Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Saved by Grace podcast, bringing you stories of hope, restoration, and God's faithful love.
Speaker: I'm your host, Sylvia Puentes.
Speaker: Hi, and welcome to another episode of Saved by Grace.
Speaker: I'm your host, Sylvia Puentes, and today I'm so excited to have
Speaker: Sterling Harris on the show.
Speaker: Sterling is a former NFL player.
Speaker: He was a federal prisoner, and he's also the author of How to Hear God's Voice, 10 Ways God Speaks.
Speaker: Sterling is going to share his powerful testimony with us today of finding God and going from religion to relationship.
Speaker: Sterling, welcome to Saved by Grace.
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Sylvia.
Speaker: It's an honor to be on this platform, an honor to be on your show.
Speaker: I know when we first spoke and we kind of did the discovery meeting, it lasted like an hour and you can just tell that you're a person that's been with Jesus and met Jesus personally.
Speaker: And I'm also one of those people that not only have I met Jesus and do I meet him on a daily basis personally, but I live my life in a way that tries to empower others
Speaker: to encounter the real Jesus on a personal basis and move from religious duty or maybe even just no spirituality at all to a spiritual connection with Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Amen.
Speaker: You're speaking my language, Harris.
Speaker: I mean, Sterling, I'm sorry.
Speaker: So I love your testimony because, you know, one thing is you grew up in a Christian home with Christian foundation.
Speaker: However, that doesn't always mean that you know Jesus.
Speaker: I would say, Sylvia, that you look at the statistics and I guess you can make numbers say what you will, but it is alarming that a lot of people that grew up in the church, quote unquote, have left the church and a lot of them have left
Speaker: a relationship with Jesus because they were introduced to a religion and religious duty and rules and not a true spiritual relational connection with God.
Speaker: And that's what Jesus modeled was a real intimate relational connection with the father through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker: And it's unfortunate that people have not experienced that a lot of times in the church as a whole, as a big C church worldwide.
Speaker: But people like yourself and myself and so many others that are running with the message of you can have a personal spiritual relationship that's real, that's realer than anything.
Speaker: any human relationship you can have because it's on such a, a root core heart level, because God created a space in your heart that's built for a daily ongoing connection with him and nothing on this earth or outside of this earth will fill that connection, will fill that void except for a relational, ongoing relational connection with
Speaker: with Jesus.
Speaker: And that's really my testimony in a nutshell.
Speaker: I've tried everything, whether it be
Speaker: religious duty, serving in my church.
Speaker: I was a motivational speaker at one point.
Speaker: I've been successful in football, business, a lot of different things.
Speaker: I've lived the life that most people say, well, that's very successful.
Speaker: And at the same time, during so many of those, I'll be happy when moments where I achieved my dream or achieved worldly success, like so many of people like myself that have achieved that,
Speaker: I was unfulfilled on the way up.
Speaker: And then when I got to the mountaintop, I was still unfulfilled.
Speaker: And that's really when you really feel empty because you trick your mind into saying, I'm going to be happy when I achieve this.
Speaker: And my life is missing fulfillment because I haven't done this or I'm not making this or I don't have this connection.
Speaker: People make these, I'll be happy when statements and agreements with themselves and their hearts.
Speaker: And really you can be, you can have fulfillment and peace through a relational connection with Jesus from the valley to the mountaintop and everywhere in between.
Speaker: And you can enjoy the process and you can also enjoy the fruits of your labor, but it has to be in the context of a relational connection with Jesus.
Speaker: And there's many people that on the outside looking in, it seems like they have fulfillment.
Speaker: But so many times I knew those people that people call wildly successful or wealthy.
Speaker: And in their heart of hearts, they still lack that fulfillment that only Jesus can bring.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that is so true.
Speaker: You know, he created us with that space that only he can fill.
Speaker: And so you see, and I'll include myself in it because, um, you know, the first 40 years of my life, I didn't know the Lord.
Speaker: I didn't even understand where there are three, who's God, who's Jesus, who's the Holy spirit, you know, and I went looking in all the wrong places.
Speaker: And I just knew that there had to be something more.
Speaker: And I was looking for that something more.
Speaker: And I can...
Speaker: testified to the fact that it was in that encounter with Jesus.
Speaker: And we all have, like, he'll meet us where we are and he'll encounter us.
Speaker: And, you know, the way he encountered you is not the way he encountered me, but he knew that I needed the encounter that I had and you needed the encounter that you had, you know?
Speaker: And that is like his grace, his love and his mercy.
Speaker: You know, he says, just come as you are.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: But that empty space, it's only he that can fill that space.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like you said, you can't do it on your own.
Speaker: He says, come, come, Billy, come as you are.
Speaker: I liken it to this.
Speaker: You don't have like a wound that you need to go to the hospital for and then say, well, I'm going to heal up this wound and then go to the hospital.
Speaker: No, you go to the hospital, you get treatment for your wound or what you need treatment for.
Speaker: So you can promote healing within your body.
Speaker: it's, it's like, it's like taking a, taking a bath before you go play in the mud.
Speaker: Like it's like, right.
Speaker: You need Jesus.
Speaker: Um, you need the power of the Holy spirit to really, to really have long lasting,
Speaker: change and transformation and fulfillment within your life.
Speaker: And when you don't have that, you really are taking some really poor substitutes, I would say.
Speaker: And believe me, I speak from experience, having taken a lot of substitutes.
Speaker: As far as success in education, I've had that.
Speaker: I've had success in football, what's in the NFL.
Speaker: I've had success building seven-figure and eight-figure businesses.
Speaker: So, I mean, I've had success in life and I've also been in federal prison and lost everything in the midst of all that and God's redeemed my life.
Speaker: So, I mean, I'm speaking from a person who has been at the lowest of the low,
Speaker: And, you know, in worldly success respects, I've been at the upper, you know, 1%.
Speaker: Of course, there's people that, you know, that I've hung out with billionaires and I've never been a billionaire myself, but I mean, I've hung out with billionaires and they're just people just like the rest of us, right?
Speaker: And I've hung out with, you know, people that were super famous and they're just like the rest of us.
Speaker: They're just people and they need Jesus just like everybody else does.
Speaker: They need healing and restoration.
Speaker: and transformation and healing within their heart, just like everybody else does.
Speaker: That's why you see people that have attained their dream, have attained success, and they're in the public spotlight.
Speaker: And people say, why are those people still struggling so much?
Speaker: Why are they still so messed up in some respects when they've got all this, if I had all this money and this fame and yada, yada, yada, I wouldn't be like that.
Speaker: Well, the problem is, the old adage is,
Speaker: Wherever you go, there you are.
Speaker: And if nothing changes, then nothing changes.
Speaker: And the reason you see that is because just because you got more money, money just allows you to be more of who you already are.
Speaker: And so if you're if you're broken inside, you need, you know, you need people's validation, acceptance, things like that.
Speaker: You're going to use more money to get that validation, acceptance in the wrong ways.
Speaker: And so, you know, it's one of those things that you really have to have that fulfillment of a love relationship with Jesus to really to really.
Speaker: ground you and root you in, in what I call success, which is a, I define as a relational connection, ongoing relational connection with Jesus.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Sterling, take us to that moment that really changed your life.
Speaker: Cause I know that you shared, you, you got saved at an early age and
Speaker: But then there was this moment that marked you, that made a before and after in your life and brought you to a new place.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I had a spiritual encounter with God when I was 12 years old and it was just a little 12 year old boy saying, you know, God, if you're real, show yourself to me.
Speaker: And if you want a relationship, personal relationship with me, show yourself to me.
Speaker: I want to know the answer is yes.
Speaker: And I threw up this little prayer at 12 years old and I still remember praying that prayer.
Speaker: And the next day I woke up with a feeling of peace.
Speaker: and serenity I'd never had in my life before.
Speaker: And now I know that that was the manifest presence of God I was experiencing.
Speaker: Back then I had no context, language or definition for what I was experiencing, but as a little 12 year old boy, I knew that
Speaker: This was God's answer to both of my questions.
Speaker: Yes, I'm real.
Speaker: And yes, I want a personal relationship with you.
Speaker: And based on that spiritual encounter, I got saved and gave my life to Jesus.
Speaker: And then I got religion and religious duty.
Speaker: And religion and religious duty say you have to work hard to get God to love you.
Speaker: So you're working hard.
Speaker: for validation you already have.
Speaker: You're working hard for righteousness that you attained when you gave your life to Jesus.
Speaker: You got his righteousness.
Speaker: You got his spirit.
Speaker: Christianity is not a religion.
Speaker: It's had a religion made out of it.
Speaker: Religion says God's far off.
Speaker: You need to do things to get him near you.
Speaker: But the reality is when you gave your life to Jesus,
Speaker: Christianity is about an inhabitation.
Speaker: It's about getting something bigger than yourself, than sin, than whatever you want to put in that box.
Speaker: It's about getting something bigger in you, which is the Holy Spirit, God's spirit.
Speaker: And the reason you need Jesus is you need to receive the blood covenant that God had with Jesus that said, you know, God, I'm going to go to earth.
Speaker: I'm going to die and resurrect and give my blood for Sterling, for Sylvia, for anyone who would call my name so they could receive again what they lost in the garden.
Speaker: which was an end drawing of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker: So that's really where the rubber meets the road as far as religion versus relationship.
Speaker: And I got religion and religious duty and religion, especially with a lot of mine was based on fear tactics.
Speaker: fear will only do help you do enough not to get fired at a job or whatever you're doing it doesn't it doesn't propel you love propels you love and motivates you when you're in love you do things because you're compelled by to action by your love for that person like in a healthy marital relationship and for me
Speaker: what religion creates is unworthiness, shame, condemnation, and really frustration.
Speaker: And so I always thought that God was never, I was never good enough for God.
Speaker: I was always falling short.
Speaker: I was, you know, I was constantly doing things that would send me to hell and different things like that.
Speaker: My mindset was, was one of just really frustration and shame and unworthiness.
Speaker: And so I began to look for validation in other places because I didn't want to serve this God that was always looking at me or that I was always falling short of.
Speaker: And so I just in that reality, that's probably the vast majority of people that believe or don't believe you have that idea of God because it was perpetrated wrongly.
Speaker: for decades about God, which is not true.
Speaker: Now that I know him, I know that's not true.
Speaker: But back then, if you don't know better, you can't do better.
Speaker: And people are bound by language, context, definitions, and practical examples, especially when you have incorrect ones, because you'll see, you'll interpret things through the incorrect filter.
Speaker: So I saw God as a taskmaster who wanted always zap me and I was always in trouble with.
Speaker: So I just found validation and acceptance in other places, which was like partying, football, excelling in sports, excelling in school, social validations, things like that, that left me still empty and unfulfilled.
Speaker: And I was on this whole cycle and I just really thought that this whole white knuckling Christianity thing was just how it was.
Speaker: You know, when you get to heaven, then you can have some peace.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But while you're on this earth, you just kind of got a white necklace and make it.
Speaker: And that's not the case.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's a lot of people living in what I call white knuckle Christianity.
Speaker: And I lived like that for 15 years of my Christian life.
Speaker: And I remember, you know, my kind of moment in drawing the line in the sand was, you know, I got out of sports.
Speaker: I had to retire early because of injury.
Speaker: I got in the real estate business and insurance business was making good money, six figures.
Speaker: And, you know, I had the big car and the big watch and the big house.
Speaker: And I was in a club in downtown Dallas and VIP dancing on the couch.
Speaker: and laser lights going, fog going.
Speaker: And I just looked out and I said, you know, God, is this it?
Speaker: Is this what I worked my whole life, you know, for to have some money, to have, you know, some fame, a little bit of fame and is this it?
Speaker: And I looked around at my friends that had way more money than I was ever going to have, you know, 50, a hundred million dollars, private jets, the whole nine.
Speaker: Yet they still had lives that were unfulfilled because I knew these people and I knew we had, we had talked about it a lot of times.
Speaker: And as I said, God, there's got to be something more.
Speaker: And Sylvia, like maybe a week later, God answered that prayer in a club in downtown Dallas.
Speaker: And I'll tell you, God will, God's always, wherever you go, there God is, right?
Speaker: So be careful where you take the Holy Ghost, because I've taken him some really super questionable places and some downright just not good.
Speaker: But he was always faithful.
Speaker: Even when I was faithless, he was faithful.
Speaker: And that's the good news of the gospel.
Speaker: And so I began to, God began to encounter me in my office and I began to feel this heat and this burning and this fire on me.
Speaker: And I was sweating and I just, I was very discombobulated and I just felt like this dark presence was trying to get inside of me and like the light in me was trying to fight against the darkness.
Speaker: And I was like, I felt like I was going to h ave a heart attack and I knew I needed to either get to a hospital
Speaker: or a church, but inherently I knew inside of me that it was a spiritual situation that I was dealing with.
Speaker: So I went to a church that I had known the pastor and grew up with the pastor when I was a kid.
Speaker: And I show up at that church and kind of tell him what's going on.
Speaker: He's freaking out because he doesn't have any context for what I'm dealing with either.
Speaker: He's like, just sit at the back of the church, darling.
Speaker: And it was a Wednesday night church service.
Speaker: And he said, well, you and I could talk afterwards.
Speaker: And I remember rocking back and forth and I was sweating in church ACs on full blast, just sweating.
Speaker: And, and I began like these, I began that my fingertips began to tingle.
Speaker: And then I started freaking out because I had no context with what was going on with me.
Speaker: And then my whole body began to burn like fire.
Speaker: And see the context I knew about fire growing up in the hellfire and brimstone era of, you know, very fear-based preaching was all I knew about fire and God was hell.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: So I think like right then, so I'm about to like, I'm about to go to hell, like right then for all my sins.
Speaker: Like it's going to be ashes, my Nikes, I said, Sterling's gone.
Speaker: He's done.
Speaker: The back of the church, he just evaporated.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, and I began to ask God to cleanse me and help me and just Lord, please, I can't do this on my own anymore.
Speaker: And that fire subsided and, and the peace of God fell on me.
Speaker: And it was like, God was poured like this cool oil on my head and just relaxed.
Speaker: And I was like, man, I just knew I was different after that day, but I didn't have any context, language or definitions or practical examples of what happened to me.
Speaker: And I didn't read the Bible for myself.
Speaker: I just went to church.
Speaker: I didn't know God personally.
Speaker: I knew about him.
Speaker: Little did I know that the Bible says, and I knew this years later, that John the Baptist said that after me, there'll come a man whose sandal straps I'm not fit to untie, and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
Speaker: And that's in all four gospels, but the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire.
Speaker: And what I experienced that day was God sovereignly baptized me in the Holy Spirit and fire.
Speaker: And I,
Speaker: And I began things that I needed to kind of fall off me, begin to fall off me.
Speaker: And God began this refining process of my life.
Speaker: And I just went back to religion.
Speaker: I went back to what I knew and what I was from, which was church attendance.
Speaker: But I still felt unfulfilled, but it was better than...
Speaker: than previously.
Speaker: So, so I wish I could say that I had that encounter.
Speaker: My life changed automatically.
Speaker: And God is a God of process.
Speaker: It's not like that.
Speaker: I've, I've heard people say that I had to encounter with God.
Speaker: And then after that, I was all good.
Speaker: I'm not saying they didn't, but I'm telling, I'm telling you that God is in the process.
Speaker: That's his, that's one of his characteristics in his nature.
Speaker: Even he might do one thing sovereignly and just like, okay, you got delivered to drugs, you never did drugs again, but he delivered you from a whole bunch of things that were behind the drugs over a process guaranteed.
Speaker: That's just how he, that's how, that's the character within the nature.
Speaker: And so God began to deliver me from the world, from myself,
Speaker: I began to get a motivational speaking, began to help kids, did a lot of inner healing work, things like that.
Speaker: And then I knocked at my door, it was the FBI about four or five years later after that experience.
Speaker: And I ended up getting arrested for mortgage fraud and I didn't do mortgages at the time I was a real estate agent.
Speaker: And I just thought I was going to go down there, tell them, you know, I'm a good guy.
Speaker: I'm, you know, a motivational speaker for kids, former NFL player, and they're going to let me go.
Speaker: They gave me 70 months in federal prison for a crime I didn't only commit.
Speaker: So I learned a couple of things, trust but verify.
Speaker: And if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Speaker: And the time I did these deals, these business deals I got in trouble for, I had this gut feeling that something wasn't right.
Speaker: But like so many things in my life, I ignored that gut feeling.
Speaker: I ignored the voice in the back of my mind.
Speaker: I ignored that kinetic feeling of a lack of peace.
Speaker: which I now know is the Holy Spirit speaking to me.
Speaker: And I teach people how to become more self-aware of, you know, the voice of God sounds like the voice of the back of your mind.
Speaker: It sounds like a voice within you, your subconscious voice, but it comes with a flow and a peace and a wisdom to it that's not your own.
Speaker: God speaks in visions.
Speaker: He speaks in like using your imagination to show you mental pictures, pictures and images and scenes from your life that, that give you either like a literal or figurative representation was trying to tell you.
Speaker: And you get like a thought impression, like a flow of thoughts or like an, like an inner knowing, like, you know, that you know something.
Speaker: And it's more like a, like a download to your heart that God's, God's putting on your heart.
Speaker: And, and I, and now I equip and teach people how to do that.
Speaker: I ended up going to federal prison.
Speaker: and just began to serve God there and didn't understand why I was there.
Speaker: But later God showed me it was the disobedience that I walked in and the compromise that I lived in, even though I was living the best I knew how was to live in compromise.
Speaker: And when you live in compromise, you open the door of the enemy.
Speaker: An enemy will use whatever he can to destroy your life.
Speaker: He just used the curse of captivity and these business deals that I was involved in to try to do that.
Speaker: And I began to serve God anyway, and God redeemed the time.
Speaker: I ended up getting involved in preaching there, led hundreds of people to the Lord there, really found a true relational connection at my rock bottom moment because I was like, okay, God, I feel like you're saying you want me to have this relational connection with you, but how can I have a relationship with God that I can't see?
Speaker: And I remember getting my mind, the words, follow me and I'll show you.
Speaker: I saw it in the script letter of my mind.
Speaker: And it just got this thought impression.
Speaker: And so I began to write down.
Speaker: I wrote that down.
Speaker: I wrote down what I felt like God's voice sounded like.
Speaker: And then all the disparaging thoughts about, you're an idiot.
Speaker: That wasn't God.
Speaker: That was just you.
Speaker: I wrote that down.
Speaker: What that sounded like, which I now know is the voice of the enemy.
Speaker: And also can be the voice of your self-doubt.
Speaker: And so I began to discern between my self-doubt, the voice of the enemy, my voice, the voice of my subconscious, and God's voice.
Speaker: And I began to differentiate between those two.
Speaker: And God showed me these patterns within those.
Speaker: And these patterns began to emerge as he confirmed what he was saying.
Speaker: And the things that weren't God began to not happen.
Speaker: And then I began to teach that and people began to get the same outcomes as I did in their own personal relationship with God.
Speaker: And I began to see people in prison be transformed by this relational connection with Jesus.
Speaker: And then I got out and kept serving the Lord.
Speaker: God introduced me to my wife.
Speaker: I ended up having a couple, you know, we have two awesome kids that love Jesus.
Speaker: And God put it in my heart to write this book, How to Hear God 10 Ways God Speaks.
Speaker: And, you know, in prison, he was telling me that he was going to
Speaker: He was going to redeem my life.
Speaker: He was going to take me to this worldwide ministry that we were going to reach millions of people for the gospel.
Speaker: And, you know, it's so interesting, you know, when I got out, I was living with my parents and by all worldly aspects have lost everything.
Speaker: And this year will be, will be the eighth year that I have been out of prison and,
Speaker: And I can tell you that God has totally redeemed my life.
Speaker: And now we have a business where we move trucks and 18 wheelers all across the United States.
Speaker: It took over that family business.
Speaker: It was failing and going under.
Speaker: And by the time three years had passed, God redeemed that business totally.
Speaker: And now we're doing better than we ever have in 25 years.
Speaker: And our ministry now reaches tens of thousands of people every month and hundreds of thousands of people a year.
Speaker: And it's just one of those things that it didn't happen overnight.
Speaker: It was a process.
Speaker: And that's why I love equipping people to hear God's voice.
Speaker: I literally got out and started with nothing.
Speaker: I started with, you know, all I had was hearing God's voice.
Speaker: But over time, God redeemed my life.
Speaker: And he'll do that for everybody that will have a relationship with him.
Speaker: Everybody's redemption looks different.
Speaker: Everybody's prosperity looks different.
Speaker: Prosperity to me means having more than enough God to forgive, to have the resources that you need to have, to love people in your life, even if they're hard to love.
Speaker: and being the hands and feet of Jesus wherever you go.
Speaker: So prosperity to me is a holistic approach of God bringing you into the full self that he's called you to be.
Speaker: And that happens when you become more like Jesus.
Speaker: And people used to say, yes, Sterling, you're so much like Jesus and you're so, you try to follow him so much, but you're not your own person.
Speaker: I said, actually, you're, you're actually wrong and I'll, and I'll prove it to you.
Speaker: I said, how much of your life is driven by fear or worry or anxiety now?
Speaker: Or fear of not being good enough, fear of not being successful, fear of not having enough, all these different things.
Speaker: And how much time do you spend in fear and worry on a daily basis within your mind?
Speaker: Most people are like, well, that's definitely an influence in my life.
Speaker: Well, I said, well, that's how I used to be and not even know it.
Speaker: But when I began to have God peel these layers of onion, onion layers off my life and off my heart, I realized that when you become more like Jesus, you actually become the more authentic self that God called you to be because you're no longer, you no longer allow, allow fear, anxiety, worry, depression to be the driver of your car.
Speaker: You let the Holy Spirit be your driver.
Speaker: Yes, those things still come even in my life today.
Speaker: But now I know how to take those thoughts captive.
Speaker: cast them off, give them over to God and declare the opposite of what God is saying.
Speaker: Like right now we're buying a house.
Speaker: It's a financial stretch for us to buy this house.
Speaker: You know, God has blessed us in the house that we're in and supernaturally paid it off a couple of years ago.
Speaker: So we own our house free and clear and we're going into a house that we're going to have to get a mortgage on.
Speaker: But I know the Lord spoke to us about specifically this house, this property that we're going to get and moving to this area.
Speaker: And so once I got a word from God, I said, you know, he said, if you receive it as a blessing, it will be.
Speaker: But I had these thoughts that, you know, what if the business doesn't do as good as it's been doing?
Speaker: What if this happens?
Speaker: What if that happens?
Speaker: And I knew that was the voice of my own self-doubt.
Speaker: And I also knew that that was probably some demonic influence.
Speaker: And so I just said, God, I release these thoughts over to you.
Speaker: These are not the thoughts I want to think.
Speaker: Lord, forgive me for thinking these thoughts.
Speaker: And I just, I just give this over to you, God.
Speaker: I receive your forgiveness.
Speaker: I give forgiveness.
Speaker: And Lord, I just, and I began to declare this house will be a blessing to us.
Speaker: The mortgage will be approved.
Speaker: This, this move will be a blessing.
Speaker: I'll be a blessed transition.
Speaker: And every time I get a negative thought or a thought that is unwanted, that's opposite of God's love and faith and peace, I declare the opposite of that thought.
Speaker: And I use it as a call to prayer and a call to bless the situation that I'm in.
Speaker: And that's practically,
Speaker: how you can manage your mind will and emotions using spiritual tools and weapons.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Um, so I want to just, uh, you know, we're, we're coming close in our time and, um, I, I want to tell you that I thank you for your testimony and sharing, um, these deep revelations because these revelations that you've had and, you know, um,
Speaker: God may not have let you to prison, but he used prison, right?
Speaker: To create purpose, right?
Speaker: And to bring you to where he wanted you to be and to do the things that you are doing now, you know, the lives that you're touching and the lives that are being transformed as a result.
Speaker: of, you know, your yieldedness, your obedience and allowing God to do in you and through you.
Speaker: And as I said to you, I always go to the Lord with asking him for a scripture.
Speaker: And the scripture that he gave me for you was 2 Corinthians 5.17.
Speaker: And I'll admit that sometimes I go back and forth with him a little bit.
Speaker: Like, is this really the one you want?
Speaker: And he's, obviously, he always wins.
Speaker: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, the new is here.
Speaker: That's the scripture.
Speaker: And what he has spoken into my heart is how important it is for people to understand that, yes, we are a new creation, but the new creation takes time.
Speaker: It's a process.
Speaker: The old is gone.
Speaker: So as you were saying that, I was like, you just blow my mind, Lord, all the time.
Speaker: Because this is what he wanted me to speak on when I share the scripture with you.
Speaker: And for everyone out there to know, because if we don't know this, the enemy will come in and start condemning us.
Speaker: Well, I thought you were a new creation and you're not looking like a new creation.
Speaker: But he walks us through this process and the new creation takes time.
Speaker: You know, in that walk and in that process, he's taken away and rebuilding us and making us into that new creation.
Speaker: So I pray that that scripture speaks to your spirit and blesses you because that's the one that he, you know, he gave me for you today.
Speaker: Yeah, it does bless me.
Speaker: And, you know, we're going into a new season and we're going into a transition.
Speaker: I actually close on our house.
Speaker: We'll close our house on the 17th of next week.
Speaker: August 17th is my birthday.
Speaker: So I'm going into a lot of new beginnings.
Speaker: It's a new season.
Speaker: We're moving to a new area.
Speaker: it's about three hours away from where we are now currently so it's uh we know it's the lord but it definitely is is taking a lot of faith to apprehend this next season of our lives and you know second corinthians has been a very uh especially that portion of second corinthians has been near and dear to my heart because you know it talks about the righteousness of god in that in that same stanza in chapter five and see i all i knew when i was growing up was
Speaker: was that righteous people must be like a deacon in your church or something.
Speaker: I didn't know it was something you attain when you get Jesus.
Speaker: When I got born again, nobody told me I got born again.
Speaker: But now when I began to really read the Bible for myself, I realized that
Speaker: In that same stanza, it says we've been made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
Speaker: And there's a lot of churches that believe in the 517, but they don't believe that we have the righteousness of Jesus, which the Bible clearly says we do.
Speaker: And righteousness means that you have the same legal access to God, the Father, God, the Spirit and God, the God, Jesus.
Speaker: As Jesus does.
Speaker: Like you have the same access to God as Jesus did.
Speaker: You have his righteousness, his unblemished faith in life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And what a, what a cool gift.
Speaker: What an amazing gift.
Speaker: What an amazing gift that we got through that sacrifice, you know, that, that he, that he, um, set us free from the curse of the law.
Speaker: And, um, yeah,
Speaker: I want you to just quickly share how our listeners can connect with you.
Speaker: And then I'd like to ask you to close us out in a prayer.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You can connect with us.
Speaker: We're on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all the handles are at SterlingHarrisMinistries.
Speaker: And you can connect with us on SterlingHarris.org.
Speaker: And you can get books, workbooks, online e-courses.
Speaker: We have a lot of content.
Speaker: free and paid content that you can get whatever your persuasion is.
Speaker: If you like audio books, we have audio books.
Speaker: If you like regular Hold My Hand books, we have those.
Speaker: If you like just videos, we have a ton of videos that we've released and that we are releasing.
Speaker: And so our whole thing is please connect with our community
Speaker: and connect with us and connect with a community that believes they can hear God's voice and wants to hear God's voice and wants more of God.
Speaker: And, you know, we're really a community that wants to help each other thrive in life.
Speaker: And so I just want to encourage people to connect with us and connect with the content we have because it will help you connect with the Holy Spirit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Amen.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Sterling, thank you for coming on and sharing your beautiful testimony and everything that, you know, that you're doing for the kingdom and to just give God the glory and everything.
Speaker: So if you could close us out in a prayer, that'd be a blessing to us.
Speaker: Yes, ma'am.
Speaker: Jesus, we just thank you for these people, Lord.
Speaker: We thank you for the anointing of the God that's been on this podcast.
Speaker: God, we thank you that you would just breathe your Holy Spirit.
Speaker: God, you would breathe your anointing into their lives.
Speaker: And God, we just thank you for release, a release and upgrade of hearing God's voice and knowing him in Jesus name.
Speaker: Amen.
Speaker: Amen.
Speaker: Well, this has been another episode of Saved by Grace.
Speaker: I thank you for tuning in.
Speaker: Thank you for tuning in to Saved by Grace podcast.
Speaker: Do you have a God story that you'd like to share with the world?
Speaker: If so, please send us a message to SavedByGracePDCST at gmail.com.
