Date: January 28, 2019 ()

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Today we are beginning a wonderful series called Dismantling the Wall Between You and God by Walking Free From Your Past. Have you ever felt there was some kind of wall between you and God? Have you ever wondered, “If I love God and God loves me, why do I feel like there is a wall there and I can’t get past it? Why can’t I seem to make things change in my life? Why do I keep struggling with the same old things, year after year, over and over?” It is because of your past usually. There are a lot of things that make up a person’s past. Sometimes it is deep hurts, sometimes it is things beyond your control. Sometimes it is things you have done. Sometimes it is the way you have looked at other people and looked down your nose at them or judged them in the wrong way. There is a right way to judge and we will talk about that. It could be shame you feel, guilt, deep sorrow, or even a misunderstanding of what God is really like. It is based on the type of people you had in authority over you when you were growing up. You might think, “If God is like that, I don’t want anything to do with it.” Maybe you have seen religion as something you do not want anything to do with. You want to have your own all by yourself, your own spirituality all by yourself. This is because you do not really understand about how you need God, you need God’s people, and you need to be set free.

Look at this first picture of rusted chains. Those are the chains of your past. People do not realize how things so long ago, so rusted, are still holding them back. Now look at the second picture. Again, there are chains on your arms holding you back, keeping you from being all you really want to be and all God wants you to be. Most people suffer from three things. They either suffer from unhealed hurts, or unmet needs – real needs that are unmet, or unresolved issues. Do you have any of those? Do you have things that happened so long ago and are still no resolved inside of you? I have the best news I could ever bring you. God can take care of every single one of those. He can help you. He can solve it when you think it is unsolvable; it is not possible to solve it. God says, “Nothing is impossible to me.” Nothing is impossible with God. He can reveal things to you, and He is going to do it through this series. If you watch all of these lessons, you will see God reveal things to you that you did not even know. They went so deep, or maybe when you were so young, you did not even know about them. God wants to set you free from every bit of it. That wall is made up of bricks, and in the next lessons we are going to talk about the bricks that are there and build up that wall. Jesus paid a price for that wall to come down. Have you ever really thought about that? Did you know that Jesus did not die for your sins just so you could go to heaven? He said, “I came that you might have abundant life, now and in the life to come.” It is possible for any one of you watching this. Some of you watching are in prison and you have done things that you are so ashamed of that you do not even want to talk about it. Maybe you have done things that made you so angry that you cannot even get past your anger. You cannot even think straight because your anger consumes you. Guess what. That is a prison, too. Jesus paid the price to set you free. Then why are you not free? It would be like someone left you a million dollars in a will and you did not know it. Then one day, someone came to you and said, “There are some pages that say you have been left a million dollars. You can have it if you choose it.” Of course you would choose it. God is the same way. He has some pages called the Bible, the Word of God. In those pages, God has your freedom in them. You have to know where they are. You have to know what God says. Then you have to believe it. If Jesus has paid this price 2000 years ago, how could it apply to today? If we live another 2000 years, it will apply for all the people’s problems that live in the next 2000 years, and the years before that. What do you have to do to get this thing going?

The first thing you have to do is make sure He is your personal savior. Can you think of where you were and how the understanding came to you, “I am a sinner. I need a savior.” Jesus is the Savior. He is God’s only Son. There is no other way to heaven but by Him. He said that. He is either crazy or it was the truth. It is the truth. He said, “No man comes to the Father but by Me.” Right now, if you have never said “Jesus I believe that you are the Savior. I believe You died for my sins and I am so sorry for what I have done. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. Please come into my life. Please change me. Make me the kind of person You want me to be. Heal me from these terrible hurts that I have gone through. Let me be a new and different person. I turn all of my life over to You right now.” If you mean that, it just happened, that fast. Recently a man, who had so many troubles, said to me, “Are you telling me I can just say that prayer and my life is going to change.” I told him, “I am telling you, you can pray that prayer and your life will change.” Make sure He is your Savior. Jesus said, “I want to be Savior and Lord.” He wants to be more. He wants to be the boss. He wants to be in control. Not you in control any longer; let Him be in control. Have you ever done that? When?: What happened after that? I had been a Christian for many years but I did not want to let go of my life. I did not want to do what God wanted me to do just in case it was boring. I am being very honest with you. I thought serving God is probably really boring and I did not want to do that. I wanted to have fun and do exciting things. The right Christians came into my life and they told me, “You make Him Lord and He will set you free. He will do wonderful things in your life and your life will finally get on the path it has been destined for.” I did it and they were right. My whole life changed. I have never been the same since. I have never looked back. I have never walked away from it. There has been too much excitement and joy and peace. It was worth it. As a Christian have you ever said, “Jesus, I am going to turn my whole life over to you. I am going to turn my finances over to you. You can have my money and tell me what to do with my money. I am going to turn my job over to you. You tell me where to work, I will be anything you want me to be. Tell me who I am going to marry, where I am going to live. Here God, it is all yours.” When you do that, the Lord says, “Okay. Here we go. Get ready because you are going to love it.” And, you do.

God says, “I want to set you free. You have hurts and bondages and I want to set you free from them.” One kind is emotional hurts. Have you ever been hurt deeply, emotionally? Most of us have. It is really painful and it is hard to get over. Sometimes you think you cannot get over it because the hurt is too deep. God says, “Yes you can. You can’t do it by yourself but I want you to be free and I can set you free.” He wants to set you free and you need to let him do it. You need to understand.

What about mental torment? Can Jesus set you free from mental torment? Absolutely He can. There is someone watching this show right now who has suffered terribly and no one even knows it. You have had thoughts of suicide, thoughts of murder, and thoughts you were embarrassed to even admit that you had. You were tormented and Jesus said, “Read the Bible. I set a man free that was bound in chains and he was so tormented he could burst those chains off his body. No one could handle him, and I set him free.” Jesus can do that for you.

Physical infirmities are another example. Can Jesus heal people today? Yes He can. I see it happen. I see people get healed and there is no way they could get healed. I have been healed. I have been healed of partial deafness. I have been healed by the power of God. You can be healed, too. If you have physical infirmities, you say, “Lord I want to be healed. I want you to touch me.”

How about spiritual? Does Jesus want to set you free from spirits that have been tormenting you, the demonic? Is the demonic real? Oh yes. Is the devil real? You better believe he is real. Do not ever let anybody tell you he is not because he is. How do I know he is? Because Jesus himself said, “I saw Satan fall from heaven light lightening, and I give you authority over him and all his power.” Jesus does not lie. It is so nice to know there is someone in this world today that never lies. God never lies. In fact, God says, “I am not a man that I should lie, I do not lie.” If God says there is a devil and there is a hell, you can take it to the bank. It is there. Do not ever let anyone say, “Well hell’s on earth and I have already been through it.” Read the Bible. It is real, and it is so bad. It is torment. God does not want people going there and it breaks His heart. It broke His heart when Hitler went to hell, because God did so much to try to get him into the way he really needed to be. He said, “No, I am going to run it the way I want to run my life.”

Look at Psalm 116. “I love God because He listened to me. He listened as I begged for mercy. He listened so intently as I laid my case out before Him. Death stared me in the face. Hell was hard on my heels, up against it. I did not know which way to turn. Then I called out to God for help. Please God, I cried out, save my life. And God is gracious. It is He who makes things right. Our most compassionate God. God takes the side of the helpless. When I was at the end of my rope, He saved me.” Let’s talk about that wall. Do you feel like you are at the end of your rope? Some of you who watch this show and watch this DVD, all over the world, are saying, “That describes me. I am listening.” I travel all over the world speaking to people and I have learned something. People all over the world, whether they live in a hut in Africa, in an igloo in Alaska, all have the same ;problems. It does not matter where they live. Their problems are all the same. It surprised me when I figured it out. Everyone has the same problems. They might have different cultures or different skin color. They might have different personalities. But everyone has the same problems. We all have them, but we have a Jesus that said, “I will help you if you ask me.” So, why are we unable to get close to God? What is it about this wall? It is never God’s problem. God says, “I want you to know me and I want to know you. I know everything about you, but I want you to know that.”

Look at this picture of a teenage boy at a brick wall. “Betty, are you saying to me that a teenager has problems that are so deep that he can’t get past them already?” That is exactly what I am saying. Teenagers today have so much outside stress, and then they have stress at home, too. Some of them have homes that are so dysfunctional that it is a wonder they can even get through their classes every day. It is just a wonder they can make it. They can dismantle that wall. Some of you watching are young, but if you will listen to what I am saying, God can set you free today and teach you how to walk the rest of your life.

What if you are in your 80’s or 90’s? You might say, “Betty, the wall has been there forever and I am close to dying.” God says, “I can restore all the years the locust ate.” God can do that. If you are in a hospital and dying, and you know you are dying, even then God can use what you have left, whether it is one day, one week, or one hour. He can transform everything. Wonderful things can come about, even in that last bit. There is someone in a hotel room, or hospital room, watching on television. You think there is no hope. Maybe you are in a coma and someone has the television on in the hospital. Nobody knows you can hear it, but you are hearing this. Jesus loves you and He can hear you talk to Him in your mind. You do not have to be verbal. He can hear you. Talk to Him.

If God wants no walls between you and Him, what are these bricks? I talked to you about shame, guilt, sins, and things you have done that you know you should not have done. It is not only hurts that have been done to you, it is hurts you have done to other people, and you know you have hurt them. There are also wounds. Another one is iniquities. What in the world is an iniquity? It is a sin that has been passed down through your family. It is real prevalent all over your family. Let us look at anger. Everyone is angry. Perhaps it is family pride. You are just so cocky. “Our family does this. Our family has done that. We have done this. We have done that.” Maybe it is alcoholism or drug addition, maybe it is pornography. It could be self-pity, or mental illness. It can be anything. It is passed down from the people in your family who came before you. Some of them were caught up in witchcraft and that needs to be broken over your life. Maybe you are in bondage to something. Word curses is another; things that have been spoken over you, deep bitterness. Maybe there is a distance between you and everyone. You do not ever feel like you fit in and you do not belong anywhere and that people are not interested in you. You judge others and others judge you in the wrong way. What about unforgiveness? You might thing “I will never forgive them.” Yes you can. You are a prisoner until you do. We have talked about anger. Think about hostility. There is so much of that. When you see government rise up against government and some of the political fighting that takes place, you are a prisoner of hostility. You have believed a lie. Someone has told you that you need to be angry or to hate a particular person or kind of people. No, you do not. Another can be flat out spiritual pride. What is spiritual pride? That is the thing that Jesus hated the most. You read in the Bible that He loved sinners, He associated with sinners. He forgave them even when they were caught in it. The ones He never had any sympathy for at all were hypocrites – people with spiritual pride that thought they were better than everyone else. Even if you have that, you can have that taken out of your life by God.

What is going to be your part in this? Your part today is to say, “God, reveal to me in a way I can understand what the issues are in my life that have made up this wall between you and me?” I have a picture of a brick wall with the sword of God slicing through it. The Word of God is quicker and sharper than any two-edged sword. It can divide asunder. Remember, I told you that God cannot lie. He can do it.

What are some examples of how your past can affect you? One is how your father treated you. How did your father treat you? Was he abusive? Was he distant and unemotional? Never told you he was proud of you and never told you that you were doing a good job? Was he always critical? Maybe it was your mother. Because of that, if you are not careful, you will think God is like that. “I can never please God. There is nothing I could do to ever please God. I am too bad for God. I am too messed up.” That is not true at all. Remember, Jesus came for your sins. He came for those hurts. Read Isaiah 53. “He was wounded for our iniquities” That is those sins passed down from your family. “By His stripes we are healed.” Jesus read that verse in a synagogue and said, “That verse came true today. I am it.”

Another thing that keeps you bound up is your perception of your reality. Maybe how you are seeing things is not how it really is. Maybe you even said “I thought that was just me. It is all my fault, no one else’s fault. It is all my fault.” All of that can keep you from knowing who you really are and who God really is, and what God’s beautiful, wonderful plan for your life really is. It is like having heavy metal weights on your feet that weigh more than you weigh. When you put them on your feet and get in the water, you go to the bottom. No matter how hard you try to get up and get air, you go back down again. Have you ever felt that way? God is going to set you free through this series. I promise you that. How can I promise you that? The Word of God says it and I believe the Word of God. God cannot lie.

What do you do? You need to pray right now. I am going to lead you in a prayer and I want you to pray this out loud. “God, I need a healing in my life right now.” Just say that and be very honest. “Holy Spirit come give me wisdom. Come guide and comfort me. I am afraid to be vulnerable before God. I need You to bring light to the dark places. Shine the light on my life, on my past, even the things that I am not aware of and the things that I was too young to remember. God, I want to know the truth. Your Word says the truth will make me free and I want to be free Lord. I am so tired of being in bondage. I am so tired of all of this. Lord, set me free. I want to be free. Protect me as I examine all of these things of my life, Lord, because I want to be totally healed. I do not want anything left God, because I want to be free from my past. I am so tired of dragging it with me. Everywhere I go I drag it with me Lord. Set me free. Amen.” That is the kind of prayers that God really listens to because they are genuine and sincere.

There are some things I need to tell you if you are going to do this with me. This cannot be a shallow thing. You cannot miss any of the lessons. You have to watch each of them because everyone is an individual lesson. If you miss one there will be an area of your life that you did not get healed from. Then, you have to be willing to walk through the pain one more time. You think, “It is so painful I don’t want to remember it.” This time Jesus is going to touch it and take it away. Then you have to be willing to walk it out. After we go through all of these lessons, you have to walk it out. No one knows you went through these lessons. They are going to still be who they were. They are not healed, but you are. You have to learn how to walk it out. I will teach you how in the very last lesson. I will teach you how to do it.

What do you really have to be to take part in all of this? You have to be sick and tired of being sick and tired of your life. You have to be sick of it. A scripture says, “God is close to the brokenhearted. He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” You can do this.

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