Many cynically believe that God created the universe, but now remains distant, aloof and uninvolved. But the truth is that God holds intimate knowledge of every person and is always working behind the scenes to draw them to Jesus. And when He wins a person's heart, He faithfully works to conform them into the image of His Son.

Host: Rose, as we continue our discussions on Steve Gallagher’s book, “Living in Victory,” we want to talk this week about Chapter 9: “The God Who Works.” And when you think of all the men and women who have ever existed, and ever will exist, God really is busy at work, isn't He?

Rose: It’s mind boggling. It’s impossible to even wrap your mind around it. He's huge.

Host: What a God we have. You know, there are different views on how God interacts with man. There are those who believe that God has created everything and then basically took His hands off His creation and is just kind of letting things wind along on their own. But I don't know how you can come to that conclusion reading Scripture, because Scripture certainly paints a different view of God's interaction with man.

Rose: If you look at Scripture or even our own lives you will see how involved God is in every detail in our lives. I think about Psalm 139 where it says, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13, NKJV) And then it goes on to say, “My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” (Psalm 139:15-16, NKJV)
       Every single person on this planet, God sees them and knows them from the minute they are conceived in their mother's womb. And everything about that person's life, God already knows about from the beginning to the end. To me that is just so amazing. Just think about all the ways God goes out of His way to work in our lives through different circumstances, or situations that go a certain way. And it’s all to bring us to a place where we see our need for God and cry out to Him so that we can turn to Him and come to know the One who created us.

Host: Right. It's pretty obvious when somebody is converted. They can say, as Paul said, “we were bought at a great price.” When you are born again, you can really see the work of Christ and what He did. But sometimes I think we forget about all the things that God did in our lives leading up to that point.

Rose: If you look back from there, you see that God has been involved in every single thing you’ve gone through. Whether it was good or not good, He’s been involved in it all. He’s been quietly behind the scenes working, and the whole thing He’s been working towards is to draw us to Himself.

Host: Yes. And when we come to that point of salvation, that certainly isn't where His work stops. He doesn't stop working on us at that point. And the mistake I made was thinking, “OK, I'm saved. It's all over. I can go live my life the way I want to live it.” But no! He's very involved in our lives after that point.

Rose: He really is. It's amazing how He'll put people in our lives even. I can remember when before I began walking with the Lord. He had me working alongside a woman that was constantly sharing Jesus with me. And then even after I gave my heart to the Lord, He positioned other people in my life. In the workplace. At the college I was attending at night. I was seeking a church to get involved with and He put people in my pathway to help me find the right one. He constantly brought people into my life that were able to speak into my life and help me to grow in my relationship with the Lord, people who would give me godly counsel and wisdom.

Host: Amen. But sometimes He brings people into our lives to rub us the wrong way so that we can see what’s in our heart.

Rose: That too. And you know, many times we think it's the enemy coming against us, and we don't see that it's the hand of God that is all over things. There may be someone at work we're not getting along with. Or someone that we have a completely different personality than. Maybe our personalities rub against one another. And then we get all upset and blame the devil for what we are going through. And meanwhile the Lord is saying “no, I'm bringing this situation or this person into your life because I want you to see what's in your heart.”

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Host: Yes. And that's one of the wonderful things that we experience here at Pure Life Ministries, because we work together and we live in such close proximity to one another. We're together so often and it's wonderful to see how God uses different personalities in this little family of ours to do a work inside of each of us.

Rose: Yeah. He does. And I think about the verse that says iron sharpens iron. (Proverbs 27:17) There's a lot of sharpening happening here.

Host: Yeah. There's a lot of sharpening going on here for sure. But it's a wonderful mercy of God to allow that sharpening to happen.

Rose: It really is, because He's wanting to conform us into the image of Christ. But we often don't realize how much we're not like Christ until we're around other people. Especially other people that aren't like us.

Host: Yeah. And what we see through this is that God has tremendous care and concern for His people.

Rose: He does. Romans talks about how there's a groaning going on and that the Sons of God will be revealed on the earth in the last days. And the Lord is trying to work in our lives to bring that about so that when people look at us will see a living epistle not written with ink, but an epistle of the Holy Spirit flowing out of our lives.

Host: You know, Rose, we're talking about the God who works, and what you're talking about kind of reminds me of the Potter and the clay. And if you've ever watched a potter put the clay on the wheel, sometimes the clay gets all messed up and he has to kind of bring it back down and start over. And I think if we understand that, then it will help us to understand how God works in our life. There are going to be good times and bad times. There are going to be times where we feel close to the Lord and times where we feel far away from the Lord. But in the midst of it all, our Father's hands are still on that clay and He's still molding us.

Rose: Yeah. What's so amazing is that as He's molding us and shaping us, His imprint is being placed on us. And the finished product has His imprint all over it. Think about it. When someone's working on that piece of pottery, they beat it down and it looks ugly, but they keep working with it and working with it until it becomes something beautiful. But that beautiful piece of pottery now has the master’s imprints all over it and around it, inside of it and underneath it. And that's really what He's after in our lives.

Host: I was in high school when I tried putting clay on the wheel and it ended up flying off the wheel. But God doesn't do that. He is perfectly balanced. He knows just what we can take, just what we need.

Rose: Yeah. He's perfectly balanced in what He's creating, and we just have to cooperate with Him just like the clay does. It just lays there and basically says, “go ahead, do with me what you want to.”

Host: Yes. It’s a wonderful work that He's doing in us and wants to do in all of us.

Rose: Amen.

In the 9th message of our "Unveiling Yahweh" series, we will be looking at God as a giver.

Our fallen nature makes us quick to malign God’s character. When life doesn’t give us what we want, we call God a killjoy. If providence steals a cherished person or possession from us, we see Him a taker. But these lies couldn’t be further from the truth. God is full of goodness. He desires to lavish His children with blessing. God is always a good giver. 

In this message, Ed Buch helps us see the amazingly good gifts of God, and the many forms they can take in our lives.

What struggling men and women truly need is an intimate love relationship with God, because a deep, personal experience of God's love will break the hold of sin. Unfortunately, many people caught in sexual sin are uncertain whether God loves them. In this show, we’ll discuss what might block someone from experiencing a sense of God’s love and, more importantly, what can be done about it.

Resources

• "Victory" (Podcast Series) By Pure Life Ministries Podcast

When Jesus Christ came to earth, He brought deliverance for His people, though not immediately—it required waiting. This same spirit of waiting is required for those who are longing for freedom from sexual sin. In this non-traditional Christmas episode, we explore why waiting on God is essential for victory, common misconceptions about waiting, and why we can confidently trust that God will come and deliver if we truly wait on Him.

Resources

• Reflections on the Lowly Jesus (Part 1) (Podcast Episode) By Pure Life Ministries Podcast

What an exciting year it’s been here at Pure Life Ministries—we can’t wait to tell you all about it! Join Nate and Josh as they share updates from our Residential Program here in Kentucky, all the way to what God is doing through Pure Life Ministries Brazil! Plus, hear a special message from our founder and president, Steve Gallagher.

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According to modern church culture, to be saved means that you believe some doctrines and go to church. But according to Scripture, to be saved means that your life has been revolutionized from the inside out so that you love and obey God from the heart.

Host: Steve Gallagher has joined me in the studio. Steve is the founder of Pure Life Ministries. Steve, it’s great to see you again. Thanks for coming in.

Steve: It's good to be with you.

Host: Steve, as we continue our discussions in your book “Standing Firm Through the Great Apostasy,” we want to talk today about Chapter 4: The Evidence of Faith. You said in the beginning of this chapter that for many years you thought the greatest problem in the Church today was a lack of discipleship, but you changed your perspective on that.

Steve: Yeah, I had a revelation one day. It occurred to me that the problem isn't a lack of discipleship. The problem is that pastors are killing themselves trying to disciple unconverted people into the Christian life. And that’s just not possible.

Host: You know, one of the problems we see in our churches today is that there is a salvation experience taught that really is nothing more than an intellectual assent to the historic Jesus. You make the point in your book that there should be some particular evidence of saving faith in the life of someone who has truly been converted. So, today we want to talk about the different evidences we should see. One of the first things that you brought up was a childlikeness. Talk a little bit about what you mean by that.

Steve: Well, that comes from Matthew 18, where Jesus makes the very clear statement, “Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3b, NASB 1995) That's pretty cut and dry. There is something about childlikeness that Jesus is saying is required for this entrance into the kingdom of heaven, and really the most pronounced quality of a child is their utter dependence upon their parents for life. That is the one quality about a child that stands out more than any other thing. They completely depend upon their parents for the sustenance of life.

Host: Now then, relate that to the individual believer. When someone comes into true faith, what are they shifting their dependence from and to?

Steve: They're shifting their dependence from self to God. That's the bottom line. A person with a spurious faith can believe all the right doctrines and have all the proper understanding of biblical teachings, but they have never transferred their true trust from themselves to God.

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Host: Steve, you also said that faith is proven by change in this chapter. And I know that in the Church in America, this is argued all the time. The question that arises a lot is, “Can I really have a true saving faith without having a changed life?”

Steve: Well, people tend to look at change as a change in their worldview. They've gone from a Pagan worldview to a maybe some kind of right-wing, Christian worldview. That's a mental change. A heart change is something different because a person’s perspectives, their values, everything changes. Not just in their belief system, but in the way they actually live their lives. And that change is reflected in a process which the Bible calls sanctification.

Host: Now, the great danger here that you point out is that someone can be in church and just naturally take on the characteristics of the people around them. But that heart change that you're talking about may never have taken place.

Steve: Yeah, because in the evangelical realm, there is a certain way of doing life. You're nice to each other. You don't cuss. You don’t pull out a cigarette and light it up in your pew. There are just certain unspoken rules that govern evangelical life. So you can basically fit yourself into that culture without having had an inward change of heart.

Host: When you think about it, the difference really is the motivation for changing. We're not changing because we're trying to keep some set of rules. We're changing out of our love for the Lord and our gratitude for what He's done for us. That kind of change is evidence of true faith.

Steve: And that kind of change is evidence that the Spirit of the living God is indwelling your heart, because we don't have it in our flesh to want to please God. We can have it in our flesh to want to obey rules and to want to fit in with the church culture we’re in. Or even to want to not stand out in the crowd, but we don't have it in ourselves to love God. Only the Spirit living in us can compel us to do that.

Host: And that really leads us to our next point, which is that faith is proven by obedience.

Steve: Yeah. And the point I made in the book, basically if I could sum it up this way is that in the dark ages, the pendulum had swung way over to the side of works. The Catholic Church had instituted a system of rules and rituals to earn your salvation by penance and obeying tradition. Then Martin Luther came along stood against salvation by works. And so, the protestant movement took on that mantra—and rightly so. But we've gone now to the other extreme. It was actually Martin Luther who coined a term that is so appropriate to what the Church is facing today.
       The term is “antinomianism”. “Anti” means against, and “nomos” is the law. So, those who embrace antinomianism are people who do not want to be constrained by biblical commandments. So, the opposite extreme of what the Catholics were pushing in the Dark Ages has become what we are facing in the church of the 21st century, which is the throwing off of all restraints put upon our lives and this feeling like we don't have to obey God. And the idea is that we should obey God for the most part, but we’re saved not by works but by faith. So, because of that fact, it really doesn't matter what we do.

Host: And yet that cuts so dramatically against what Jesus Himself said was evidence of love for Him.

Steve: Well, it's throughout all of Jesus’ teachings. He could not be clearer in saying that if you love me, you will obey my commandments.

Host: Yes, Amen. The last evidence that you gave is that you talked about the evidence of faith being proven by a person’s fruit.

Steve: Well again, I can refer directly to the words of Jesus. This is coming out of John 15, “He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5b, NASB 1995) And He goes on to say, “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.” (John 15:6, NASB 1995) And it is said in various other ways throughout the New Testament that fruit bearing is evidence of one’s faith.

Host: Steve, as you closed this chapter you shared the story of a man named Robert who came into the Pure Life Ministries Residential Program. That might be a great way to end this discussion today. Tell us that story.

Steve: Well, Robert is like a son to me. Robert came to us, having grown up in an evangelical church and by the time he came to us, he had just attempted suicide. He was on several psychotropic drugs. He weighed 500 lbs. He was in uncontrolled homosexual behavior. And when he went and confessed to his pastor about all his struggles, his pastor's solution was to make him a Deacon of the church. And that threw him into more hopelessness and despair, which is actually when he tried committing suicide. So, then somehow he found out about Pure Life and when he came to us, it would be hard to have found a more hopeless person than Robert walking this campus. And yet, because there was something inside him, a sincere desire to really have the Lord, Robert started responding to the Holy Spirit. And little by little, God started transforming his inward life. And pretty soon the pounds were flying off of him. He lost 200 lbs. while he was in the program. And you know, Robert’s life is a glowing testimony of someone who obeyed God and the fruit that will come out of that obedience.

Host: And we see that replicated in many of the lives of men who come to us, and we see it throughout the true Church of God. Where there is true faith, we see real evidence of genuine faith in their lives.

Steve: I see it all over America. You see people who have really come to the Lord. They just stand out and it's such a blessing.

Most of the men who come to us for help have already taken a lot of steps to break free from sexual sin, but nothing has changed. This clearly shows it's not enough to take steps to find freedom. You’ve got to take the right steps. In this "Ask the Counselor" episode, we'll provide a biblical response to the question, "What's the first step to breaking free from sexual sin?"

Resources

• At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry (Book) By Steve Gallagher
• Check Out Our Residential Program

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Should Christians watch movies or TV shows that contain inappropriate innuendos or sex scenes? In this episode, we’ll give you a straightforward response to that question, but we’ll also take a deeper look at what the Bible teaches about a more foundational issue: our interactions with the world.

Resources

• At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry (Book) by Steve Gallagher

We’ve had many parents ask us, “What can I do to help my child overcome sexual sin?” But this question begs a deeper one: what is the role of a parent? To help us answer this, we sit down with biblical counselor Mark Shaw who reflects on two decades of counseling and raising four children of his own.

Resources

• "For Parents" (Podcast Series) By Pure Life Ministries

Thanksgiving—it's the time of year when we're encouraged to be grateful for the blessings in our lives. But when things get difficult, what should our attitude be? In this special Thanksgiving episode, we'll talk with three of our staff members who decided to fight for gratitude in the hard seasons.

Many people in today's Christian culture claim to be worshipers of God. But true worship is only revealed through a life of obedience. In this Timeless Truths segment, Jeff Colón contrasts the lives of Abraham and King Saul, urging us to reflect on whether our own worship resembles Abraham's wholehearted obedience or King Saul's partial and insincere devotion.

Host: Jeff, we want to continue in our discussion in this series, “Worshiping God,” and one of the things we've lost about the reality of worship, especially in the Evangelical Church in America, is obedience to God. And we learn a lot about that in the story of Noah. Let's talk about that.

Jeff: Yeah. A lot of times we do think of worship in the sense of being in a worship service where people are praising God and singing songs. But really it involves our whole life. We see that in the life of Noah and just how he walked with God.

Host: Scripture tells us that he found favor in the eyes of God. Why was that?

Jeff: Well, it says he found favor in the eyes of the Lord because he walked with God. This means that he was obedient. His life was led by the Lord, and it pleased God to find someone that was willing to let Him order their steps and lead their life. And God can do a lot with someone that's willing to do that.

Host: Jeff, as we talk about obedience, one of the phrases that I heard many years ago was that partial obedience is not obedience, and we see more in Noah than just partial obedience.

Jeff: Yeah, and it really does tie in with worship as we'll see later in the life of Abraham as well. But Noah heeded what God said, and he did all that God commanded of him. Contrast that with King Saul who we see had partial obedience. He was instructed to totally wipe out the Amalekites and leave no one living and to take no spoils, but he only partially obeyed. Then, when the Samuel the prophet confronted him, he said, “God doesn't delight in sacrifice and offering, but in obedience.” That's what God was after. Him doing everything He had told him to do.

Host: Yeah. I know that's something that God continually impresses on me. Not only that God is not interested so much in the sacrifice, but that He's interested in obedience out of our heart. In other words, if you're in ministry, He's less concerned about the ministry work you do and more concerned about the heart that that work comes from. And that may seem like an extreme statement, that God is asking for our full obedience. Many may think, “God is just asking me to go to church on Sunday and for me not to drink or smoke or do drugs.” But really, he wants the totality of our hearts to be given to Him. And that's what we see in Noah.

Jeff: Yeah. If you think about it, if we only obey God part of the time, what are we really saying? We’re saying that we'll obey God when it doesn't interfere with what we really want to do. That's not walking with God as Noah did.

Host: Yeah, it just came to mind that Jesus said, “There will be those on that day who will say, Lord Lord.” And they'll list all the religious things they did, but He really wasn't their Lord. Because they were only doing a few religious things that looked good to other people. But in their hearts, He wasn't the Lord of their life.

Jeff: Right. And we're not talking about perfection here and that you have to do everything perfect, but there should be a general consensus in your life that your life is ordered by the Word of God, even though at times you might miss the mark. But you see it, you repent of it and you're always coming back to the Word of God.

Host: Yes. You know, sometimes in counseling, you'll mention something to someone, and you see the look on their face. It's like, “You're kidding. God would ask me to do that?!” It may be something as simple as giving up a pet hobby or something that's getting in the way of their relationship with the Lord. But we see this kind of dramatic call in the life of Abraham.

Jeff: Yeah, that is so true. To me, it really is a picture of what true worship is, because when you think about Abraham when the Lord told him to offer up his son as a sacrifice, he said to his servant, “We are going to the mountain to worship.” We're talking about him going to sacrifice his son.

Host: But not only his son, it was the promise. It was God’s promise for his future.

Jeff: It was the promise. It was everything he relied on to fulfill God's word to him. Yet it had become something that he was trusting in rather than God and God required it of him. And again, we see what's at the core of worship. Are we really looking to God or are we trusting in something else? Yet we see that he was obedient.

Host: Yea. And one of the wonderful things that comes out of this study is that God requires us to worship, and yet he gives the provision for us to worship. It's just wonderful how God does that for us. Every time I look over the years at how God has intervened in my life to bring me into His presence and to bring me to a place where I can worship Him, gratitude just wells up. And a grateful heart is part of worshiping God too. How important is that?

Jeff: I'm reminded of Romans 1:21, where it says, “They did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful.” That led to worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. That’s what happened to Adam and Eve. The serpent deceived them into believing that God isn't good. And when we lose sight of that, it really does lead us away from worshiping God the way we ought to with our lives. And we're commanded in Scripture to be thankful in all things.

Host: You know, in line with that Jeff, before the Tabernacle came about even, every time God did something for His people, He instructed them to make an altar. And they had altars for that reason, didn’t they?

Jeff: Yeah. It was a place where they could remember that mercy. And for us it points to Christ and not losing sight of what Jesus has done for us. And that really is the basis for our gratitude.

Host: Yeah. In fact, in the study we were looking at, they mentioned that those alters really were a type for the Cross. It was a picture of the sacrifice to come.

Jeff: For me, it doesn't take much reflection on what Jesus has done for me to stir a grateful heart inside of me. When I take time to express gratitude to the Lord, it's an act of worship to Him.

Host: Yes. I remember when I came into the Residential Program here at Pure Life, it was difficult for me. And no big surprise that when we're living a life of sin and self-will, we don't have a heart of gratitude. But as God begins to cleanse you and purge you of your idols and begins to open your eyes again, you realize that He's done so much for you and continues to do so much for you.
       Well, Jeff, as we close this discussion today, let's kind of tie it up with something that I think we need to touch on that we can learn from. And that is the obedience of Noah and also the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son.

Jeff: Well, what we learned is that there's a cost in our worship with the Lord, yet He saved Noah and His family. He opened the way of blessing for Abraham. So, it brings a blessing with it when we obey the Lord and we worship Him in that way. And then we have reason to be grateful. And it all ties together. It really is a wonderful cycle if I could say it that way that just continually enhances our worship and actually makes us want to worship Him more with our lives.

Host: And it of course ultimately points to the greatest cost ever paid and that was the sacrifice of Jesus, which is our greatest reason to be grateful and to worship.

Compared to most of the world, Americans have greater opportunities for wealth and a pleasurable life. But in light of biblical warnings about riches, how should Christian couples view the American Dream? In the final episode of "On the Same Team," PLM graduates Stephen and Jubilee Howell talk about how their pursuit of the American Dream nearly led to their ruin, but how God gave them a new vision centered on building His Kingdom.