Why You're Still A Slave to Sin (How to Break Free)

Why are so many Christians struggling living a godly life?

Because they're doing it in their own power.

Why are they doing it in their own power? I want to know. They don't believe. They don't believe. Why don't they believe?

Because they don't know.

Because they don't know. We can't have anything from heaven unless we believe, and we can't believe what we don't know.

I'm a young man. I've had a lot of conversations with young men. I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to do this. And they're just like, I've tried everything in my own strength to be set free.

This is what we discovered that 98% of the Christians in America don't understand. And that is this. Do you want to do it or you want me to do it? No, I want you to do it.

You're setting this up.

Hey everybody, welcome to John Bevere Podcast. I actually, maybe going forward, we'll just have you say it, Art, and then I won't feel so uncomfortable using my name.

You're going to keep saying it.

John Bevere Podcast. Oh God. Gosh. Anyway, great to have our friends with us today. We are going to talk about something that I think should really spark interest in people.

I mean, let's jump into it. You're giving me a look like—

okay, so, so here we are. We're going through 2 Peter because 2 Peter, the reason we're talking about this book is it applies to today. There's so much truth in this book that really speaks to what our generation's going through. Let's reframe it again. We've had over 30 million people in 24 years walk away from the Christian faith. 30 million, over 30 million. That's 1 in every 10 Americans. Yeah. Okay. None of these people said, I'm gonna leave the faith. One day I'm just gonna do it. What about all the other believers that think that would never be me? Well, I wanna make sure it's never any of us, and I wanna see those 30 million come back. So here is another secret key ingredient of why I believe we've lost so many people in the faith, and that is what most people don't know about grace. So let's start with verse 1 again. This letter is from Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to you who share the same precious faith we have. This faith was given to you because of the justice and fairness of Jesus Christ, our God and Savior. Verse 2, may God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. Verse 3, by His divine "Power." Okay, stop right there. "By his divine power." First of all, the word power there is the Greek word dunamis. We actually get our word dynamite from that Greek word.

Interesting.

It is interesting. Yeah. So what it means is power, now listen to this, especially achieving power. That's actually what the Lexicon dictionary says. Power, especially achieving power. So that means power that accomplishes something. Now, by his divine power, what is he referencing? He just said, "May God give you more and more grace." So he's actually equating grace with God's achieving power. This is what we discovered that 98% of the Christians in America don't understand, and that is this. Do you want to do it or you want me to do it? No, I want you to do it.

You're setting this up. All right.

A survey was done, and these are Bible-believing, Sunday morning attending Christians. We asked, give 3 or more one-word definitions of the word grace. The overwhelming response was Salvation. I agree, we are saved by grace and only by grace, and we can never earn it, right? I agree. Number 2 answer was forgiveness of sins. I agree, the grace of God is what forgives our sins. Thank God for his grace. All of us say thank God. Number 3, a free unmerited gift. Absolutely true, it's a free unmerited gift. The 4th response was the love of God. I agree, Here's the tragedy. Only 2%— and the actual figure was 1.9%— of those over 5,000 that were polled said that grace was God's empowerment. Or only 2% of them equated grace with power.

Yeah.

Okay. Now, here Peter does it right here. May more and more be great grace given to you by his divine power. Okay, let's look at God's definition of grace. All right. God says to the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, my grace is all you need for my power. Oh, wait a minute. God just said my power is grace. Yeah. My grace is all you need for my power. Yeah. Works best in your weakness or your human inability. So here's the aspect of grace that most Christians don't understand. Grace is God's empowerment on my life that gives me the ability to go beyond my natural ability. Hmm. Now, this is why it's so important. As we read Peter, listen to what we're reading. By his divine power, that's grace, God has given us everything. Now, that word everything in the Greek means totality of what's being discussed. Yeah. God has given us everything, everybody listen to this, we need for living a godly life. Now let's just stop right there. What's the biggest struggle a lot of Christians have today in the United States?

Yeah, living a godly life.

Why?

Well, they don't know how to connect the dots. Like most of them are trying to do it in their own ability.

Yes. And not relying on Christ. I was hoping you would say that. Yeah.

Not relying on grace. And my question too around this is why? Like, why is it that there's so many Christians that are trying to do these things of living godly in their own ability? And why do you feel like people don't know about this?

Because, okay, how will they believe if they're not told? So Paul asked that question. How will they hear if there isn't a proclaimer, right? Okay. If we tell people, this is what we've done in Western Christianity, we've told grace saves, grace forgives our sins, grace is a free gift. We've emphasized that. I'm so glad we have because it's all 100% true. But if we don't tell people that grace empowers me, it empowers me with dunamis, God's divine power, now all of a sudden I'm still living in my own ability, and this is why we can't have anything from heaven unless we believe, and we can't believe what we don't know. Hey everybody, spiritual growth doesn't happen by accident. That's why we here at Messenger International are passionate about equipping you with resources to help you grow in your relationship with God. One tool we hope you'll take advantage of is our free MessengerX app. Inside MessengerX, you'll get access to dozens of full-length courses, sermons, audiobooks, and more, all available to you at no cost. Whatever your goals, whether you're looking to discover your calling, develop deeper intimacy with God, find freedom, or improve your relationships, you'll find resources on MessengerX that will help you get there. Download MessengerX today, create your free account, and dive in. Now back to the podcast. Everything in the kingdom has to come through faith.

Yeah.

Without faith, it's impossible to please God. Faith is believing. How can we believe something we don't know? Mm-hmm. So if all I see grace as, as—

Those three areas.

Those three areas.

Yeah. Which is three major, like you can't emphasize that enough.

Major, major, major, right? I'm not getting the benefit of the divine empowerment. Yeah.

Which is how Jesus presents it.

Okay, I know people are really wrestling with this. Let's just take it a little further, okay? Everybody understands this, saving grace, correct? I mean, we have emphasized this over and over again in the church, right? All right, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes, whoops, believes shall be saved. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to give a scripture to everybody that this, this is mind-blowing when you hear it. He is the propitiation. This is 1 John chapter 2. He is the propitiation of our sins, and not only our sins, but for the sins of the whole world. Mm-hmm. Art in the whole world saved. Okay. Yeah, but whoa, whoa, whoa. How can you say that? The whole world is saved. Hmm.

Expand.

I will. I'm gonna put me on record. The whole world has been saved.

Okay.

Why is it that Jesus says the majority of mankind is gonna end up in hell? Because whoever believes receives saving grace.

Yeah.

Okay, so in other words, every single human being you see on this earth, he is the propitiation for their sins, but they're lost because they haven't received his lordship, his salvation, and believed in his work done at Calvary.

Yeah.

All right, so because they don't believe, even though they're saved, it's not benefiting them because Jesus says the majority of mankind is going to end up in hell. Matthew chapter 7. Many are those that go to everlasting destruction, and that many is the Greek word that means majority.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. Why are so many Christians struggling living a godly life?

Because they're doing it in their own power.

Because they— yes, they're doing it. Why are they doing it in their own power? I want to believe they don't believe. Why don't they believe?

Because they don't know.

Because they don't know. And that's why we're doing this podcast. Yeah, we want them to know.

I mean, and that's a sobering sobering thought because I— look, I'm a young man. I've had a lot of conversations with young men who are navigating porn addictions, right? And I just watch when I have those conversations of— it's like, I'm trying to do this, I'm trying to do this, I'm trying to do this. And they're just like, I've tried everything in my own strength to be set free. And like, when I give them that revelation of what God's grace has actually done for them, of one, of course, it's It's God's grace is the covering and the forgiveness of sins. And I speak always to, that's not who you are. Like, God has so much more for you than you being stuck in bondage of that. And so I remind them of who God is. But then when I explain to them that they have this ability to not be a slave to that, it is like, I mean, it is world-changing for them. And I think about the Christians right now struggling in so many areas of of navigating how to be a good husband, how to be a good wife, and how to be a good father, how do I fight greed, like all these things. And they're doing it constantly in their own ability. Like my heart breaks because they don't know, they don't believe.

I would love to affirm what you just said. In Romans, the 6th chapter, I mean, I have this highlighted. What then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? That's the first verse. Of course not. Now listen to what he says. Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Then he goes on to say, I mean, this is amazing. In verse 6, we know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin, for when we died with Christ, we were set free from the power of sin. Okay, that's just, that's 2 times. Now let's go to verse 10. When Jesus died, he died once to break the power of sin. Now let's go. These are all the highlights I have in my Bible, okay? This is verse 14. Sin is no longer your master. Verse Uh, let's see, where are we at? Verse, uh, 15. You become the slave to whatever you choose to obey. So we can go on and on and on and on. He says so many times that we've been set free from the power of sin in Romans chapter 6. Now that's theory to most people, and the reason it's theory and not reality is because we didn't tell them that grace empowers us to walk away from sin. And let's read this again. By his divine power, let's substitute the word grace in there. By his grace, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. Yeah. And the word everything means the totality of a godly life. So it means there's not one sin that can have dominion over us as believers if we believe.

Well, can I— hopefully I'm not jumping ahead. No, you know, I'm looking at my Bible right here and it says that second line, as you go further, it says, through the full knowledge of him. And what I was saying even earlier, when I ever have those conversations with people that have been in bondage of porn, I always remind them like, that's not who you are. And I think through this knowledge of what we talked about a lot previously, of that knowledge of growing in your walk with God, What is it? We understand more of who we are when we understand more of who created us in his image. And so as we know our creator, we understand more of who we are so that those things are not in your nature. I mean, I've had conversations and I remember when I navigated this way back, like 10 years ago, I'm coming up on 10 years ago, is I remember thinking to myself as I started slipping further and further away from it and just being like, okay, I'm set free, I'm set free. When it started coming back into my mind, I remember it was not an attractive thought anymore. It was not something like, maybe this would be a good thing, because God was reshaping my identity. And it became more and more the thing that's like, no, I'm not someone who finds pleasure in that thing.

Can I challenge what you just said?

Yeah.

He was reshaping your identity, but I think you're about to find out in 2 Peter, the formation of his nature was growing in you.

Yeah, yeah, that's good.

The formation of his nature. Yeah, think about it. His nature. Yeah, because our goal is to become more like Christ, and we have that ability. I mean, let's, let's just read on here, okay? Because I feel verse 3 and verse 4 are two of the most powerful scriptures in the whole New Testament. I— and I'm not meaning to compare with scripture with scripture. I'm just saying that these two have so much in them. By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for a godly life, for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know— that's what you just said, and that Greek word is epigenesis, which means not experientially know, intimately know him, the one who called us to himself. Now stop right there. Called us to himself. Do you realize what we just heard? Yeah. He called us by name to himself. In other words, guys, I'm not calling you to live in a nice place in a big city, a celestial city. I'm calling you to me.

Yeah.

The city's amazing. And everybody that's ever seen, got a glimpse of the eternal city said it's no words to describe. But God said he's calling us to himself.

Yeah, that's not his benefits, not his things that he offers.

It's to him called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. Verse 4, and because of his glory and excellence, he has given us very great and precious promises. Uh-oh, what are we talking about? We're talking about the word of God. Yeah. He's given us great and precious promises. Now listen to this. These are the promises that enable. So we're talking about theory earlier. By his divine power, we live free, right? We have everything we need to live a godly life. But these promises, these are the promises that enable, enable, enable, empower you to share in his divine nature. Okay, stop. His divine nature. "And escape the world's corruption caused by human desire." Okay, whoa, we just talked about so much there. So he says his divine power gives us everything we need to live a godly life. Then he says the way we do it is we have these divine, we have these exceeding great and precious promises. And by the way, it says great and precious promises, the actual Greek says exceedingly great. So think great and go exceed that, right?

Yeah.

The promises are the word of God. All right, now can I go back to the scripture that we started this whole podcast with? And now, brothers, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace. Okay, the word of his empowerment. Let me prove to you that it is the word of his empowerment. Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3 makes a statement, Arden, that I wish we would talk about more. But it says in Hebrews 1:3 that Jesus upholds everything by the word of his power.

Yeah.

It doesn't say the power of his word. If it says the power of his word, okay, that's great. That means his word is powerful. But when it says the word of his power, that means all of his power, all of his dunamis is locked up in his word. If all of his power is locked up in his word, Those great and precious promises that are exceeding, His word, are what empowers us, that's the free gift, to live free from sin and to live a godly life. This is why it is so important that we get in the word of God. This is why we should read our Bibles. We should talk about the word of God to each other. We should meditate and think about the word of God. I mean, listen to what God says. God says to Joshua, "These words, these scriptures, you shall meditate on them day and night. Then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success." So he's like, as long as you're thinking about my word, my word has the power in it to give you the ability to live the godly life. Arden, you said you have friends that are bound to pornography. Do you know what statistics say? 67% of the men that attend church regularly watch pornography regularly.

Yeah, I honestly thought it was 80. I thought it was like 67 was probably—

probably since I looked last, I think it was 8.

I think it's 8, closer to 80.

Okay, whatever. We're talking at least 7 or 8 out of every 10 guys.

Yeah, it's a majority, which is insane.

Okay, but, but let's go back to the other one. 98% of the Christians in America don't know grace empowers me. Go ahead.

Well, and that's the thing is what I know, we've talked about this, is that a lot of people see grace as it's only something that is powerful enough to save me from the penalty.

Right.

Of sin.

Right.

So eternity away from God.

Right.

But they neglect that it is also like, you can't say it's powerful enough just to save me from the penalty of sin and not say it's not powerful enough to save me from the bondage of sin. And that's what I love that you've emphasized so much through this grace message and this understanding that I hope more and more Christians get a hold of. Because you see Christians, they continue to go through bondage, and they're not realizing that the same grace that saved them and set them free from those things is the same thing that is going to get them set free from the bondage that the sin is taking into their life.

While you were saying that, Arden, I just started thinking, and I went over here to Titus 2:14. Listen to this. Jesus gave his life. He gave his life. Think about it. Our creator gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us and make us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds. He talks about freeing us and he talks about cleansing us. So Freeing me frees me, as you just so beautifully said, from the bondage of sin. Cleansing me cleanses me so I don't suffer the penalty of sin. So if we only preach that Jesus frees us from the penalty of sin and not the bondage of sin, then all of a sudden now we've got people who are gonna struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle, and they're not gonna be, engaging that power that gives them the ability to live a godly life.

Well, and I also, like, we've talked a lot about the sinner's prayer in conversations that you and me have had and understanding, like, sometimes we don't fully get people to understand what they just said yes to. And I've always had these conversations with people is that they think when I gave my life to Christ, it's this moment where it's like, I got born again and I don't fully understand what that means, but I said yes to Christ and he does all these things in my life. But how does this fit in with— I'm still struggling with pornography. I'm still struggling. And what they're trying to do is clump everything that they were dealing with, that they were in bondage to, into this new identity that they have. And they're bringing it into this born again where God said, no, I've made you a new creation. And that doesn't mean that these people, as soon as you are a new creation, that you won't maybe have some of those challenges come up into your life. It's just that that old identity, the old thing that was holding you back, those bondages of those sins are dead. And you walk in this new understanding of grace and what God has given you and brought you into so that you can walk free from it.

You know, the only fight that we're told to fight in the New Testament is the good fight of faith.

Yeah.

And you're just, you're describing, it's not something you just tiptoe into. You have to wrestle, you have to war, you have to contend, knowing that God has promised this to you and you have a flesh to deal with and you've got demonic powers to deal with and a society that's trying to pull you into the muck and mire. You have to contend, you have to fight. But if you, If you don't, I want you to imagine, everybody listen to me on this. If you don't know what the Bible says and you're not taking the time in the Bible, if the Spirit of God's not enlightening your eyes, you have nothing to fight with. You don't have, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

I mean, when Jesus is tempted, what does he use?

He uses the word of God.

He uses scripture.

Scripture. Yeah.

That's how he fights temptation. And if we don't know what scripture says, we don't, we're not armed. I mean, it's what we talked about. It's a two-edged sword.

Yes.

It is used to cut up the things that are in the spirit, cut up the lies from the enemy, the things that are gonna come up against us. But if we are just pulling everything from what our favorite podcast is and stuff like that, we're missing out.

You know, Alec, your brother brought a girl to our house one night and she was a student at Oxford University. We just got to talking to her. We got to know her, right? We were engaged in getting to know her, and turned out I've never seen a young lady with more disease and more physical health challenges than this young girl. I mean, I— my— Lisa, my jaws were like dropped listening to all the infirmities and problems that girl had. I mean, it was multiple. I— and I remember, um, Alex said, Dad, Mom, I was hoping you could pray for her. And I just looked at her, I said, all right, great, what What, what scripture are you believing for? What are you standing on? What's the word that God has given you? And she said— she just looked at me. She said, well, to be healed. Yeah. No, I said, what scripture are you fighting with? What's, what's the one— what's the scriptures that God's made alive in you that you're believing for? And she stuttered and she was like— and I started explaining to her I said, look, the Word of God is powerful. Every word of God has the power in it to bring itself to pass. God said, I'm watching over my word to perform it. You don't have a scripture you're anchoring on. So I just keep ministering to her, right? The Word of God, the Word of God. I said, look, here's mine. This is mine personally. Anytime I'm fighting with any kind of— mine's Psalm 103. That's so real to me. God gave me that word years ago. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and don't forget his benefits, who forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. And I thought, wow, in one breath he says, forgive all my sins. John, do you believe God's forgiven all your sins? Yeah. Yes, every sin. Every sin the blood of Jesus forgave me of. Yes. Well, in the next breath he says, all your diseases. Is there any disease I haven't healed you of? No. Is there anybody that came to Jesus who said, I wanna be healed of this? And he said, no, God just wants you to learn something. And I went, oh my gosh. And it became—

You can't believe the first part without believing the second.

Yeah, it became a reality to me. And I shared that with her, right? And she went, whoa. Well, we kept talking and all of a sudden the word came alive in her heart and she grabbed ahold of it. And do you know, we found out that girl who had gone to doctor after doctor after doctor, who was actually gonna have to stop studying and everything else, she got completely, totally healed because she believed. Yeah.

Can I ask if you can go into this? So you talked about establishing God's word. I've heard you talk about how God's word is established here on earth. Can you explain that? Because I think sometimes people think just differently about that. And I remember you explaining it to me one time and my mind was kind of blown.

Okay. So the Bible says, forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven or established in heaven. That's Psalm 119. Forever, O Lord, your word's established in heaven. I thought to myself when I read that, why doesn't it say, why doesn't it say forever, O Lord, your word is established in heaven and on earth? And that's because God gave earth to men. And we're the ones that choose what gets established on this earth. So the scripture came up in my heart when I thought about that, "Out of the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word shall be established." And then I thought of what God said in Isaiah 55, "So shall the word be that goes forth from my mouth. It will not return to me void. It will accomplish what I sent it to do." And I thought, how does it return? It returns out of our mouth. So He's the first mouth, we're the second mouth. When we speak His word on this earth, we establish His will on this earth. So here's the deal. Forever, O Lord, yes, Your word is established in heaven, but it's our responsibility to establish it on the earth. That's why Jesus didn't say, God my Father, please cause this storm to stop. He spoke and said, "Peace." He established peace in that storm on this earth by speaking the word. 'Cause he is the word of God. He speaks to a fig tree and it never has fruit again.

[Speaker] So, and we go back to what we're saying, establishing here on earth, establishing that we have everything granted to us. To live a life of holiness because of his grace.

In totality, we've got everything we need to live a godly life. The only thing is we're not employing it. We're not establishing it. And so what I'm believing for is that every single one of you listening to us will understand that God has given you and I everything we need to live a godly life. You don't have to do it in your own ability anymore. You've got the power of grace. And that power of grace is called the word of his grace. And when we get the word of his grace in our heart, now guess what? He watches over his word to perform it. He upholds all things by the word of his power. All of his power is locked up in his word. That's why it's called the word of his grace. That grace gives you the ability to rise beyond your natural ability so that you can live a life that you couldn't live before in your own ability.

Dad, would you want to pray with people?

I think that's a good idea. Yeah. I want to pray for you right now. Some of you have bondages in your life. You have, you have things that you just can't shake, whether it's perpetual lying, it's perpetual gossip, whether it's substance abuse, whether it's pornography, I wanna pray for you that you would be free because Jesus freed you from the dominion of sin, from the slavery of sin, and He freed you so that you could live like a son or a daughter of the kingdom of heaven. So in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, I speak to the addictions. I speak in the name of Jesus to the sins that has lorded and mastered over your life. No longer will it lord and master over your life because I speak the word of God in agreement with Art, and we speak the word of God over your life right now. And we command in Jesus' name for your mind to be renewed. We command in Jesus' name for your body and your flesh to line up with the word of God. That says that you are free. We command that even in your mind, your synapse connections and your neural connections of your mind would begin to change as you've heard the word of God, and that you will now have the mind of Christ. You would now think thoughts that are pure and just and honest and of good report. In the name of Jesus, I break the generational curses off of you that have gone back, the epigenetical patterns that were passed down to you from your father, from your father's father, your father's father's father. I break the power of those sins off of your life, and I command you to walk free in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And now, Father, let it be established to my brother and my sister according to the word of God. And if you've never given the Lordship of your life to Jesus, just say this right now. Jesus, I repent of living for myself, and in the sin that you died to set me free from, I give my life to your lordship, to your kingship, now and forever, in Jesus' mighty name. Wow. I just— I believe people are going to be— I want you to share. The Bible says we overcome by the blood of the Lamb, the word of our testimony, and we don't love our lives even unto death. I want you to share. I want you to come into the, you know, into YouTube, whether it's social media, whether it's directly reaching out to our ministry. @MessengerInternational. You can go to johnbevere.com. I want you to share what God has done for you. I want you to share it with friends. I want you to tell people how you've been set free because when, you know, that's what Jesus told that man that got free from the devils. Go and proclaim to the 10 cities of Decapolis what God has done for you. I want you to proclaim what God has done for you to your friends, to the people who love you, who wanna see you succeed. And in the word of your testimony will be the establishment of your freedom because his word is activated in our lives when we speak it. Philemon 6 says that every good thing that God has given to us is activated by us acknowledging what he has done for us. Speak the word of God over your life because you are free. You just have to walk in your freedom. All right, until next time, this has been the John Bevere Podcast with Arden Bevere and John Bevere.