The Role of Repentance in the Life of a Bible Teacher

Dr. Eric Mason: You ever just been in His presence and you don't want to stop the reprise of the oil? You ever been there where you just say, "I just want to sit here for a while and thank the good Lord"? But this clock is running, and we can't sit here.

But I loved what I was sensing. Let's praise God for this band and everyone who was leading us today. [applause] Amen. Amen. Let's praise the Lord for the ministry of our sister, Nancy Leigh DeMoss. [applause] I'm thankful for your ministry and thank you for the thousands of women that are better because God has allowed you to pour yourself out like a drink offering and continuing that and blessing you and strengthening you and brother, Robert, who's coming up here and going to a serenade ministry. [laughter]

That brother was about to go ahead and just sing it on up up in here. I've been just blessed by watching them when we met and watching them even now in the back and different things, how God has courted them and now they're courting one another. So now we honor the Lord for your union.

I just want to acknowledge the woman who has been with me for twenty-one years. I love her to death. My wife, Yvette Mason, is here with me. And I'm thankful for her. Thankful for her. Thankful for her. And yes, we were crazy enough after twenty-one years to have another child. [laughter]

We lost our first daughter fifteen years ago, and then they told us we wouldn't be able to have children. Then out pops three boys. Matter of fact, the last boy came October of last year, so we thought he was her. And so we were like, "We're done." And the Lord was like, "No, you're not!" And here she comes—her name is Amalyah Faith Mason.

We're starting her off right; she's at a women's conference! [laughter] She might as well get used to it. Hopefully this conference is still going on when she gets up in years, so she can come hear some True Woman ministry, amen? Amen, amen, amen!

Well, I'm going to submit to the time that God has given me here at the Revive '15 Conference. I want to get us started in the Word of God. I'll be reading from Psalm 51 out of the ESV version of the Bible. I won't read the whole thing, but if you don't mind, I have a custom. I love people to stand when the Word is read.

I want us to stand, and I'm going to stay within this brief time—and we're going to have a time of prayer—and then I'll be out of your way. Psalm 51. When you get there say, "Amen." If you're still rolling there say, "Wait!" Look y'all, go to the middle of the Bible and find Psalms, all right? It's in the middle. If you've got an ESV Bible, it's page 474, All right! [chuckles] If you've got a phone you ain't got no excuse, right? [laughter]

All right, Psalm 51. I'm honored to be here! Psalm 51, let's go. It says:

Have mercy on me, O God,

   according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

   blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

   and cleanse me from my sin!

For I know my transgressions,

   and my sin is ever before me.

Against you, you only, have I sinned

   and done what is evil in your sight,

so that you may be justified in your words

   and blameless in your judgment.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,

   and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,

   and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

   wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness;

   let the bones that you have broken rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins,

   and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

   and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence,

   and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

   and uphold me with a willing spirit.

Then [Then—there it is!] I will teach transgressors your ways,

   and sinners will return to you.

Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,

   O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness (vv. 1–14).

For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;

   you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

   a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (vv. 16–17).

Ladies, if I could tag this text for our brief time together, I'd like to talk about the role of repentance in the life of a Bible teacher. Let's go before Him . . .

Mighty One! We need that oil that makes this easy. Even though it's difficult for man, it's easy for You. So God, will You continue what You've already been doing? Show off Your glory tonight! Break hearts, transform mindsets, change dispositions, break through the uneasiness of discomfort.

Throw Your weight around! Show the enemy who's boss. And I will be careful to give You all the honor and the glory and the praise, O Mighty One! In Jesus' mighty name! And everyone who agrees with that said, "Amen!" You may be seated.

In doing premarital counseling and counseling couples over the years—particularly couples—it's interesting sitting in my office and talking to a couple. I always like the ones where the wife calls, and she begins to lay out to me the three billion ways in which her husband is stupid. [laughter]

She begins to let me know that if he would just get his stuff together, the marriage would be way better than it is, because, "Look, God made me, I'm glorious, beautiful, great—I do what I'm supposed to do. I'm submissive most of the time . . . why is he trippin'?" Right?

So I say, "Well, I would like for your husband to call me, because I don't want to drag him into the office. Just have your husband call me, then we'll make an appointment with my assistant, and we'll sit down in my office and . . . boom! We're in my office, I'm sitting before them, and the husband has his hand on his face, looking like the weight of the world is just crushing him. The wife, she's being handed tissues and is pouring out her brokenness about the state of the marriage and how much of a mess her husband is.

However, when we begin to probe and work into the time together, it begins to come clear (which was already clear to me) that there was a need for the wife to own some stuff, too. And in her owning some stuff, usually it begins to open up and even turns the tide of mutual ownership and mutual repentance, because both in the marriage need to turn back to God—making them able to turn back to one another.

Listen, listen! It's easy in our lives to talk about what's wrong with someone else—how messed up someone else is, how much their need is for God, and how good we are. But every now and then (I'm just letting you know), if you would just search your own spirit—if you would just search your own heart—and allow the Holy Ghost to do what He does, maybe (just maybe) we will find something wrong within ourselves that is in need of gospel transformation.

So we come to a passage that may not be a passage that you're unfamiliar with in the Bible. It's the Psalms, and they were written by several people—sons of Asaph, sons of Korah, and here, David. We see that we come to a Psalm that is familiar to us (some of you may not be familiar with it). But it's a Psalm on repentance. Somebody say "repentance"!

"Repentance" is a powerful word and a powerful idea. What is interesting is that as you read this passage on repentance, you don't even see the word one time, but it's impossible to read this passage and not feel and sense the idea of what's happening in this passage, which is authentic and true repentance.

Therefore, if we're going to look at this idea of the repenting of a teacher, I've got a few points for you, then I'll be out of your way.

Number one, teachers hunger for the character of God. Teachers hunger for the character of God. Look at David here in this passage. He starts off, "Have mercy on me, O God." Mercy is one of the attributes of God. It's when God doesn't give us what we deserve, and in order for David to know that God didn't give us what we deserve, he knew and knows that he deserves something other than what God has been dispensing to him.

In order to be repentant, you've got to long for God's character, and he didn't throw himself on just any old part of God's character—he threw himself on God's mercy. The reason why he's writing this . . . he's writing this not from the cave of Adullam, running from Saul, but now he's the king in place and he's the one who is now God's anointed one (in the small "a" sense), and now he's in the office of a king.

One day he was supposed to go out with other kings to go to war, and he decided to chill at his crib. He decided that that day he was going to get out of his bed, put on his robe, cock his hat to the side, sort of walk out and just look over his kingdom.

I don't know what my man was saying. He walked out and looked over his kingdom. He said, "Man, it's great to be over Jerusalem! Why they all fightin'?" And then he sees a situation that causes him to do what he shouldn't do. He began to lust. Some of you know the story.

He brought the young lady in, Bathsheba, (he had seen her bathing), he slept with her, then murdered her husband and then lied about it. So on his record he has three counts under the law. First he has adultery, number two he has murder, and number three, he has lying.

Here you have a man who is in a position to shepherd God's people, to lead God's people, but he's using his authority manipulatively to do what he wants to do. Now, God had somebody—I like this—that was man enough (and you need somebody in your life that's woman enough) to get in his face!

My man Nathan walks up to him and says, "What's up David, what's up man?" gives him a pound and says, "Have a seat back on your throne." [laughter] He tells him a story, starts talkin' up the story to him, and David heard this story about a dude that had all these sheep but stole this dude's one little sheep, which was the sheep that he nurtured and he loved the sheep a whole bunch. And then, boom!

David took his crown off, he's sweatin', he's angry, his temperature has gone from 98.6 to 107; he is angry on his throne. And David says, "Bring him here! I got him!" And David gets looked in the face by a good friend, "You're the man!" And David, knowing that he thought that he could run from the Lord's presence, but not realizing that he knew that he couldn't run—but he tried to run and it didn't work.

And God sent a good person to get in his grill and tell him about his nasty, triflin', funky self! [laughter] See, teachers, you need somebody in your life to tell you off. Some of us like people around, "Aww, you just bless the ministry! You just did a great job! God be blessin' through you! The oil of the anointin' just fills this place, and I can just feel the Holy Ghost."

And you just like, "Amen, Praise God, Hallelujah. I know, I know, I know." Right? [laughter] But teachers need someone in their life to jam them up. So David, in reflecting on his pridefulness, throws himself on the mercy of God. He says, "God, have mercy on me! Please don't give me what I deserve!"

You know that you're in a place where God is dealing with you when you know you deserve something, but the goodness of God is filling you to the point where you say, "God, You've been so good to me! I know I deserve what I've got coming. I know I deserve to lose everything. I know that everything should be destroyed. But will You be merciful unto me?"'

And he goes further. He says, "According to your hesed." Somebody say "hesed." [Oh, you've got to get back here, like you've got a cold and say, "chhhesed." There it is, there it is! Hesed is the Hebrew word that means "loyalty." It's almost really untranslatable.

As a matter of fact, the King James Version compounds words and then calls it "lovingkindness." It's that word that points to God's covenant loyalty. In other words, in repenting of his sin, he doesn't call on his good deeds. He doesn't call on how he went to war and sought the Lord.

David didn't call on, "See I depended on You with Goliath. I did this in Your name, I played music and demons left kings." No, he said, "I need covenantal loyalty. In other words I need what only You can provide, because I have nothing to provide." You know you're repentant when you throw yourself on the mercy of God and you say, "God, it's nothing that I can give, it's nothing that I have, it's nothing that I can do, but I am trusting in the name of the Lord—that Your character, based on You keeping covenant, will save me!"

And I'm so glad that the new covenant is a covenant that God keeps for Himself, for us. It's not a covenant that we keep. Because of what Christ has done, God keeps covenant. A repentant person throws their self on the unconditional disposition of the God of heaven.

It's powerful what David does hear, as he talks through and works through the idea of God's covenantal loyalty. You see, the teacher hasn't just been in the class. These are the attributes of God—His omniscience, His omnipresence. Sometimes you have to go through something that brands on you God's omnipotence, God's omnipresence, God's grace, God's mercy and God's justice.

Some people say, "God's not fair," but I tell them all the time, "You don't want Him to be fair!" [laughter] So David asks for mercy and he asks for God to apply His covenant loyalty—as a covenant-keeper, of One who keeps His word!

Then he asks for very, very specific things. He asks for God's abundant mercy. He says, "I need a lot of mercy, because I know how messed-up I am." Then he says, "Blot out my transgressions, Lord. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity." Then he says, "Cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions." He's asking for God to do a deep cleansing in him, because he recognizes and knows that it's not just this sin from which he needs forgiveness and cleansing, but he needs wholesale cleansing.

In other words, the sin that you did ain't the sin that just needs dealing with; it's the root of what caused the sin to take place. We're going to come back to that in a second.

This brings me to my second point. If you're going to be a repentant teacher, you need this in your life—desire to come fully clean of your sin. This idea of repentance here, it's a powerful word. In the Old Testament repentance, it's interesting, it means to turn back—turn back to someone, something or some place.

In the New Testament, repentance is the Greek word metanoia, which means not just change direction but change your mind. In other words, to change your thinking about. . . See, at the end of the day, our need for repentance starts with a worldview transition.

When Jesus comes on the scene and says, "Metanoia, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," He's saying, "I want you to change your mind about what you think I'm like and what you think the kingdom is like, and embrace what I'm going to give to you." Coming clean in repentance means the disposition by which you say, "God, help me to now have a change of mindset, not just my feeling about the consequences of my sin."

Real change is not just allowing the pressing of the consequences of your sin to merely make you feel bad (in order that you would want change), but change really comes from a mind change—which we'll see in a second. I like the way Augustine said it. He says, "God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination."

Spurgeon on repentance. Spurgeon said, "I have learned from the Scriptures that repentance is just as necessary to salvation as faith is, and the faith that has not repentance going with it has to be repented of." I like that, because repentance is almost a marriage of the idea of faith together with repentance.

Look what David says in Psalm 51:3—something, to be honest, I'm still grappling with how to come to terms with this: "I know my transgressions." The word there for know is yada, which means, "to become intimately knowledgeable of."

In order to repent, you've gotta own the full extent of your sin. In other words, what you have to begin to do . . . because, in the role of a teacher, sometimes you can manipulate the people you're teaching and kind of confess but not really repent. In other words, you confess—so you acknowledge you did something—but you don't let your need to feel the impact of what you've done to somebody, or what you've done in your household, or what you've done in your life settle on you.

So what's David saying? He saying, "I've become intimate with the knowledge of the mess that I've made." In other words, a repentant person doesn't hurry people through the impact and the shrapnel that their sin has caused. A repentant person repents and allows the ground to be laid bare, so that they can feel the impact and know it, so that their repentance can become deeper.

It's interesting in my relationship with my wife—and I'm going to put it on me not her. I'm talking about my stuff, all right? Sometimes when I do something—you know what I'm saying. You know, you ladies have a way of talking to us, amen. And communicating for quite some time [laughter]—not wanting a response-especially during that time. You better shut your mouth, bro' during that time. [laughter]

She begins to spill her frustrations with what I did. And sometimes, in my mind, I'm like, Okay! I'm a mess, I know. I'm messed up! Daagg! Then you all know what you do at that point, right? The shutdown ministry happens! [laughter] Y'all go like this. "What's wrong?" "Nothing." You know when your wife says, "Nothing," you're in the doghouse!

But when I listen and don't rebut, don't have a rebuttal, don't have a way out, a way to demean, a way to minimize . . . "But you do the same thing! See what you do to me?!" That's not repentance. Christ paid for your sin, so you're not bearing the weight of your sin that leads to death.

You are listening to what Christ has died for. By listening and dealing with the impact and brokenness that your sin could have cost someone. . .letting it sit there and you begin to take it to the cross. However, you need to feel that you've sinned, you need to feel that it impacted people. Because what it does, it trains you to not want to do that thing ever again. It trains you to say, "God, I never want to be down that road again! God, I never want to hurt them like that anymore. God I never want to cause that type of pain!"

"God, I want to know You! I want this to be off me." And guess what that weight does? It makes you run to Him! It makes you run; knowing your sin makes you run. It's not this false depravity idea, when you're focusing on how depraved you are, because that's pride. That's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about knowing it and having clarity that you've made a mess. Then he says, "My sin is ever before me." David is saying this because this sin has sat on him for months. As a matter of fact, Nathan didn't confront him until the child was almost born. So he didn't get confronted, and everybody knew David did it.

Can you imagine sitting on something for eight months, like public sin? Bathsheba walking around, Uriah dead, people just serving David wine, serving him bread, cooking him lamb—coming in there and bringing people in. And David's sitting there, and a baby's growing in the stomach of a woman.

And then, finally! God gives the gall to somebody to jam David up. Look at what it says next. He says, "It's ever before me." So, you know you're a believer if you can't just sin! You can't just sin and be like, "La-da-de-la-da-dah," and you're just chillin'. I'm scared!

He said, "My sin haunts me." Really, it's not his sin that haunts him, it's the Ghost that haunts him. There's nothing like a Holy Ghost beating. You try to bob and weave the Holy Ghost, and you say, "I've got some training in this." [laughter] And the Holy Ghost says, "I've been knocking cats out for millennia," and boom!—hitting you in the ribs. Boom!—hitting you in the guts.

You've got to come to the point, David came to the point, where he said, "I give up! I'm tired of getting knocked out by the Holy Ghost." And he said, "My sin is ever before me."

And then, the centrality of his sin—he gets clarity. It's not some maximizing or minimizing, but to help him to see. He says something powerful here; he says, "Against You, You alone, have I sinned." He said, "I've done what is evil in Your sight." He's talking to God, telling God.

God already knows, but God likes to know that you know. He knows that we don't know. David is not telling the omniscient One anything about how bad his sin was, but he's letting God know, "I know that this was a mess!" Some of us in here need to say . . . some of you have made some messes. You're great teachers, but you've been bobbin' and weavin' the Spirit, you've been bobbin' and weavin' people.

God is saying, "Sit down now and recount! Recognize the mess!" David says, "Against You and You alone have I sinned." I can see David rocking back and forth and feeling the crushing nature of what he's done. He says, "What I've done is evil in Your sight. I know that this is a sin against you!"

The hardest thing about sin is viewing it from God's perspective. You can't just view your sin from the perspective of the people who are mad at you, because if you only deal on the plane of the people who are mad at you, you won't repent, because you'll be mad at them because they won't let you go.

But when you know your sin was against God, "Oh!" Boom! Right then and there—then, now, family of God, the disposition has changed, because you know it's ultimately against God and God can deal with you. Once He deals with you, you can deal with others.

You won't be freed up as a teacher. Nobody likes to be around somebody who talks a lot of theology and talks a lot of Bible and knows everything—but when they're wrong, that theology doesn't call them to repentance. Nothing works in an old arrogant teacher, who has all the curriculum, all the information.

You've got Logos, the portfolio Logos—the highest version! [laughter] You done took online classes of Hebrew and Greek. You're the woman that doesn't just talk about marriage and children. You talk theology! The classics! You're killin' 'em, right? But when it comes to your heart, it's desolate.

The health of your ministry depends on you dealing with you! Your ministry is only as healthy as your repentance. If you can't repent, how can you teach and preach and call for a response? You heard Nancy earlier, "Call for a response." And you thought, Yeah, I'm going home and call for a response! No! It's not about home; it's about YOU! When are you going to respond?

That's what David does here. David does it and helps us to recognize the glorious necessity of this. Look at what he says. He says, "So that You may be justified in Your words." He's saying, "What You said through Nate, You were right." The Bible says, "Where words are many, sin is present." It's interesting that this is all David said after Nate got in his face: "I have sinned against the Lord." That's all he said.

He didn't say, "Well, if my momma didn't . . . if my daddy didn't . . . if I didn't grow up in a house with . . . if they didn't treat me like . . . my momma treated them better." He doesn't say none of that! He says this clearly here. David says, "God, You're justified in everything You say about me, because I know that this is a mess!" That's when you know you are free, when you can say that.

And look what he says next. David says, "This is deeper than me, though, God. You are blameless in Your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity." He says, "I'm not weavin' this, God, but this goes deeper than me! It goes back to this original sin issue, and I need You to do more than just deal with this."

When he says, "My mother conceived me in sin," he's basically saying, "God, don't just deal with this sin, deal with the core of my issues! Oh my God!" You know you're repentant when you're allowing God to deal with some core stuff in you. He said, "I want you to deal with my sin nature." That's the core of who you are!

That's why Christ came to die, to replace with a brand-spankin' new nature! Yet the residue of the flesh still needs mortifying daily and daily. Don't underestimate its need for mortification and destruction and crucifixion!

Last point and I'm out of your way. A teacher who's being transformed and walking toward repentance, number three, longs for real transformation! Somebody say "real." Real transformation! Look at our brother David, what he says: "You delight in truth in my inward parts." It's beautiful that God could even delight in us.

But really, what He's delighting in is what's in us. Now, the word "truth" here is interesting. It's not the word for Bible information. I was blown away at that! I thought, Yeah, yeah, God desires the Bible in us! And that's true, based on a plethora of passages.

But the word here doesn't mean biblical information, even though it could be connected to biblical information. The word here for truth means "authenticity." If I could write a lexicon, in that section right there I would write that it means "straight up."

In other words, God loves it when we're honest about where we are. You can't repent until you're being honest about where you are. You cannot have a delusion about where you are. You could do your hair like you want, you could do your makeup like you want, you could go to Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and buy you some fly pumps, buy you a nice outfit and kill it! [laughter]

But one day, you'll have to take that makeup off, in Jesus' name! [laughter] And what God calls every human being to do, inside of them, is take off the makeup. Take off the makeup, take the wig off your soul. God says, "I want to see the real you. I can't deal with the dressed-up person in the soul. You're living out a reality and a model that doesn't really exist! I love you!"

"I don't love that person that you've created. I love you, actually! As messed-up as you are, as triflin' as you are, and the decisions that you make. At the worst point of you committing your worst sin, I was still deeply in love with you!" That's the beauty of the gospel!

God doesn't love the caricature and the action figure and the doll that we make of ourselves. God loves the actual person that we are! That's why I love the fact that the Bible says, "And while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." Many of us believe, as believers that we still gotta get ourselves right to be liked by God, but God is still madly, desperately in love with you.

And so what does He tell David? God says, "I delight in you being honest about how messed-up you are and letting Me deal with it." And look what David says: "Teach me wisdom in the secret heart." Like this. So what he's beginning to say is, "God, I want to open up more than what I had opened up to You, that really caused the issue of my need to repent."

It reminds me of when we first got a building. Our church meets in North Philly, and we meet in an old industrial building; it's over a hundred years old. And when we first bought the building, I had to get an exterminator, because some things were running around and the women's ministry didn't like that too much. [laughter] Heh, heh, heh, heh. I wasn't laughing when they were looking at me, either!

So I got a guy to come out, and he said to me, "Pastor, tell your staff that when I come there, I need everything open." I said, "What do you mean, you need everything open?" He said, "Everything that has a knob on it, a lock on it, a door on it, open it."

We went in this one room, and it was just species of roaches I had never seen in my life. We had a bat problem—it was crazy! And he says, "If I exterminate this part, but these parts aren't open, then the part that has been cleaned will be re-infected by the parts that are closed. So what I need you to do is, I need you to open up everything. Every single area of the building, from the top to the bottom, I need opened when I come in there, so I can deal with everything in one fell swoop."

That's what God wants you to do. Some things in your life, that you've had locked away for a while . . . We know we've all got stuff. The gospel's for that. There are some areas of your life you haven't opened up to the God of heaven, and you're afraid to open them up. David says, "I want to be fully clean!" He says, "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow! Let me hear joy and gladness."

His sin had so clouded him that he couldn't even enjoy himself anymore. People are jumping and enjoying themselves around him, but his sin was weighing him down. He said, "Clean me up, God! Let the bones that You have broken rejoice!"

David says, "Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities! Create in me a clean heart!" He's almost prophesying here. He didn't even know the reality of the new covenant, but he was saying, "If You can do it, God—I'm pretty sure You can—can You just recreate me from the inside, out?" He's prophesying about the renewal and regenerational power of the Spirit, based on Titus 3:5.

"Renew my heart! God, give me a new heart, and renew a right disposition toward Your holiness, the right disposition toward Your glory, the right disposition toward Your people! Renew my spirit, renew the right spirit in me! Cast me not away from Your presence. Even though I'm hurting right now, it's Your presence! Take not Your Spirit away from me."

He's not talking about relational distance as much as he's talking about his kingly position. He says, "Don't take away the great promises that You've given me! Restore to me the joy of my salvation."

"Uphold me with a willing spirit." That's what he says there. There it is. He says, "Then, when You renew me, I'll be ready to teach!" Isn't that beautiful? "When You renew me, I still won't be perfect, but my life will be an open book to You now, practically. God, I know You can see everything, but I need to open up everything for me to see that You see."

And then you'll be able to go to people with mercy, not just the law. You'll be able to go to people with a different disposition because you've seen God transform you. When God transforms you and when God renews you and when God breaks you and transforms you, you'll be excited when He restores to you the fact that He changes people!

And when you know your mess, and you know that the gap between your mess and God was closed through Jesus Christ, and He's healing you and He's pushing you on, then you can believe God! You can stand here and pray for somebody after the gathering with the faith of a lion—praying over them and speaking the Word of God over them in faith, because He did it for you, and you're believing that He can do it for them! Yeah!

And so tonight, I want to invite you, by the power of Christ who has saved you, I want to invite you, teachers, to repent. Every head bowed, every eye closed. You're here tonight, not by happenstance. Maybe you're here and you don't know Christ as your Savior, ultimately. We'd love to walk you through that reality as well.

If you don't know Christ as your Savior and the pardon for sins, I'd like for you to slip your hand in the air so we can talk to you about the transformative power of Jesus Christ. If that's you, slip your hand in the air. Anyone? Anyone who wants to put their faith in the fact that Christ's death on the cross was sufficient to deal with their sin . . . you've never done that before. It brings you into a relationship with God. Amen.

Ladies, if you know the Lord was speaking to you, even during the course of this day, but this is sort of a capstone for you tonight, that God is calling you to deal with uncharted areas that are locking away more of the fullness of what God wants to progressively, through the gospel, bring out of you, stand to your feet. I'm not going to pump and prime.

You ladies to my left, thank you for being bold. You ladies to my right, thank you for being bold. I see you on the front row, I see you in the back. Anybody else? I see you way in the far back. Thank you for being so bold. Why are you standin'?

I want to pray for you. If you'd just come forward, I want to pray over you, just pray over you tonight. If you don't mind, if you can make the trip, if you can make the trip tonight, God wants to get into some uncharted area. Come do business with Daddy. Daddy wants to do business with you. He loves you to death. He loves you to death, and the gospel is so sufficient.

I see y'all coming. It's okay. Thank you for being so bold, ladies. Thank you for being so bold. This is a very, very bold move. Anyone else? I see some of you wrestlin'. Stop wrestlin' with the Spirit of God. Just come on. Nobody's looking. Everybody's minding their business.

It's about you and Daddy. Daddy wants to go into some uncharted areas tonight, by the power of the Spirit and deal with you. If you want to kneel here . . . whatever you want to do. C'mon, ladies. Yeah, yeah, let Him deal with it. I see you all coming from the back, so we'll wait for you. I see 'way in the back. Yeah, thank you for your boldness.

I see you coming in the middle. Thank you for your boldness. Anyone else? I saw you just popped up. Thank you. Thank you for poppin' up, sis. Thank you for your boldness. Yeah. We're going to stand right with you and pray. I see you coming, thank you, sis. Thank you sis, I see you, too. Hallelujah for your honesty!

Anyone else! Thank you for poppin' up. It's a bold move, to deal with yourself and deal with your mess, but you've got a promise! Anyone who confesses and forsakes their sin will find favor! He who conceals it will not! It's real simple. If you're here tonight and you're saying, "God, I'm tired of concealing this area of my life. I know You see it, and I act like You don't see it, but You really do see it! And God, I want this to be the beginning of me admitting."

I see you, sis. Thank you for coming. Thank you, too, for coming. I see you. Anyone else? We're going to wait for you one more minute, just one more minute before I pray. Anyone else? Thank you. I saw you popped up, sis. I saw you popped up. Thank you for your boldness.

A few of you are still wrestlin'. Thank you. I see you guys coming. I see some of you all wrestlin'. You're wrestlin', You're wrestlin'. The Lord's saying, based on His Word, "I got you! Just come on down!" Thank you, guys. All you guys that just popped up, thank you for comin'. Come on down. He wants to deal with it tonight. He wants to use that anointing that she was talking about to just break through some stuff, by the power of Jesus.

I see you comin', sis. Thank you. Thank you in the back. I see you over here to my right. Thank you, God bless you. I see you comin' from the middle, I see you all comin' from the back. There's some more, there's some more. I see you with your hands up, comin' down the aisle. Bless you. I see you comin'.

Let the Lord move, by His Spirit. Amen, Hallelujah to His holy and righteous name! Let's deal with some uncharted areas. Thank you for poppin' up, sis. Thank you so much! That's how much He loves you. He'll wait on you. Bless the name of the Lord God for Your work.

Father, Mighty One of Israel! Mighty to save! Mighty to set free, mighty to deliver, powerful to clean, loving to embrace! Thank You, God, thank You, God, for Your Spirit who is mighty to do what He does! Thank you for these sisters who are coming forward, and many of them are in tears and broken before you.

Our text says, "A broken and contrite heart You WILL NOT despise! Thank You for that Word, God, to let us know that it's okay to be broken before Daddy! It's okay to be honest with our mess! God, there's so much potential in this room! So much power from You in this room, and so many things that are in the way of it, God. And I know You use us despite us—You always do, but You also want to use us as a conduit. God, I just pray for my sisters, whom you have made—in Christ—powerful women. And I pray for them today, that they would go into places of brokenness.

I'm going to say this, and I want to be very sensitive about it. If you've been raped, if you've been molested, and you're angry at God about it, if you've ever been taken advantage of, and that's one of the things that still breaks your heart today (you know Jesus Christ will save you, but you're still wrestling with that), I pray for God's strength for you to open that door for Him to walk through.

When He walks through the door, He doesn't take advantage of you; He transforms you. God, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, as my sisters are opening doors of their soul, in places where they've never opened, I'm praying that Your wind would rush through with an oil unbelievable, with the Balm of Gilead, with the blood of Christ—that You would heal over.

But Lord, don't band-aid it, Lord. Would you heal it in the mighty name of Christ? God, will you blow your wind on the broken and dry bones? Some of these sisters have been in deserts and not feeling Your presence while holding a Bible in their hand and telling people about Your goodness. But they're hurt, they're lonely, and they're frustrated. Meet them, God! Meet them, God! Meet them, God!

Shower down in ways that You can only do, Mighty One! All through this place! May they never be the same! May they be shocked by how You heal, may they be shocked by how You set free, may they be shocked in how You deliver! May they be shocked in how You renew, may they be shocked in how You transform!

May they be shocked and blown away and filled with worship and thanksgiving for what You're doing! God, we love You and we thank You for being the Tender Warrior, the Balm in Gilead, El Elyon, Jehovah Rapha, Jehovah Tsidkenu, Jehovah Nissi, thank You! Thank You for showing Yourself through Jesus.

I pray that the might of the gospel will build them up in their most holy of faith, and what Christ has done in dying on the cross for their sins, raising up from the grave . . . May they experience resurrection power in this particular area that they've opened up.

In Jesus' mighty name, we thank You! Amen!

You can stay here, because I think she's going to sing, but I'm gonna let Nancy come right back up and she's going to close us out with some things. But I'm just believing God with you ladies. We're going to join our faith together, that God's going to do a work in the spaces that you've left closed for years.

My prayer is that God would give you breakthroughs unimaginable and that you would be strong in the Lord and the power of His might to face everything that He lays before you, so that you can be healed.

The Bible says, "Do you want to be made well?" If you want to be made well, leave those doors open and let Jesus come on into that area. God bless you.