Highlight: Forgiveness and Growth after the New Age

Apologia Studios

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It's absolutely amazing the power of God's grace. Like it reminds me of John 14 with the

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Holy Spirit says he's going to he's going to convict the world of sin and righteousness, right? And then we have God guiding you to his word in which convicts you of your sin.

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And then you making a statement like a repentance, like literally repentance, you went from one direction to another.

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You went from looking for peace or knowledge or esoteric mystery to be revealed in astrology, looking at the moon and things like things like that.

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You turned away from that and you turn towards God and his word. And it's so amazing. It's like even, even

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Doreen, right? Like Doreen virtue. She said, Deuteronomy 18, like absolutely convicted her, made her like stop in her tracks.

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And that's what the word of God does. So what's so encouraging about that sister is when I hear that is when you look back at your life and how you were, the coolest thing is this, is that when the sun sets you free, you are in free indeed.

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None of that in your past, right? Affects your position before God now, because now

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Jesus's blood has covered your sins and you are free to worship him in spirit and in truth.

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So you have the objective point now to look back into your life and say, look, these are the things that I was doing wrong.

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And now I'm going to follow God and I'm going to try to stop other people or try to help them out of this area.

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Like that's, that's an amazing thing. It's like you saw you, you know, who the truth is. The truth is a person is

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Jesus Christ. You're in a relationship with him and now you want to help others. It's like, it's amazing.

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So I want you, hopefully when you look back at your life and see the things that you were into to not look back at them and go, man, like look at this horrible person

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I am or whatever things of that nature. You go, no, look who I was. I was dead. Cause like you, you even said, it's crazy.

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It's crazy that I believed I was a star seed. Let me tell you something. There's a lot of crazy things. People believe people believe their descendants of fish.

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And I'd say that's the majority of the world that believes that literally it's the grace of God that gets you to love his word.

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And now you move on, you press forward, you persevere to the end, you run your race and set your eyes on what is ahead of you, right?

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Keep your eyes focused on those heavenly promises of God. And it's an amazing thing. Like you are now adopted as a child of God through the blood of Jesus Christ.

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That's your position now. And I think that's just a phenomenal thing. It's very encouraging to hear your story because it reminds us that there's hope.

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And that hope is Jesus Christ, that regardless of some people that I, even I've grown up with that, I, that I'm still friends with in the, in the way they are, it gives me hope to know that Jesus is not far off from them.

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You know what I mean? That he can, he can save them. And I'm, I'm just, I'm happy for you really am.

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Yeah. It's, it's, um, it's been a really humbling and wild experience because yeah,

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I do look back sometimes and I, and I can feel shame, but mostly I feel heartache for that person, for that former version of myself who was just dead in her sin and didn't know it because like I said,

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I was, I was psychologically, I was emotionally and spiritually just unwell. I was unwell and I, and I needed help.

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I needed Jesus. And so my heart mostly breaks for her, but I, I'm so grateful that the

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Lord saved me because I'm just, I mean, we're all unworthy of that. And for him to deem me worthy,

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I don't know how I could ever take that for granted. So when people say to me now, you know, how can you make

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God your whole life? You know, why is Jesus everything to you? That's why. And that's why I get so emotional because I was unworthy and he saved me anyway.

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Yeah. Um, no, Angel, thank you again so much for sharing that and just being vulnerable with, and it's just, just a testament to just God's grace of where, where you came from, you know, to where you are now.

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And one thing I just want to maybe just encourage you with is that, and maybe just share you a quick story is, so, you know, we're part of Apologia Studios.

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Apologia Studios was initially Apologia Church. We were planted out of a drug and alcohol recovery facility.

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So 90 % of our congregation were people coming out of, you know, the worst of the worst people from, you know, prostitutes to drug traffickers to, you know, people who are using, you know, meth, fentanyl, whatever they're,

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I mean, you name it, it was just a place full of broken people. And I remember specifically, you know,

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Jeff had told the story one time of just at least two scenarios where both two different people came up who were brand new in Christ, but just had a really rough past of just, you know, they look at, they play, they're playing in themselves, you know, the camera reel of why

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I did this, this, and this, you know, I was using, I took advantage of people I robbed, I stole, kind of giving their whole resume of why they're not worthy, how

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God can never use me. And one of the things that Jeff told us that he told them is like, he says, you need to realize that, you know,

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God is sovereign over, you know, all of that. And in those moments of when you were in your past life, like God was preparing you,

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God was actually preparing you to be where you are now. So, it's very easy to look at your past when you're doing, you know, the tarot card readings or the astrology charts or where, you know, you were maybe doing something to where, you know, you feel like, oh no,

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I led someone astray. The reality is at the end of the day, you know, God is sovereign. He's preparing you to be where you are right now to be able to tell your story, which, you know, praise

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God, you know, we have a platform where this will go out to who knows, maybe someone who's utilizing astrology or maybe is kind of even where you were a couple months ago.

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So, that's one of the times where it's very easy sometimes to get, you know, not realizing what

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God is doing and get caught up in replaying the past over and over and over again, rather than being where you are at the present, but also focusing in on the future of not even where you are now, but one day, how you see

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Christ in part, one day you're going to see him perfectly face to face. And in that light,

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I just want to read this one scripture to encourage you, and I'll just jump back to you, Angela, give me your thoughts. One of my favorite passages in the entire

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Bible when it comes to finding your identity in Christ, and when you're dealing with that exact issue, is 1

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John 3 .19 and 20. And it says that this is how we know we belong to the truth.

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This is, yeah, it says 1 John 3 .19, this is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence.

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Okay, let me refresh it because I'm going to play a verse scenario. And it says, if our heart condemns us, if our heart condemns us, this is verse 20, we know that God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything.

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So it's saying, you know, you have those areas in which your heart condemns you, but God knows everything and he doesn't condemn you.

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He has accepted you. You're already a daughter of God and you've been accepted by the complete work done by Christ on the cross.

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Like, that's the power and the beauty of the cross, that you are saved by grace, apart from works, you're clothed in white robes in his righteousness, and you're perfect and accepted before him.

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And I think that's just something that I think Christians deal with in general, whatever their past is, where, you know, the enemy will come in and will try and take advantage and try and give you words.

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In fact, we just had a sermon on Sunday where the pastor was talking about that, how we take, we take down, we cast down every thought cast against us.

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We take every single thought captive. And that's one of the big parts of the Christian life. So yeah, I just felt it kind of led to, you know, just maybe share that scripture and also encourage you as well, too, because I think this is something that you and honestly all of us need to hear.

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Yeah, 100%. I think about that a lot, how God is so sovereign and he knew the whole time, like he knew that I would eventually wake up and come to know him.

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And he let me go through all of that because he was preparing me for who

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I am now in Christ. And like you had mentioned earlier, it gives me hope, too.

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It gives me hope for those that are unsaved. Because even if you listen to the things that I said just shy of a year ago,

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I'm a totally different person. And that's scripture that we become a new creation in Christ.

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And so the way that I used to speak and think and behave, it's so far away from who

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I am now. And so to think of all those people that are in the

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New Age or are atheists or agnostic or in witchcraft, whatever it is, that it can just change at the drop of a hat when the

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Lord decides it's time. And it's really encouraging and a really great reminder to pray.