changing her name), was trapped in bitterness toward God and her husband and ensnared by sexual sin. Her heart raged with hatred toward her husband: for the ways he had neglected her, not treasured her, and abandoned her spiritually, emotionally, and physically. In a desire to experience freedom and to make her husband pay for his neglect, she began to hook up with men and eventually had a series of affairs.
After years, the tip of the iceberg of her indiscretions were discovered. Despite her hardness of heart and spiritual blindness, Kimberly was willing to meet with her husband for counseling. Her rage so blinded her that she was unwilling to repent of her sin. She demanded that her husband repent to her, recounting detail by detail of his offenses to her numb husband. In fact, we would later learn that she was continuing on in her adultery even through our counseling. If you would have met Kimberly in this season, you would have likely thought Kimberly was a lost cause. Any time spent on her was wasted effort.
Many friends and family of hers voiced this opinion. Without the Spirit, they were right.
In fits and starts, God began to grab ahold of her heart. She resisted, but the Spirit pursued. Brick by brick, God lowered the walls of her heart. Ultimately, the Spirit broke through. She ceased her active and rebellious sin, she repented, and she began the long and slow process of asking forgiveness from her husband and earning his trust back (a process still in the works). She recently wrote letters of repentance to his parents.
Kimberly shared that the Spirit’s work came in two waves in her life. First, the Spirit pursued her in her disobedience, and second, giving the Spirit gave her joy in him and power through him for obedience.
A hard and brittle tree, fruitless for years, cast aside, has come to life, bearing the ripe and sweet fruit of humility, patience, and repentance. Only the Spirit.
The other day, she sent Angel a message of her exchange with her pastor and gave Angel permission to share it with me. It is a stunning testament to the power of the work of the Spirit in her. As you read the following, be encouraged. The Spirit is pursuing you. The Spirit can change your heart. The Spirit can break the power of sin over your life.
I don’t want to waste God’s goodness on a deaf heart, I’d rather wait until his heart ears can hear… for two days now, I think I’m going crazy, because I keep hearing, “you have to tell them.” I think I’m losing my mind. Either that or it’s the Spirit. It’s this incredibly strong urge to go to my pastor and tell them what they have to tell the congregation. But who am I to be telling THEM? I am the little nobody that would sneak in and sneak out. And now I’m barely noticed. And the voice is telling me to tell them to tell the congregation about the Holy Spirit and about his power. This really makes no sense.
My pastor already knows about the power of the Spirit. I called my pastor’s cell phone yesterday, but it went to voicemail so I hung up. He didn’t call back. I’m at a loss because this seems absurd intellectually but my heart won’t stop longing to tell them.
I was laying in bed barely awake getting my bearings and praying when my pastor called. He saw a missed call on his phone and he wanted to call me back yesterday but didn’t get the chance. I woke up real fast! He said he was concerned so he was calling me back. I said, “Oh it’s about the Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Oh, well, I thought it might be that.” And I told him what I felt God kept saying to me and I told him how I kept telling God that it seems so absurd because who am I to be telling him anything, and maybe it was the enemy trying to make me look like a fool. But it wouldn’t go away the voice that said “tell him to tell them.”
I told him about how he mentioned revival in his prayer meeting many weeks ago and how I had been thinking the same exact word for the church before he said that. I told him how I watch many churches and you can hear the audience vocally say amen and woo-hoo and their arms are raised. But I said our church seems like zombies. They need revival! I told him that I wanted the congregation to be drenched in the Holy Spirit. That’s revival!
I shared how I now know that, like I was, so many have been gripped for decades by their idols, by their sins that I hear confessed at prayer meetings: gluttony, hoarding, money, Covid fear, worry for their children. I know some have been gripped for decades. They need the Holy Spirit, that is the only way they are going to be free and change. They think they can do it themselves by their own finite efforts and that’s how they keep operating but they need the infinite power working inside them.
I said, “Because of my season of darkness, I know the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. And it’s not because I say so, it’s because John and Angel say so. I said forgiveness and mercy are received at the cross, direction and guidance come from the Word, but only by means of the Holy Spirit is there POWER. The Holy Spirit is the secret to the Christian life that I think people are missing! They talk about the cross but they go no further. They are missing the transforming work and the empowerment that is the key to living a transformed life. When they think of Jesus, they think of the baby in Bethlehem, or the one scorned and spit upon, but the power of the one working in our hearts is the victorious risen ascended unstoppable supreme one.”
I told him, “I tell people I want to be Peter and I think they think I’m crazy because they’re thinking of the old Peter, but it was Peter who was able to tell the lame beggar to get up and walk, he’d been lame since birth but he was able to do that because he had the Holy Spirit in him, so he was able to do what Jesus did because it was really Jesus who was giving him the power to do it. I’m on fire for that.”
He said, “It’s timely that you mentioned all this because I’m going to begin today’s sermon with a confession that I’ve lived most of my Christian life neglecting to recognize the ascension part of Jesus. Jesus is in heaven now, a physical body with scars.”
I said, “Yes! Jesus came back for 40 days to preach one thing, just ONE thing. And we don’t talk about it in the church.”
He said he’s going to spend from now through July on this topic. He said I was not the only part but I played a big part in him doing this series. He asked me to pray that the Holy Spirit would burn inside the souls of the people at the church. I said, “OH AMEN YES! Of course I will pray!”
Do you believe in the power of the Spirit of God in your life? Listen to my friend Kimberly, who a year ago rejected that her adultery was sin and today climbs the rooftop to sing the praises of a God who is at work.
Can revival come in your heart? Can you actually experience his joy in your obedience? Can God change the heart of your loved one who is completely hardened to God? In your family? In your neighborhood? In your workplace? In America? In the world? Kimberly says yes. I agree. The Spirit is able.
Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash