Killing Sin: Conquer the One Thing That Is Defeating You – Karl Clauson

Episode Transcript

FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson; Podcast Transcript

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Killing Sin: Conquer the One Thing That is Defeating You

Guest:Karl Clauson

Release Date:December 9, 2025

Karl (00:00:00):

I’m probably 950 miles into the Iditarod Trail sled dog race. The sun is down. I don’t know where I am. And I went to sleep. I woke up a few hours later and the sun’s coming up, and then I saw what had happened and I could not believe it. I use that story now to illustrate what it is to be in a sin, shame, repent, repeat cycle.

Dave (00:00:25):

We’ve got Karl Clauson in the studio.

Ann (00:00:27):

We sure do. Are you excited?

Dave (00:00:30):

Yeah, I’m excited. Anytime Karl’s here, I’m excited.

Karl (00:00:34):

He’s questioning.

Dave (00:00:34):

I mean, of all things to talk about, Karl, we get to talk to you about your sin life.

Karl (00:00:37):

Yeah.

Dave (00:00:38):

Let’s talk about sin.

Karl (00:00:39):

How exciting. How exciting.

Dave (00:00:41):

No, seriously. You just released a book called Killing Sin. But tell us, why this topic?

Karl (00:00:51):

Can I tell you a story?

Dave (00:00:52):

Yeah. No, you’re not very good at stories. Is Karl good at stories?

Ann:

He’s the best.

Karl (00:00:57):

Can I tell you a story?

Dave (00:00:58):

Does it have anything to do with Alaska and the Iditarod?

Karl (00:01:00):

It’s one that I’ve never, it’s so wild. I’ve never used this story until about a week ago in my life, and I don’t know why. It’s some of these things are just Holy Spirit bound up and then all of a sudden, boom, released. So I’m probably 950 miles into the Iditarod Trail Sled dog race. I’d come into the village of Golovin.

Dave (00:01:23):

Hey, wait, wait, wait. As you tell these stories—

Karl (00:01:25):

Yeah,

Dave (00:01:26):

—Bruce, I think we need a soundtrack underneath. It feels like a movie.

Bruce:

Yeah, we have some wind—we need some wind and snow.

Dave (00:01:35):

I can play my guitar underneath it.

Ann:

I’m like, I want to pull up my little cup of hot chocolate and Father Karl’s going to tell us his story. It’s so good.

Karl (00:01:46):

Oh, would you think—

Ann (00:01:48):

That’s the Iditarod right there?

Karl (00:01:49):

Would you believe I’m thinking about going back and running a 50th anniversary—compete at that race?

Ann (00:01:54):

What?!

Karl (00:01:54):

Yeah.

Dave:

Wait, wait, wait. You’re serious.

Karl:

Yeah.

Ann (00:01:57):

I’m not surprised at all.

Dave (00:01:58):

Really?

Karl:

I’m thinking about it.

Dave (00:02:00):

You think you could do it?

Karl (00:02:01):

I can.

Dave (00:02:01):

I know you could do it.

Karl (00:02:02):

I know I can.

Dave (00:02:03):

I say do it.

Ann:

I do too.

Karl (00:02:05):

So back to Golovin.

Dave:

Golovin.

Karl:

I’m 900 and some miles into this race, so I’m close to the end. Probably got two days to go. It took me 21days.

Dave (00:02:14):

21 days.

Karl (00:02:15):

Yeah. Eight hours, 12 minutes and 32 seconds to get there. So it was a ways. So I leave Golovin. I’ve got seven dogs in my team, started with 13. None of them died, but they get lacerated pads or dehydrated, and you take care of them. They’re my buddies. And so if they were just on that threshold, they always want to go, but sometimes you got to be a good dad, right? It’s like I’m sitting you down.

(00:02:42):

So I had seven left in my team, seven really good dogs. But we headed out of Golovin, heading for the village of White Mountain. And we had to go off this little land spit down onto the sea ice, on the ocean. So we’re on Norton Sound, which is part of the Baring Sea. And I mean, we’re out there and now the sun’s gone down and now the wind is howling. Just came up. And on that coast, man, you get into these winds that are just brutal. And at one point I’m on that sea ice and there’s no, there’s no snow cover on the ice. It just scraped clean. And I slow down and I look with my headlamp and I’m looking around for any sign of the trail. And I thought I saw some scrapes in the ice. And so I stopped my team, told them, “Hey guys, hold on.” I went up to the front lead dogs and out in front of them, I looked and sure enough, there’s some little scrapes in the trail. So I’m on the ice. I’m like, okay, we must be all right.

Ann (00:03:42):

Can you see land at that point?

Karl (00:03:43):

Oh no, I can’t see anything. It’s near white out conditions. It’s not white out, but the sun is down and I see nothing.

Ann (00:03:49):

You can’t tell where the land is.

Karl (00:03:50):

No, I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I am. So I’m giving my team commands, we’re going and we’re—30 minutes, stop the team, go up to the front of the team, lead dogs. Look down with my headlamp. Sure enough, there’s scrapes on the ice. Alright, a team’s gone before me here. I do this for four hours and I’m going 30, 40 minutes. Stop the team looking 10 minutes, stop the team looking. And at this point, they’re hungry. I’m hungry. And I’m like, where is White Mountain? How in the world did we miss it? What’s going on? And I decided to shut it down and I get the team huddled up. I give them some really cool snacks. I had these butterballs with honey and all kinds of bee vitamin supplements, and they’re the size of a baseball, a little bit smaller than a baseball.

(00:04:47):

And I’d just chuck them to them like Scooby snacks, man. And they’d open their mouth and I’d get mad at these guys because they’d go one bite and they’d swallow it and it’s down. I’d be like, “Guys, enjoy them a little bit.” And they’d be looking at me like, “Hey, give us another one.” So I got them bedded down, and I went to sleep. I woke up a few hours later and the sun’s coming up and I could not believe it. And then I saw what had happened the whole night long. I had been doing monster laps out on the sea ice circle after circle, after circle after circle.

Dave (00:05:23):

No way, for four hours.

Karl (00:05:24):

Four hours.

Ann (00:05:25):

You’re seeing your own tracks.

Karl (00:05:26):

Seeing my own tracks. And when the sun came up, I saw White Mountain, or at least the trail that would get us there off in the distance. And I was just kicking myself. And you know what? I use that story now to illustrate what it is to be in a sin, shame, repent, repeat cycle. It’s like you’re going through life. You’re not making forward movement. You don’t know what in the world’s going on, but you’re in this cyclical cycle, death spiral, getting nowhere.

(00:06:02):

And my heart for people is not that we become sinless because there’s some people that hold to that theology. I’m not one of them. But I do believe that when we find that we’re called to put to death the deeds of the flesh by the power of the Spirit. And even Jesus said, if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out, your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. I think we’ve got to take seriously this call in our life to not especially have these reoccurring patterns of issues. Whether it’s I started sipping wine, now it’s sipping me, gossip, outbursts of anger that we’ve explained on our Germanic upbringing or whatever it is, time redemption or the lack thereof. I’ve talked to a lot of people about issues in their life, but if I ask people, what’s the one thing that’s holding you back from everything? Kind of have you going in circles without forward movement? Every person I’ve ever talked to, and I’m talking radically committed Jesus followers, can usually identify that one thing that’s holding them back. And my heart is, I don’t want people to do laps out on the Baring Sea, spiritually speaking. I just don’t want it.

Dave (00:07:18):

Hey, before we get back to the episode, let me take a moment to remind you that those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. That’s a promise from God. And we’ve seen it time and time again this year at FamilyLife. When families face challenges or marriages are tested and hope feels hard, God’s promise remains true. FamilyLife exists to bring the hope of Jesus to families everywhere. But we need your partnership and support to do it. And as a year comes to a close, you have the opportunity to help us give that hope to families everywhere. You want to do that, just visit FamilyLifeToday.com or you can give us a call at one 800-FL-TODAY to learn more and to give. We’d be honored to have you in our corner.

Ann (00:08:06):

Karl, how many—do you think a lot of us are stuck in that; we’re just in that cycle?

Karl (00:08:11):

Big time.

Ann (00:08:12):

You do?

Karl (00:08:12):

Yeah, I do. I think it’s an epidemic. I think it’s linked to the fact that I’m going to get choked up here. I think it’s linked to the fact that we have a relative absence of persecution relative to the rest of the world. Our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, in Afghanistan, in China, the underground church, wherever you go in the world, South America, there is a price to be paid for following Christ. And so you can’t try to meld together as we do this American dream with all of our frankly materialism that we have. And I’m not against that, but it’s holding us back by virtue of the fact we have so much. We have too much to lean on to give attention to what’s ripping us off, that we have in Christ Jesus. And so I do think we live with it. In fact, anecdotally, this is hilarious. I host a morning show. It originates from Chicago.

Dave (00:09:08):

It’s a great morning show.

Ann:

It’s so good.

Dave:

We’ve been on it many times. We love coming on your show. It’s the best.

Karl (00:09:14):

It’s a lot of fun. It’s called Karl and Crew. It’s fun. And I came in and I did a bait and switch on them. And I came in one morning, I told my team, I says, I got a great question that’s going to lead to the most important question. They said, “Alright, well what’s going on?” I said, “Alright, here’s the deal. So the Chicago Bears had a bad season as they have for the last decade.”

Dave (00:09:37):

That’s good for us Detroit fans.

Karl (00:09:39):

Yeah, yeah, just Dave, whatever. We’re not going to go there.

Dave:

We know bad seasons.

Karl:

So the Chicago Bears were hurting. It’s middle of the season. I said, “Alright, here’s the question. If you could change one thing about the Bears that you know would change everything about their trajectory, what would it be?” Phone lines lit up. Texts came in, just poured in, and it’s coach, it’s ownership. It’s even concessions. I mean, it was everything. And I’m like, “Alright, that’s great. You guys responded so well. Now here’s my question for you. If you could get victory in one thing in your life that you know if I could win in this area, it would change everything for me spiritually.” We were crushed with responses. Absolutely crushed. I mean, they went on and on and on.

Dave:

What’d you hear?

Ann (00:10:39):

Karl, did you ask that question before you wrote this book or after?

Karl (00:10:43):

Yeah, before.

Ann (00:10:45):

So that probably spurred you on like, man, we need to do something.

Karl (00:10:48):

Big time. Here’s some direct quotes that I got from either calls or mainly texts and we had thousands of texts: poor time management, gluttony, destructive thoughts, rebellion, pride, porn, finances, anxiety, gossip, disorganization, addiction, bad habits, bitterness, apathy, social media and self. And those came in by the thousands. I got response to that question for like three months.

Ann (00:11:21):

Why do you think?

Karl (00:11:23):

People want to get free, Ann.

Ann (00:11:24):

That’s what I think too.

Karl (00:11:25):

People want to get free, Ann.

(00:11:28):

They want to get free. And the danger with sin, undealt with, according to, and I love this in Romans 8, verse 13, apostle Paul says, “For if you live according to the flesh, you’re going to die. But if by the Spirit, holy Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” People read that and they wonder if that can be true. That’s a promise. If you, by the spirit put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. And I think people want to live. And one of the great dangers is we think, and I’ve done this plenty of times in my life, we think we can suppress, deny, rationalize, minimize stuff that sits in the shadows of our life, right? We do. And we think it won’t affect us. The problem is what’s in the shadows. Satan is just taunting us with, he’s accusing us. He’s deceiving us to keep it hidden. And God wants to not only bring it to light; He wants to put it to death. And I think the killing of sin is one of the most hopeful, joyful things that we can imagine because it’s not about killing sin for killing sins sake. It’s about living man.

Ann (00:12:46):

Yeah. Being free.

Karl (00:12:48):

It’s about taking hold of what God has for us.

Ann (00:12:51):

How much do you think that hiding of sin and being slaves to sin affects our marriages?

Karl (00:12:58):

Oh my goodness. It’s everything. It’s everything.

Ann (00:13:04):

Because—

Karl (00:13:06):

Well, here’s the problem. When you’ve got sin hidden—I’m going to cut to the chase on this one—you’re breaking fellowship with God and you’re actually breaking it with everyone else because you’ve got this covert little deal going on over here, and you can’t live with robust authenticity. I can tell you today, I do not have, by God’s grace, any reoccurring pattern of sin in my life. But it hasn’t always been that way. In fact, one of the interesting things for me is that I’m a busy guy. My wife says, “You can get more done than five guys together.”

Ann (00:13:46):

You and Dave could be brothers.

Karl (00:13:48):

We really could be. I don’t know—

Dave (00:13:53):

I’d like to have your hair. I know that.

Karl (00:13:56):

Oh, Dave.

Dave (00:13:57):

So you get a lot done, but what’s that mean?

Karl (00:13:59):

Well, here’s what it means. So you want the real honest truth about this. I was doing a Psalm 139 prayer, “Search me God, know me, try me, see if any hurtful way in me and lead me in the way everlasting,” by the way, which is the greatest prayer to pray, Because that introspective prayer where you’re going, “Okay, God, I don’t know myself all the time, but let’s go.” And the Lord showed me, and this wasn’t too many years ago, He said, “You can get so much done. I made that possible. You didn’t, and you can get so much done, but Karl, you’ve got hours in your day that you are squandering time.” And I was reminded of a guy named Gordon McDonald who’s been, I think he’s gone a long time ago.

Dave (00:14:48):

Ordering Your Private World.

Karl (00:14:50):

Yeah, Ordering Your Private World, and he even battled with that.

Dave (00:14:53):

Yeah.

Karl (00:14:54):

But he made a profound statement in that book and he said, “Unseized time flows to your weaknesses.” And it’s just true.

Ann (00:15:02):

That’s good.

Dave:

King David on the balcony should have been at war. He’s got unseized time.

Ann (00:15:07):

Unseized time leads to what?

Karl (00:15:10):

Unseized time flows to your weaknesses.

Ann (00:15:12):

Flows to your weaknesses.

Karl (00:15:13):

It always does. And the Lord began to work on me. So I had a lot of things going on, preaching at multiple times on multiple campuses and radio, going four hours of radio. And I’m like, okay, Lord, what do you want here? For me, it was as simple as, man, I’ve always been a, I’m not a sitcom guy. I’m not any of that. I’m news and sports. But when I do a deep dive on that, I’ll go into it. And then with Twitter, X, you can go do deep dives and God so convicted me. And then I went back through the analytics on my phone, and I saw how much time I was spending on my phone. I’m too embarrassed to tell you what it is. It was a lot. And so here’s two things going on. I’m super productive on so much stuff, but 24 hours in a day is a lot of hours. So I do this sometimes—I’ll tell somebody, I say, and we’re talking about this, I’ve done this at a conference. I was with 500 guys down in Williams, Arizona here recently, walking through Killing Sin. By the way, it was so awesome. I saw 55, 60 men surrender their lives to Christ who had all been raised in the church. Man, they were part of a church, but they didn’t know Jesus personally.

(00:16:45):

But I told these guys, I said, I grabbed a couple of these guys. I go, just go stick your nose up against this wall right here for 60 seconds. Just stick your nose. Don’t do anything. Just stick your nose against the wall, 60 seconds. 60 seconds is a long time. Now some of you are listening right now going, oh great, this guy’s a workaholic. No, because redeeming time, and that’s a big one, right? I love Moses in Psalm 90; he says, “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” A lot of people think good time redeemers must be really wise people. Moses said, no, if you redeem time, you become wise, which is so cool. So what the Lord did in my life in that season and is still working it out today. It’s a battle every day. I look at my life wanting to redeem time, and I ask the Holy Spirit to prompt me when I’m beginning to fritter things away. But here’s what we need to know. We can take a nap to the glory of God. You can play with grandkids the glory of God.

Dave (00:17:49):

Sabbath.

Karl (00:17:51):

Yeah, but even the goal with Sabbath was to move toward God, not away from everything. So that’s why a lot of people come off of a Sabbath or off of a vacation and they’re more fried than they’ve ever been before. And so time redemption is just a subpart, but I like to mention it and here’s why. It was the biggest issue that people listed.

Ann (00:18:11):

Really?

Karl (00:18:12):

Yeah, the biggest issue in my non-scientific, but very anecdotal study. I was stunned how many people said, I’m a sluggard and no one knows it.

Dave (00:18:23):

Really.

Karl (00:18:23):

I’m lazy. I’m wasting time all over the place. I’ve got unseized time flowing into my weaknesses left and right. And when it comes to porn, here’s what I’ve found working with guys in porn. It’s very interesting but again, I’ve learned this. Unless you are a real sex addict and there are some, but if you are just struggling with porn, here’s generally the rule. You get up in the morning, you’re not grabbing porn, you get up, you get breakfast, you’re off to work, you’re busting your tail. If you’re running your kids here and there, just something; that’s not what’s got your tookie in a squisher. What’s got your tookie in a squisher is that two-hour bandwidth where you really don’t have anything planned in the evening and your wife is off doing her thing or you are sitting there. Now, this is the danger with smartphones and stuff.

(00:19:24):

I had a guy tell me, he was sitting there, his wife’s watching something and he’s on his phone and he’s scrolling porn and they’re 10 feet away. And this is a dude that’s got his sleeves rolled up and serving in the church. Now when he came clean, here’s what we did. So we got to take extreme measures to kill what’s killing us. You got to make some moves. You might have the wrong friends around you. You might have the absence of God’s word in your heart, irrigating it out and just working through you. But you’ve got to take those hours. And so this isn’t one guy, this is scores of guys I’ve worked with and seen victory.

Ann (00:20:10):

And women are struggling more than ever before.

Karl (00:20:13):

I’m blown away at the statistics.

Ann:

Me too.

Karl:

When I saw it recently, I’m like, holy smokes, man. And a lot of this is gender confusion and men not being men and it’s killing us. But here’s what happened. I found that when these men take these unseized windows of time that get frittered away, and women tell me this too, that they’ll, it’s like doom scrolling and all this stuff and Insta and it just goes on and on. But when we can bring those under the leadership and lordship of Jesus Christ, not to be working harder, but just redeeming it, whatever redemption looks like for that time, guys, I’ve seen victory galore and it’s been awesome. So got to put it to death but you got to identify what is it that’s holding me back?

Dave (00:21:08):

How does a guy or a woman, because when I hear that, I often think a lot of people—and no research to back this up. This is a Dave-ism.

Karl (00:21:19):

Yeah.

Dave (00:21:20):

I know men well enough to know a lot of them don’t want to kill it.

Karl (00:21:24):

Oh, now you can’t work with those guys.

Dave (00:21:26):

It’s just like I’m going to tolerate it. It’s not that bad. I’m not looking porn every day. I’m only looking at it once every two months. It’s a binge thing and then I’m great. Or whether it’s money or food or alcohol, they don’t want to kill it. They don’t see that it needs to be killed. It’s okay.

Ann (00:21:46):

It’s not that bad.

Dave (00:21:47):

It’s not good. I shouldn’t be doing this, but it isn’t destroying my life, and I don’t have the desire to kill it. I have a desire to manage it. And if I can manage it enough that you don’t know and nobody—and this is pastors too—

Karl:

Big time.

Dave:

—doing ministry, but they’ve got this little side, little—

Karl (00:22:04):

Hustle, of whatever it is.

Dave (00:22:07):

Yeah, and they’ve gotten to the place where we convince ourselves it’s not that bad a deal. It’s not destroying my marriage. In fact, if I told my wife, it would destroy our marriage, so I’ll just keep it a little secret. And as long as I can control it, I’m okay. But Karl’s here saying I should kill it.

Karl (00:22:21):

Yeah. See, here’s the rub though. It is destroying your marriage. You just don’t know it.

Dave (00:22:26):

Yeah.

Karl (00:22:27):

It’s not destroying it as we’re off to divorce court, but you’re ripping yourself and your bride off.

Dave (00:22:32):

I mean, does it take a tragedy to get you there. I’m not going to change my eating until I have a heart attack. Then it’s like, boom, I’m changing my eating. I get caught. Something happens in my marriage, then I’m going to get there.

Karl (00:22:46):

You can’t cling to what is good until you hate what is evil. You can’t. I love this passage. It’s Romans 12:9, “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” So here’s the bummer news, if you don’t really hate it, you ain’t going to kill it.

Dave (00:23:06):

Right, right.

Karl (00:23:07):

You ain’t going to kill it. But if you dare to hate it, Katie bar the door. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

Dave (00:23:14):

I mean, how did you get—because I know you opened the book with your story back in the Iditarod days. You were tolerating sin in your life. How did you get to the point where you said, I’m done. I’m not doing this anymore.

Karl (00:23:25):

God broke; God broke me. God broke me. I mean, here’s the beautiful thing about God is that I think God loves us so much. I think he will bring us to the point where we can’t take it anymore. I do. And someone listening is I think the spirit of God moves in such a way because he convicts the world regarding sin, righteousness, and judgment. So I know that the Lord is constantly at work in hearts, and he can move you from trying to—how did you say that, Dave?—kind of manage it, rationalize it, have it in the shadows. And he can bring that to the point where you begin to get a really godly emotion, which is hating, abhorring what is evil in your life, but you’ve got to get there. So this is people that are content to try to keep hiding it need not apply to kill sin, but you also need not apply for the abundant life that Jesus promised you because it ain’t going to be there, man. It’s hard.

Ann (00:24:31):

And I think too, Dave, there’s a sense of complacency that life is okay. And Jesus didn’t make our life and create us to be like, okay. He created us to be alive and free to impact the world—

Karl:

Totally.

Ann:

—to take reign and take territory for the kingdom. And so to live in that, like I’m okay, things are okay. I think there’s a stirring, even listening to this conversation.

Karl (00:24:58):

There’s more.

Ann (00:24:59):

There’s more.

Karl (00:25:00):

CS Lewis said—quick knockoff of his quote in the weight of glory—he says, we’re fooling about with drink, sex and ambition, not realizing we’re just making mud cakes on the beach when this whole world of God’s glory is in front of us here.

Ann (00:25:19):

Exactly.

Karl (00:25:20):

And that is the rub. See, we’ve sold short the abundant life. When Jesus was walking through that vineyard with his disciples on the way to the cross, probably two days before his death. And he grabs those leaves and he picks them up, says, boys, look at these grapes. This is what I want for your life. It’s to my Father’s glory that you bear much fruit. And then he went on to say, man, I’m the vine. You’re the branch. You abide in me. You’ll do it. Apart from me, you can do nothing.

Ann (00:25:57):

And it reminds me of a quote from a woman in Iran who came over here to live who was persecuted, loved Jesus, persecuted for her faith. She said, all we want to do is get to America to be free. And when she came over here to live, she said, I need to get back because the Christians here have fallen asleep.

Karl (00:26:19):

You know what’s crazy about that? Have you heard about Wurmbrand? Yeah. He was an evangelist in Romania, and he was under Ceausescu’s rule, communist rule. Well, this guy, he went, I mean all in with Jesus and just said, I’ll pay whatever price. Well, he was incarcerated for I believe, 20 years and just beaten routinely. The bottoms of his feet, for some reason they just beat him bloody. And he would’ve bones protruding. This guy was a rock star for Jesus. He got out and had huge influence across Romania. And there’s a couple that got so fired up for following Jesus that they began to take the Jesus film from house to house to house in Romania. And they were getting little house churches built up and they had to keep on the move. Well, their family began to escape, and the first son of theirs escaped. In fact, he was ducking gunfire, helping a pregnant woman get out of Romania into Czechoslovakia. And as they were running across the border, they’ve got bullets whizzing over their head. So they come here stateside. One here comes, the oldest brother comes to America, and then pretty quick they all come over. Well, the whole family is just on fire for God, right. Now the years go by and guess what happens? Now we’ve got that young man that escaped Romania. His little brother is in our church. Now he’s a grown man with his own adult kids. And he told me in his cool accent just a couple of weeks ago, he said, man, Karl, I, we’ve substituted the American dream for this incredible life that we can have in Jesus Christ.

(00:28:24):

He said, and it’s a bad swap out. So we have to stay on guard, right. And I think it’s John Piper that told one of my—I had a worship leader in a singles ministry years ago, and he got John Piper’s hand at a conference, and he said, Hey man, good to meet you. If you could tell me anything, what would you tell me? We got like 500 singles coming to this singles ministry in Little Rock, which was wild. It was a revival. Piper looked at Greg and he said, Greg, enthrall people’s minds with the grandeur and the power of God. And to your point, Ann, we’ve got to keep this great and gracious God who loves us so much, and I am pretty simple this way, but I think God must just shake his head sometimes going, you guys, you got a nice Tesla, but you’re coming up so shy of what I have for you.

Ann (00:29:27):

There’s so much more.

Karl (00:29:28):

Yeah, yeah. And that’s the life. That’s the reason to kill sin is there’s so much more.

Dave (00:29:38):

But it’s almost like for so many, they can’t see White Mountain and they just think, this is it.

Karl:

This is it.

Dave:

It’s like, I can be good for a month or two or three or maybe even a year, but I’m going to return to my vomit. And they don’t get a vision of White Mountain is grander. That’s what you’re made for. I can get off this cycle and live the life.

Karl (00:30:05):

You’re right on Dave. And the problem with doing laps with, and it’s a deadly lap that you’re doing. It’s sin, it’s shame, it’s repent. And then in that repentance moment, then you have this huge burst of, I’ll never do that again. I will never fall into this again. And then boom, you get your tookie back in the squisher.

Ann (00:30:32):

Tookie back in the squisher.

Karl (00:30:33):

It’s deadly, man. And here’s I think the key to this. I was on air one time, and it’s so funny because Allie walked into me and she said, Karl, we talk here a lot about putting sin to death, but we do it in our own strength. Isn’t that one of the biggest problems, guys?

Dave (00:30:58):

Yeah.

Karl (00:30:58):

I mean, we are trying to do what only God can do.

Dave (00:31:03):

Can’t do it.

Karl (00:31:04):

And here’s what we need to remember that the grace of God was displayed in our life to give us salvation, Titus 2:11-12, training us to renounce ungodliness, worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright lives in this present age. Here’s the kicker. So we have taken God’s grace to save us. And we know that because couldn’t save ourselves. And we’ve tried by our own efforts and grit and our own self-will to sanctify us. No, Titus 2:11-12, training us to renounce ungodliness, worldly passions, to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in this present age. Here’s the kicker. We’re going to keep doing laps of sin; sin, shame, repent, repeat over and over again until we understand the God who saved us is the same one who’s going to carry us and grow us and take us onto White mountain. That’s His job. It’s not ours.

Dave (00:32:17):

So how do we get, I know you walked through it in your book, when we decide I want to kill sin.

Karl (00:32:23):

Yeah.

Dave (00:32:25):

Where do we start?

Karl (00:32:25):

Humility. Humility.

Dave (00:32:29):

What’s that mean?

Karl (00:32:31):

Andrew Murray said that humility is the one virtue that gives birth to every other virtue. He’s absolutely right. God resists the proud. He gives grace to the humble. 1 Peter chapter five, verse 16, we find if we humble ourself under God’s mighty hand, he will lift us up. Humility is not making pitiful little of yourself. It’s making a bunch of God and then finding your identity in him. Now we can go. And humility is such a powerful thing. And I always thought that maybe I needed to change my personality because how can a loud guy be humble? And the Lord by his grace has shown me, oh man, there’s been loud guys for many, many years that have been humble. And so it’s an introspective moment where you realize, man, I’m not all that and a bag of chips, and that’s okay because I know who loves me. I know how much He loves me. And humility is the kicker, the primary virtue to get sin dealt with in your life, to be the husband that God’s called you to be, to be that woman of God that is fruit bearing in your life. The posture before God that will allow us to put sin to death is humility. The absence of it is pride. And so yeah, Andrew Murray also says, he says, the absence of humility is explanation enough for every character defect in our life.

Ann:

It’s so true.

Karl:

And it is true, man.

Dave (00:34:24):

Yeah. And I mean, I’m even thinking of Scottsdale Bible to raise your hands above your head with people around you—

Karl (00:34:32):

Big deal.

Dave (00:34:33):

—requires humility. Because it’s like for some people that’s very embarrassing. They’ll do it at a football game, but not in church. And so it requires a sense, I don’t care what anybody thinks, and humility in your kitchen or in your den is falling to your face and raising your hands.

Karl (00:34:51):

It is.

Dave (00:34:52):

You can’t do that with pride. It’s an absolute, I am desperate. I can’t do this apart from you. That’s humility.

Ann (00:35:00):

I think those have been for us, Dave, our most godly moments, even in our marriage, like God, we don’t know what we’re doing. We can’t do it. We’ve tried to do it, and we can’t do it apart from you. We’re desperate for You, God.

Karl (00:35:14):

It’s a beautiful thing.

Ann (00:35:15):

That is a beautiful place to be. And I think we’ve seen more breakthrough when we’re on our knees before God on our face. I remember the first time I spoke for a Weekend to Remember marriage getaway. I remember being in the shower, 29 years old. I say, I’m on my knees in the bathtub.

Karl (00:35:31):

Good.

Ann (00:35:32):

Before I get up to speak—

Karl (00:35:33):

Oh my goodness.

Ann (00:35:33):

—like God, I have nothing. I’m 30 years old. I’m 29. I know nothing. I don’t have anything but You, Jesus. So I’m crying, I can’t do this.

Dave (00:35:43):

Karl, you know the first woman that came up to her after she spoke, you know what she said, at the Weekend to Remember?

Ann (00:35:48):

No, it was before I spoke.

Dave (00:35:49):

It was even before you got up.

Ann (00:35:50):

Yeah.

Dave (00:35:51):

What did she say?

Ann (00:35:51):

She said, I am so disappointed that you’re our speaker and she’s in her fifties. I’m 29. And I said, so am I. I said, I can’t imagine what you could even get from me, but I’m going to come up to you afterwards and say, how can I be better? Help me.

Karl (00:36:10):

I love it.

Ann (00:36:11):

But there’s something about, I look at the scriptures where God does His best work when we’re on our face and saying, God, I’m the lowliest of my clan. I know nothing. I have nothing. And He whispers in our ear, and I’m enough. I’m enough.

Karl (00:36:31):

And staying there is powerful. My dad passed away at 95 years of age, but I didn’t know what a rockstar I had in a dad. My dad was a big grace of God guy. So he was just a champion of the grace of God, meaning he saw God in everything.

(00:36:54):

And my dad was very intellectual. In fact, when he was getting his PhD at Arizona State, I was in sixth grade, and I remember vividly him sitting with my mom at this little dinky dining room table. I mean, we’re on half salary and he’s duking it out and riding a bike to Arizona State. And he would say, oh, Eva, let me tell you about yesterday, called my mom, Eva. Her name was Yvonne. Oh, Eva, let me tell you about yesterday. I went down to the library and I’m digging, looking for resources. This is back when you actually had to go dig for resources. And I’m praying and I’m asking God, God, just show me. And he did Eva. See my dad, that’s humility. When you begin to see God is guiding the affairs of my life, God wants to intervene. When I’m 16 years old, I’m building a 3,700 square foot home with my dad on our lake property outside of Anchorage, Alaska. It’s a modified A-frame, 12/12 pitch, which just means super steep roof. And it’s just me and him building all summer long, 2,500 square feet, a deck around the thing and just beautiful, right on the lake, like 10 feet from the water. And I’d get up in the morning, and my dad would be out there, no saws going yet. And my dad told me when we started that summer project, I said, how long are we going to work? He says, we will not any longer than sunup to sundown, but you need to know something in Anchorage, Alaska. You know what that means? That’s like 21 hours, alright. And then we pulled 20-hour days.

Dave (00:38:46):

Really?

Karl (00:38:47):

Oh, we had a couple of days when we’re pouring concrete and stuff. We’re out there 20 hours. It was crazy. So I get up one morning in particular, I got up, we got a camper out on our property, and I roll out of my sleeping bag—and wasn’t drinking coffee at that point in my life. Wish I had been—roll out. And there’s dad just standing out there on what we had built the day before. And I come alongside him. I said, Dad, what’s going on? He says, I’m just thanking God, Karl. He said, look at this son, put his arm around me. Look at what God let us do yesterday. Look at this. And I think that is the posture where sin can’t live. That’s the posture where sin has to be put to death. This is where great men are born is at that posture of seeing God in everything. That’s power, man.

Dave (00:39:38):

Yeah. When you’re on the other side of that, pride. I mean, your dad could have been standing there saying, look at what I built. Pride leads to sin.

Karl (00:39:51):

It’s the feeding frenzy of Satan, man. The interesting thing, when we come clean with God, when we try to hide our sin, God will expose it because He loves us. But when we bring our sin to God, He covers it. Isn’t that wild? So the very thing you think you’ve been hiding, God wants to cover if you’ll just agree with Him. I’m missing it in fill in the blank, and it’s holding me back from everything. It’s cool.

Dave (00:40:26):

Yeah. Well, I mean, you walked through us in the book three moves, and the first one is, get honest with your sin and your God. Is that what you’re talking about?

Karl (00:40:35):

Yeah. You got to get honest with your sin. Confession is just agreement. You don’t need to get too fancy with it. You certainly don’t need to go to—first step is not to go to a person. But the value of going to people, the funny thing with confessing sin to God is sometimes it’s easier to go to God than it is to a person.

Dave (00:40:56):

Yep.

Karl (00:40:57):

You ever notice that guys?

Ann (00:40:57):

Yeah.

Dave:

Oh yeah.

Karl (00:40:59):

And what we find in James 5 is the power of bringing sin to the broader body of Christ. And it’s repeated over and over again. Bear one another’s burdens. And in James 5, the interesting correlation is that if you confess your sin, you’ll actually be healed. Now, I’m not big on this at all—these guys that try to put a sin name to every common cold out there. That’s not God’s plan for your life. Trust me. I mean, we’re going to get sick. My bride’s battled cancer.

(00:41:39):

But this is true. Are there people suffering physically because sin has gotten a grip on their life? Yeah, it happens, man. The physiological effect of pornography camping out in your life is huge. The physiological effect of you knowing God has something better for me, whether it’s a gossiping spirit, anger outbursts, you’re sipping wine and now, yeah, it’s got you by the throat, baby. I had a woman come to me, oh, talk about a humble thing. And this is proof that confession works. So if you’re humbled enough to go to God, agree with him, I’m getting smoked by this—whatever it is—that breaks the back of Satan, that begins to steal his power. But then when you go to a person, wham, breakthrough. We have two campuses of a church in Chicago, and I had a woman come up to me and they happened to be very wealthy, and she said, I have something I’ve got to tell you. And it is so embarrassing.

(00:42:51):

I said, what’s going on? She said, about 15 years ago, I’ve been following Jesus now for, I think she said 35 years. About 15 years ago, I started thinking, well, I’ve got grace. I’ve got grace. God gives me grace to drink. By the way, you don’t need grace to drink. I drank like a fish, man. I was a Crown Royal extravaganza guy before I was born again. You don’t need grace. Grace isn’t the permission to live as you like. It’s the privileges to live as you never could before. That’s grace. So she came to me and she said, I am not only drinking. I can’t go a day without it now. It’s got me; didn’t start that way, but it’s got me. And I looked at her and I said, I can assure you I can read your mind right now. This was one of the hardest things for you to do, but you have a sense of freedom. And she stole the words from my mouth. She goes; I am so glad I’ve told you this. And that’s the pathway to freedom. You got to bring it out of the shadows, whatever it is, and God will clean it up.

Ann (00:44:08):

Well, it’s interesting. When we were going through Cru as we first came on, involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, is what they called it then and Bill Bright talking about spiritual breathing. I’m like, you don’t hear confession repentance as much as we used to because that was just part of our lingo, part of our language, part of spiritual breathing. You’re confessing your sin. And even the word repentance, you’re not hearing that word as often as we used to. Why do you think?

Karl (00:44:39):

I don’t know what the reason is, but you’re right. Repentance is metanoia, which means this radical turning around and it’s a change of mind, it’s a change of direction, it’s everything. Without—

Ann (00:44:55):

Like the woman who came up to you, she confessed it, but then that turns into like, I’m going to change this.

Karl (00:45:04):

I’m going to change. I’m going to change. It’s interesting. I’ve been seeing a lot of, I’m so encouraged with what I’m seeing right now on some YouTube shorts and different things. It’s pretty cool. There is a reclaiming of the gospel.

Ann (00:45:20):

The resurgence.

Karl (00:45:22):

And the resurgence of the gospel is repentance is central to this thing. I mean, how in the world can you get off of a broad path that leads to destruction onto a narrow path without turning around? We’re born with our backs to God, and I’m seeing huge spiritual awakening. We need it because in the church today, one of the great dangers is that we’ve got a lot of people, many millions going to church every weekend to good Bible preaching churches and they don’t know the Lord.

(00:45:56):

Wayne Grudem said, because I was in Matthew 7 with him. And I’ve said, Hey, Wayne, I’ve just been hammering this lately, and I use Matthew 7 all the time, and Matthew 25, the 10 bridesmaids. But in it, Jesus tells the story, many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, and he’s going to say, I never knew you. And the question is, who are these people? They prophesied in His name, they cast out demons in His name, and they did mighty works in His name. These were spiritually active people. I mean, we got to get our head around this. Gruden took it further for me. He says, Karl, there’s people that have prayed prayers that have been answered. There’s people that sit on elder boards. There’s people that preach. There’s people that do mighty things in Jesus’ name. And they have not yet had a metanoia moment—

(00:46:50):

—where they have believed for salvation that Jesus is the only answer. And it’s a dangerous thing. You look at those 10 bridesmaids in Matthew 25, and it’s like, alright, man, they’re all dressed up, ready to go, and it’s a parable about the coming kingdom, the return of our Savior. and five are ready. They’ve got lamps and they’re filled with oil, and that’s awesome. And then five, they all look, all 10 look the same, and they’ve all got lamps, but five of them have lamps that are empty, which I think represents the infilling of the Holy Spirit. That’s just my take on that passage, and they aren’t ready. So especially in a world where we’re so behavior driven and we measure based on behavior, this illusion of salvation thing may be one of the biggest issues. Before we can go killing sin as a means to take and hold of the life that is found in Christ, we need to repent and find salvation for the very first time.

Dave (00:47:53):

I mean, what if I’m listening or watching and I’m listening to you, Karl, I’m like, could I be one of those and not know it?

Karl (00:48:00):

By the droves, man.

Dave (00:48:01):

How would I know?

Karl (00:48:03):

The Holy Spirit will convict, but here’s what’s happening. In this moment there’s probably someone right now listening going, that’s me. Now here’s the beauty in that. That’s the Holy Spirit revealing that. But the epidemic of people that are in church but not in Christ is humongous, man. Here’s the cool thing. There’s so many places you can go in the scriptures, but here’s in John 14 the disciples—Jesus is telling disciples, I’m going away and you know where I’m going and all that, and I’ll be coming back. Thomas, man, he spoke up. Everybody had questions. He was the one guy that had the courage to ask him. So he’s like, no, we don’t know where you’re going.

Ann:

Love it.

Karl:

Isn’t that great? That’s what he says.

Ann (00:48:59):

No, we don’t actually.

Karl (00:49:00):

No, we don’t actually know. And He says, oh, I’m going to prepare a place for you and I’m going to come again. But wedged in there, He says, I am the way and the truth and the life and the way is narrow. And it means you can’t add Jesus to your broad path materialism.

(00:49:22):

That’s not Christianity. You got to turn around. You’re born with your backs to God. You got to repent. And he says, I’m the truth. And it’s so beautiful when you can embrace not your truth, but God’s truth. And that is you’re a sinner, and you need a Savior and His name is Jesus. And so if you’re listening right now, you can do that. You can just say, I’m done going my way, God, I’m turning around. I’m repenting. And today I believe the truth that I am a sinner and I need a Savior. And I’ve never cried out to you in such desperation in my life before. Praise God. Because the third is the payoff, and I am the life. And even in this moment right now, when you’re having this moment of repentance, the Holy Spirit’s flooding you with life like you’ve never had before. That’s how you know it’s authentic.

(00:50:18):

And you know it’s wild. So I host a radio show with four people. You ready for a trippy one? This is, I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this with you guys, but we had a young man graduated from Moody Bible Institute—came to Moody, pastor’s kid raised in the church, baptized at eight years old, ran the traps, went to Moody Bible Institute, mastered or majored in communications, joined our radio show to help with call screening. Well, I never liked to have people around me without bringing them on mic. So I drug him in one day, and his name’s Jonathan, but I quickly nicknamed him Young Thunder. Jesus had Sons of Thunder. Jesus had Sons of Thunder. So I’m like, I’m calling you Young Thunder. I remember the day I branded him that, and he’s nervous, but he’s good on the microphone. Pretty quick we decided to bring him on full time. Well, and by the way, he’s pumped to have me share this right now. So I start going through Matthew 7, and he was going through hell.

(00:51:31):

He started losing weight. He lost 30 pounds in months. He couldn’t eat. He kept hearing voices that he thought was accusations from Satan. Turns out it was the Holy Spirit. And after a few months of this tumultuous time, and he said, I was going through Matthew 7, he said, you’d keep going back to it. And in his heart, he’s like, shut up, Karl. Quit going back to many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord. And he was home one night. He’s married and he’s a newlywed to a sweet God follower, just a great woman. Shannon’s great. And the Lord spoke to him almost audibly. He said, why do you call me Lord and do not do what I say? And he fell to his knees, and he was born again that day.

(00:52:29):

He had to go back to his dad. He went back to his dad and said, you baptized me as an unregenerate church goer. I need to get baptized. Two years ago, he was baptized on Easter by his dad for a second time, for the real time. He had to go to his wife, said, you married a fraud, but I’m in Jesus. He’s sobbing while he’s telling her this. He came on air with professors that would be in studio, and he said, I came here. I got good grades, but I wasn’t born again. With tears in his eyes, he’ll share that story wherever he goes.

Ann (00:53:06):

Wow.

Karl (00:53:08):

The hallucination of salvation is what I call it.

Ann (00:53:15):

Did you know that 40% of our ministry support comes in these final weeks of the year? And your gift in this season helps us continue sharing the hope of the gospel with families everywhere.

Dave (00:53:28):

So come be a part of the team that helps make this ministry possible. How can you do it? You can give it FamilyLifeToday.com or give us a call at 1-800-FL-TODAY. Okay, let’s go back to the show. Okay, let’s go back to the conversation.

Ann:

Let’s go to it.

Dave:

I always think you’re using. Please keep that in.

Karl (00:53:51):

Got to tell you an Iditarod story.

Dave (00:53:55):

Those are always great.

Karl (00:53:57):

I was heading for the village of Shaktoolik.

Ann:

Shaktooua.

Dave:

Shak Tua.

Karl:

Shaktoolik, Shaktoolik. In Unaliq it means endless wind. And boy, it’s true. So I got into the village of Shaktoolik, or I was heading toward the village of Shaktoolik, and I was going to go out onto the sea ice, and that’s a whole nother story. But as I was heading toward the village of Shaktoolik, I was so sleep deprived. I was starting to hallucinate, and I’d heard about this, but I’d never done it. But hallucinations are so real. If anyone ever tells you they’re hallucinating, believe them because they’re as real as real can be.

(00:54:44):

I came out of what’s called Raspberry Hills, coming down this steep long ravine onto the sea ice looking for the village of Shaktoolik. I’m hungry. My dog team’s hungry, and I’m tired and I’m sleep deprived. I think I’d had two hours sleep in three days. So you start getting just loopy. And I look up and woo-hoo. There it is. Couldn’t believe it. I mean, the village is—now I’m getting closer and closer and closer. And as I got closer, it was the coolest thing. There are cabins on both sides of a road, and the trail goes right down between them. And I looked off to my left and oh, thank the Lord. This must be the checker’s cabin because the lights are on and there’s smoke coming out of the chimney, and there’s a guy out chopping wood out front. And so I put my emergency brake down, stomped it in, which is a snow hook, stomped it into the sea ice. And I took off my fox mittens so that I could greet him as I walked up to him and I walked up to him and I go, how?

Ann (00:55:52):

And no one’s there.

Karl (00:55:53):

The whole thing disappeared, guys. The man, the ax, the wood he was chopping, the houses, the village, and all it was, was open sea ice. See, the reality of Matthew 7 is that it’s a grand spiritual hallucination. People spiritually see something in themselves that isn’t there! That is sobering.

Ann (00:56:22):

As we talked earlier, I think when people aren’t in Christ, truly, they don’t have the Holy Spirit. They are content to live in a mediocre whatever, because it’s the power of God, the Holy Spirit that convicts us. That’s like reminding us, this isn’t enough. There’s more. And I think that’s really important to know, are you in Christ?

Karl (00:56:49):

You know what, Ann, you just brought up something, and you put a piece together for me here. If we go back to that question you asked, Dave, why do we or how did you frame that? Why do some people, why are we—

Dave (00:57:03):

Yeah, we tolerate it.

Ann:

We’re complacent.

Dave:

We’re comfortable with it.

Karl (00:57:05):

There’s two different kinds of people, I think. One is they’ve never been born again and so there’s no compelling Spirit presence to get it eradicated. And by the way, this is huge, guys. This is huge. Wherever I go now with churched audiences, I give the salvation all the time. Because the amount of people who are going to say, Lord, Lord from the Western Church, and he’s going to say, I never knew you. Jesus said, many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord. And these are not just cultural Christians. They’re in the whoop and war of the church, man. It’s everywhere.

Ann (00:57:44):

And so even as a listener, you’re analyzing, is that me?

Karl (00:57:47):

Yes. And that might be you right now and today can be your day of salvation. And there’s no patent prayer. It’s a cry of the soul that says, I surrender all. I repent. I turn around. I believe Jesus died for me. I’m giving it to Him today. And I think the answer to the question that you had, Dave, is twofold. One is some people are truly not born again. But here’s what I know. For those that are truly born again, I do believe the Spirit of God will have moments in your life when you are sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Ann (00:58:23):

Me too. Yeah, you know there’s more.

Karl (00:58:25):

You know there’s more. I think that’s the undeniable theology of the regenerate man or woman is we know. And do we rationalize? Yeah. Are we afraid of getting found out? Yeah, but you know there’s more.

Dave (00:58:41):

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you have to confess it, not just to God.

Karl:

You got to go to people.

Dave:

James 5, you are forgiven, but you have to confess it to a brother or a sister.

Karl:

Got to bring it out.

Ann (00:58:54):

And that’s what we talk about, that humbleness, being humble, in there.

Dave (00:58:58):

And even when I’ve, I’m not a student of what’s going on in our country and revival wise, but on college campuses, I just listened to Carey Nieuwhof talk to Jon Tyson and the pastors out at Saddleback, and they’re all like, there’s a revival going on.

Karl:

There is a revival.

Ann (00:59:14):

It’s a beginning. It’s a rumbling.

Dave (00:59:14):

Tyson’s studying revival from history and he says, there’s things going on. JP Pokluda, who we’ve had on here, Jennie Allen going around the country at college campuses—

Karl (00:59:25):

Yes.

Dave (00:59:25):

—they talk about these revivals on college campuses start when we tell the students, turn to a brother or sister and tell them your sin.

Karl (00:59:34):

I did not know that.

Dave (00:59:35):

And they say they look out, and these people are turning to one another and telling secrets they’d never told anybody. And the spirit of God starts to move and they start laying, is there a lake? Is there a pond? Where can we get baptized? It starts, and again, I’m not an authority on this, but it sounds like there’s something going on with, I’ve got a secret. I’ve got a pet sin that I’m not killing. And the spirit of God is saying to me, bring it into the light and we’re going to kill it right now, and we’re going to give you a new life.

Karl (01:00:05):

Dave, you’re right on. Do you know that the big three spiritual awakenings we’ve had here in America, all three of them were directly linked to confession of sin. Not—and I think we think about that, and we think, oh boy, there’s a lot of shame attached to it. This is not about you getting up on a platform on a Sunday and saying, here’s my laundry list. This is about you going to one or two people who you trust saying, here’s my list.

Dave (01:00:37):

Yeah. When I’ve had people come up to me like, that lady came to you as a pastor after a sermon, and they want to confess the secret or sin, my next move is, are you married? You got to tell your spouse.

Karl (01:00:50):

Yes.

Dave (01:00:52):

Do you have men in your life? I’m not going to walk with you. I may be your pastor, but I’m not your brother in life. And in some ways, I think they have this thing I’m going to tell God I’m forgiven. I’m going to tell Dave, my pastor, we’re good. And they go back to their sin because the people are doing life with them don’t know. And it’s like, you got to tell your wife, you got to tell your husband, you got to tell your best friend because they’re going to look you in the eye. That’s scarier than telling your pastor.

Karl (01:01:21):

And then you got to get armed up with the word of God. See, the interesting thing about putting sin to death is that it begins with humility and confession and repentance, but then you get proactive because—we haven’t even talked about this, but here’s the kicker.

Dave (01:01:38):

You got to attack it and block it.

Karl (01:01:38):

You got to attack it and block it. Here’s something amazing. This is a mind blower. So I was studying one day. One of my favorite psalms is Psalm 1:1-3. Those three verses, man, get away from fools, mockers and scoffers.

(01:02:00):

Meditate on this law even if you walk alone for a season rather than with knuckleheads for friends. This is what the psalmist says. You get alone with God in His Word. You meditate on it day and night and your tree will be like you’re planted by streams of living water. Your leaf will never wither. In all you do, you will prosper. Okay, so I was looking at that word, meditate, and then I went over to Joshua 1 and he told Joshua, God told Joshua the same thing. Joshua 1, I think it’s verse eight. Meditate on the law day and night as you go into this new land, and I will give you success and prosperity wherever you go. Now the guys with the polyester suits that are telling you, give me a hundred, you’ll get a thousand back. Them notwithstanding, those guys are knuckleheads, that’s full-on spiritual abuse.

(01:02:52):

We need to reclaim some of what we threw out with the baby and the bathwater, which is leaves not withering, success, prosperity and success wherever you go. And then you’ve got asked the question, well, what is meditation? Well, I do a deep dive on this word and it’s the Hebrew word Hagah, and I get ahold of a phenomenal Hebrew scholar, and I said, Hey bro, I’m studying this word here and we got a problem here, Houston. He said, what’s going on? I said, this word does not mean, think about it. Hagah is a Hebrew word for speak, moan, utter, shout, sing. What everyone’s doing at the wailing wall in Israel in Jerusalem is they are doing open wide the gates that the king of glory may come in. Who is this king of glory? The Lord’s strong and mighty. Something like that. Okay, they’re probably not doing that. They’re probably doing Torah or who knows what they’re doing, but that’s what they’re bobbing back and forth. They are hagahing the Word of God. And I said to my Hebrew friend, I said, why don’t you say this? He says, I try to say it wherever I go. I said, I’ve never heard it.

Ann (01:04:06):

I’ve never heard that either.

Karl (01:04:08):

Isn’t that amazing? Well match that with the new covenant and we’ve veered away from this word. There’s two words for “the word.” The word became flesh and dwelt among us; that’s Jesus. That’s logos. That’s used a couple, 300 times. But there’s another word called rhema for the word. Rhema is the spoken Word of God. So Jesus—this gets me so excited. I could just spontaneously combust. So Jesus is in the wilderness and he’s getting tempted by Satan. What’s Satan tempting with?—the word of God! He’s misquoting Deuteronomy. Jesus responds back by quoting the word of God and then He says this word, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every rhema word that proceeds from the mouth of God, the spoken Word of God. Oh, we’re not done yet. It’s used 70 times in the New Testament. One of the best is Ephesians 6. You get all the armor on and then take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the rhema word of God. That’s the word for word, rhema. It’s the spoken word of God. This is huge.

Ann (01:05:35):

Lay it down.

Dave:

Let’s go baby.

Karl (01:05:37):

If we do not get God’s word on our lips, murmur, mutter, speak—

Dave:

—sing.

Karl:

—sing. This is why worship is so powerful. We miss it. It’s the spoken Word of God. I got chills right now. This is why songs need to be written theologically accurately. This is why some of the best songs are just scripture put to word.

Ann (01:06:04):

Straight scripture, yeah.

Karl (01:06:06):

Because what are we doing? We are wielding the only offensive weapon of war we have. This is why I’m a big believer in worship. This is why I’m a big believer. When lost people witness God’s people worshiping God, there’s two things going on. They’re seeing people that actually believe something that’s bigger than them and then what’s coming out of their mouth is offensive sword words—

Ann (01:06:34):

I love it.

Karl (01:06:35):

—for the annihilation of darkness. So I think it’s, I don’t know why we don’t talk about it more. There’s two things that we don’t talk about a lot. There’s a lot of lost people in the church that need to be saved; that’s one. The second one is you can be humble and you can confess all day long, but until you do what Jesus said, and that’s to wield the spoken word of God. I’m a big believer now in speaking the word of God. It’s so important, man. I try to do it all the time.

(01:07:11):

And it’s so beautiful because “I’ve been crucified with Christ. It’s no longer I who live,” Galatians 2:20, “but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.” Wow. Now it’s hard to flip through porn when you’re saying those words. It’s hard to be a grumbler when you’re saying those words. I’ve got a whole card catalog of scriptures going through my mind right now, but this is what I need to say. When you begin to use the Word of God as it was intended—here again, slice and dice, some of those things that you cave to over and over again. My bride mentored a gal. Oh, she was ritualistically abused in a cult. She was a super gymnast. In fact, Corelli, that guy. I mean he was her coach man. She was topflight. She gets saved and she’s got to unpack some stuff, man. And what we prescribed for her, my wife told her, I want you to get the word of God, not just in you but out of you, speaking it. She had her put these three by fives everywhere, right? She’d get giant post-its, put them up. I can’t give you too much of the details except to tell you that this girl is walking in victory.

(01:08:58):

My bride mentored another girl who came to a singles ministry we had years ago, and this is for any of you that feel shame over bad choices in the past. You just rip this girl’s story off and grab it as your own. She was one of the most stunningly beautiful women anyone has ever seen. She’s just one of those girls that she just, I mean, peel paint beautiful. Just going to say it. She walked in one night to a group of single adults and—have you ever seen heads turn? I mean the whole auditorium looks over here.

(01:09:31):

That very night was her answer to prayer. She had actually wanted to take her life, and she put a sign out before God in her lostness, and God heard her cry and had a miracle happen. And after that miracle happened, God told her where to go and that was to us. And she didn’t know why in the world she was coming. Well, she got saved, but then she told my wife her story. Because of her sexual abuse as a young girl and men taking advantage of her in horrible ways, even in her childhood and stuff. She was a beautiful little girl and it’s just awful. She’s like, oh, I guess I’ll never find love. I might as well use my body. And she just started bedding down boys for money left and right. And when she walked in and my bride took her through a deliverance season, she began to list out the names of all the men she could remember. There were at least, my wife says, 400 names of names she could bring to mind. Brilliant girl. And then they went through and they renounced by the power of the spoken Word of God all the other guys that she couldn’t remember and all the stuff that she’d been through. What is normally a two-hour session was six hours.

(01:10:52):

My wife came home wrung out and she said, man, this girl’s walking in freedom. This girl today is unrecognizable, married, couple of kids, ministry in another continent. Guys, whom the Son sets free is free indeed, but you cannot kill sin without wielding the Word of God. And you might say, well, I’m not in the Word. Well, it’s time to get in the Word!

Ann (01:11:19):

I was thinking too of people are saying, I’m not really into worship.

Karl (01:11:22):

Get your hands in the air, my friend.

Ann (01:11:26):

Even if you don’t feel like it.

Karl (01:11:27):

No, work, speak it.

Ann (01:11:29):

Yes.

Karl (01:11:29):

Because it’s the rhema word of God. It’s the hagah word of God. It’s the spoken word of God. You cannot meditate biblically nor live victoriously with the armor of God if the Word of God is not coming off your lips.

Ann (01:11:47):

Karl, everybody that listens knows that I read the Bible every year. I go through the whole Bible every year for the last 18 years. I can tell within three days if I haven’t been in the Word.

Dave:

I can tell too.

Ann:

No, honestly, I can tell. My heart feels distant. I feel dead a little more dead. I feel I’m looking now to things that will fill me up. There is a power in God’s Word that is unbelievable and it’s exactly what you’re talking about. It’s mysterious, but it’s also, it ignites our soul. This is what we were born to do.

Karl (01:12:25):

Boom, Ann. It’s so good. And so I always wanted to get people in the Word. You want to get in the Word, but you want to get the Word into you. So some of you might say, I’m reading the Bible, but it’s kind of cold. I would say—we were talking earlier about just getting on our knees. I think the physical posture of things is way more important than we imagined.

Ann (01:12:55):

Me too.

Karl (01:12:56):

I do. And I think there’s something about getting on your knees physically.

Ann (01:13:02):

It’s the humble part.

Karl (01:13:03):

Yeah, it’s the humble part; that if you cry out to God on your knees, God, show me, give me some word. And a cool little story in the fourth chapter of the book of Mark is so cool because God’s talking about every person that takes the light of My Word and puts it on a lamp just meaning—and this isn’t about being a witness to the world. It’s used two different ways in Jesus’s teaching. This is just about taking the word that God gives you. Here’s what He says. If you take that Word and you use it, that’s the exact word he uses, more will be given to you. And I’m convinced of this. You find one truth of God that you’re willing to speak out and say, I will walk in it with the new mercies tomorrow morning is new truth to apply. That doesn’t fire you up, you got wet wood.

Dave (01:14:01):

Well, I mean I’m thinking as I listen to what you’re saying, Karl, I’m not thinking I’m going to admonish men today or tonight to get on their knees with their wife.

Karl (01:14:15):

Do it. On your knees.

Dave (01:14:16):

Maybe you’ve never done it. Maybe you’ve done it and you did it yesterday. But every time Ann and I have gotten on our knees, we did it on our wedding night and prayed that God would give us a marriage that would impact the world. Here we are. We did it on our 10-year anniversary when she said, I’ve lost my feelings for you. And I repented in the front seat of a Honda Accord on my knees. And again, you don’t have to get on your knees, but there was something about that moment that was humble. I was humbled.

Ann (01:14:42):

Dave, I can—we’ve done it a lot in our marriage, but when we do, there is something extraordinary spiritually speaking. I think what you’re saying, Karl, in the spiritual realm, I don’t know what that is, but there’s a power when we’re together on our knees pleading before God, that changes things.

Karl (01:15:00):

It’s huge, Ann.

Ann (01:15:01):

It changes us.

Karl:

It changes us.

Ann:

And your husband, you’re like, he’s not going to do that. You could ask him to do it. If he doesn’t feel comfortable, that’s okay. But you do it. Do it. And say—and don’t judge him, but say, I’m going to pray for us. I think we need it. I want to have an impact and love him well.

Dave (01:15:22):

Our producer Jim sent me this quote, Matt Papa from the book Look and Live. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this quote. He said, the call is this, make your life one unflinching gaze upon the glory of Christ.

Karl (01:15:37):

Yes.

Dave (01:15:38):

Do this and you will live. Do not do this and you will die. You will die. You won’t have victory over sin. You won’t make it through your struggle. You will tinker with toys and technology in all manner of counterfeit beauty until your life is wasted.

Karl (01:15:57):

You know what’s a trip about that statement? Is it just—the spirit just—my spirit leapt in agreement with the Holy Spirit in me. The Holy Spirit was my lost God until about 15 years ago.

Ann (01:16:13):

What do you mean?

Karl (01:16:14):

He was my lost God. I went to Bible college, and I went to Denver Seminary. I could do doctrinal positions on hamartiology, study of sin and especially the Holy Spirit. But I think a lot of our circles, and frankly a lot of people listen in the circles we run in as in overreaction to abuses of the spirit we’ve just run and it’s dangerous.

(01:16:43):

But what I was with the Lord one time, and I was having a sweet time with the Lord, and the Holy Spirit was beginning to—and by the way, if you want to study the Holy Spirit, John 14, John 16, Romans 8, three chapters hang out there. People often go to 1 Corinthians, no, that’s corrective in nature. You want instruction on the Holy Spirit. John 14, John 16, Romans 8, camp out because it’s powerful. But this is what Jesus said, and I was like, what? He said, I’m going to go and the Holy Spirit’s going to come. It’s to your advantage—

Ann (01:17:22):

I’m blown away by this.

Karl (01:17:23):

—that I go.

Ann (01:17:24):

Yeah.

Karl (01:17:25):

So all these, what would Jesus do things? I had Ian Thomas from England speaking at a church of mine when I was up in Anchorage, Alaska, and we sat down at a sushi restaurant and he saw these kids with these, what would Jesus do bracelets and he’s sweet, very short, sweet old man. He was in his nineties at that point, and he looked at me, he goes, these what would Jesus do bracelets drive me crazy. I said, oh, really, why? I’m glad I didn’t have mine on. He says, you don’t ask that question of the Lord when Jesus said, I’m going to give you the Holy Spirit. It’s to your advantage that I go. We don’t ask what would Jesus do? We ask the Holy Spirit, guide us here. Lord.

Ann (01:18:11):

What are you doing?

Karl (01:18:12):

What are you doing?

Dave (01:18:14):

What do you want me to do? Yeah.

Karl (01:18:16):

I lift the sails of my soul. And the thing as we’ve even been talking here today, this was foreign to me two decades ago, but this is going to sound a bit mystical, but I don’t believe that God wastes a moment in our life. I had an Uber ride this morning that I was listening to the Lord, and the Lord was very clear to me, this is not a guy to witness to today. So you always hear stories about, right?

Dave (01:18:43):

Yeah.

Karl (01:18:44):

And I witness all the time, but it was very clear in my heart, just keep your head down, prepping for coming on with Dave and Ann. Everything’s cool; I got this. Isn’t that wild?

Ann (01:18:55):

Yeah.

Karl (01:18:56):

So I feel like the Lord through the power of the Spirit keeps us at that point of humility and dependence on the Lord. And the Spirit of God is by the way, how we put to death the deeds of the flesh. And He wants to live in us. You get the Bible below the water surface anchored; you lift the sail of your soul and let the Spirit of God take you somewhere, look out.

Dave (01:19:25):

We are hearing about this Millennials and Gen Zs revival.

(01:19:28):

I have this picture in my mind of families and husbands and wives on their knees tonight. Their kids are watching them on their knees. It’s going to change their legacy—repenting of sin, killing sin, speaking out secrets and then speaking out the Word of God, meditate. I mean, that’s the revival I see happening. It’s great to see college kids, it’s awesome. But when moms and dads have a real revival in their heart and they’re killing sin and they’re repenting and they’re on fire and they’re worshiping and their arms are raised and their knees are bent—

Karl (01:20:01):

Yes.

Dave (01:20:03):

—it’s going to change the legacy. God’s always revived through the institution called the family. That’s how He did it.

Karl:

That’s how He works.

Dave:

It’s how we reproduced through the family. And man, I’m like, man, I hope people are listening today going, I can’t go till tomorrow without grabbing my wife’s hand, maybe grabbing my husband’s hand and saying, we need to repent. We need to start this thing over. I’ve got something I need to tell you that I’ve already dealt with God, but I need to tell you. Yeah, I don’t know how it’s going to go when I speak this out loud. It’s scary, but—

Karl (01:20:34):

God will honor it.

Dave (01:20:34):

—it’s God, the blood of Christ is going to cover this. I’ve been living in the dark. I’m running circles on Lake whatever that was, and I want to get the wipe out—

Karl:

It was on an ocean.

Dave:

An ocean, even worse. It’s like, man, if that happened around our world. I would just say to the men, yeah, I know you’re afraid because I’ve been there. It is scary. Ask God for power and courage and step into the light and let Him work. He will work. And I want you to send us emails and tell us that story. And by the way, get this book Killing Sin. It’s at FamilyLifeToday.com, show notes. Click it there, get it, read it, repent. Done. Boom.

Ann (01:21:17):

Hey, thanks for watching and if you liked this episode—

Dave (01:21:22):

You better like it.

Ann (01:21:23):

—just hit that like button.

Dave (01:21:24):

And we’d like you to subscribe. So all you got to do is go down and hit the subscribe—I can’t say the word subscribe. Hit the subscribe button. I don’t think I can say this word.

Ann (01:21:35):

Like and subscribe.

Dave (01:21:36):

Look at that. You say it so easy. Subscribe. There it goes.

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