A Journey to Spiritual Freedom and Refreshment

Thanks for joining us today. Such a pleasure to have you with us. I'm Phil Pringle. This is my podcast where I'll be sharing the Word of God, which will strengthen you, inspire you, equip you, and empower you for life. Let's go. go.

Hey, everyone. I believe in the local church. Ever since we started our church way back in 1980, we've been planting churches all around the world in major cities, villages, towns, and we have seen ourselves plant churches now in over 60 nations in the earth. Last year, we planned to plant 20 churches and we ended up planting 45. This year we're going to plant another 42 churches.

I'd like to invite you to become a partner with us in this grand plan that God has called us to, planting His magnificent church all around the world. It's not an inexpensive exercise to plant churches. It costs us a lot to support pastors when they're just starting out and their families and their structures, their circumstances, renting houses, needing a car. And in some of these places, they're very poor and we want to help them rise up and plant great churches in their nations.

You can help us by jumping over to our website, C3 Church Global, and there you will find a giving section, and you can give towards helping us plant churches all around the world. I'm praying for you that as you give, the blessing of God will rest upon your life in abundance. In Jesus' name, God bless you.

It's amazing how many things that once were considered wrong are now considered right. But just because society changes its views on things that once Scripture upheld as being wrong, just because society changes its view, even governments pass laws to make wrong things right, doesn't mean that they are now right. There's a God in heaven who's far above every government, every society on earth. He is the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and his government rules forever.

But he designed us in a particular way so that if we do something that violates who we are and violates his rules of living, then we get to feel bad. We get to deteriorate on the inside. And that slow disintegration of our heart, mind, and soul, it starts to tell on you as life passes. And one of the outcomes of living with unconfessed wrong in our lives is exhaustion.

Acts 3 verse 19 of the New Testament, where Peter says, Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. And Peter here says, Repent therefore. for. Now, that's not a common word these days. And some people would say, well, repent just means you turn around. But actually, it does mean a bit more. It means to feel sorry for having offended God. It means feeling sorrow over what we've done that's wrong.

And repentance, honestly, honestly, it might be the biggest gift besides Jesus that God has ever given to us. Because to lose the ability to say, I'm sorry, or to not have that ability means we can't get right with God, with others, and with ourselves. But to be able to feel bad is not that bad. Guilt should lead us to come to God and say, God, I am truly sorry. And when we do that and we confess our wrongs and bring them into the light, they lose their power.

Sin loses its power when it's surfaced. But our pride really works hard against us ever doing that. It says, oh, that's embarrassing. Or our fears of the exposure. And so that's the character-building moment of our lives that can last for a lifetime. Because from then on, once we've had the courage to do that, we find the courage to come into the light about any number of things that we face in life.

So the first step of repentance is to own it, to own the responsibility, not to blame others, not to say, oh, well, you don't understand what I was going through at that time, or I'm not responsible because I was brought up like this, or I just was under so much pressure then, and I can't help it. All of those, our slippery way of trying to avoid admitting, I blew it. I messed up. And when we could do that without shifting the blame and accept accept responsibility.

And by the way, shifting the blame is not a new thing. It's been with us humans forever, right in the Garden of Eden. Adam did it. Like when God said, what have you done here? Adam said, well, the woman you gave me, she gave me to eat. He shifted it to the woman and he shifted it to God. He said, God, you gave me this and now I'm in a mess. He didn't own it. He needed to. And when we do own our responsibility, we grow up a whole lot.

We become strong inside. And so we come into the light and then we ask for forgiveness. We say, God, I'm sorry. Forgive me. When we ask for that, the grooves of unforgiveness and guilt can be pretty deep in our mind and we may not feel an instant freedom. Sometimes it will come instantly. The Holy Spirit will apply the sacrifice of Christ in our lives, and we instantly feel set free. But it may take time. And maybe we've been in a cycle of just repeating this, and this is it again.

But you know what? He told Peter, you got to forgive 70 times 7. God is not going to be telling us to do something that he doesn't do. And he will keep forgiving you as long as you're moving in that right direction. He'll say, yeah, okay, we'll. And I find this gift of repentance, it is one of the greatest gifts, as I said before, that you and I can ever have. It's like taking out the rubbish.

And in our house, we put food scraps and all kinds of things in that rubbish bag, then take it out like three times during the week to fill up the bin, and then the rubbish comes on Monday morning and it's gone. But if I didn't have a capacity to put out the rubbish from my house, I'd have rats, disease would follow, the place would stink, the whole house would get run down.

And for many people, because there's stuff in our lives that we haven't yet brought to the Lord, we find we're getting sick inside. And the Lord says, come clean, come to me and offload that burden. It's a heavy, exhausting burden carrying it around. If you've ever read the story of Pilgrim's Progress, you know that when he let his burden go at the foot of the cross, the burden of sin, he gave three jumps for joy. He was free.

And when we finally do come to the Lord and understand he is forgiving and he is kind and he died for us so that we could be set free, then we can come to him boldly and say, God, I'm asking for forgiveness, and it will be yours. Ephesians 1.7 says we have forgiveness. When we receive Christ, we receive a covenant with God that includes forgiveness. So once we've brought it into the light, the blood of Jesus Christ, that's why it was shed, cleanses us, washes us clean.

So there's no longer any foothold for sinister forces like the devil and demons and whatever to lay hold of us. We are free. And that is what the good news, the gospel, actually is.

And then it says, so that times of refreshing, not only do we get free from the past and free from our mistakes and the heavy burdens, we actually receive refreshing because fresh, clean water comes on us. Now, besides putting out the rubbish each week, I wash myself each day, wash my teeth, wash my hands, wash my face, have a shower pretty much on a daily basis. Us and we all need to get cleansed and washed. But how refreshing is it after you've had a good shower and you come out and

you just think, I feel refreshed. I'm ready for anything. And that can be a daily experience for you and I. So that as we come to the Lord, confess things that are troubling us, that have weighed us down, bring it out to Him. Then not only refreshing, but healing healing can come to our soul. He can rejuvenate us, revitalize us on the inside. So let me say the scripture one more time. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.

That's all God wants to do with them, blot them out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. So now we're forgiven and cleansed. We come into the presence, the presence of the Lord. And that is a beautiful thing. There's no atmosphere in the universe equal to that presence of God that brings peace. It brings healing. It brings calm and guidance.

And you can sit in that presence for a long time without getting bored because there's so much rejuvenation in just soaking in the presence of the Lord. And then joy starts to come. Scripture says there's joy in the presence of the Lord. fullness of joy. So the joy that we all seek, the happiness, it comes from being close to God. And if you follow these steps that I've shared with you today, they will take you into his presence. And there you will discover a joy like no other.

Hey, hit follow, hit subscribe, share this with a friend that you know might welcome it. And I'm looking forward to talking again with you soon.

I wrote the book Peace because I was coming across so many people struggling with anxiety and they were either getting pressed or angry, worrying about things that they didn't need to be worried about. But it's just like this fear would paralyze them in life. And I wanted them to know that God can bring peace to every heart. He's known as God of peace.

And so Paul says be anxious for nothing and then he says and the peace of God will keep your heart and mind well that sounds like mental and emotional health and that's what I would like to think people will discover as they read this book and find a pathway into the peace of God you can check it out on amazon.com or philpringle.com you can order the physical copy or or download an e-book. Hey, thanks for jumping on this podcast today. It's been a pleasure sharing with you.

Check out more content on Instagram or on my YouTube channel. Just search Phil Pringle. Or else you can go to my website, philpringle.com, and check out my latest books, artwork, and my blog. Look forward to talking again soon. See you then.