David Wilkerson confronts a church culture obsessed with counseling everyone else's marriage while nobody prays the one prayer that actually works. Paul's teaching on the veil reveals that real change never comes from waiting for someone else to shift, but only from crying out, "Change me, O Lord," and letting the Holy Spirit do what no counselor alone ever could.

Preached: August 15, 1999

Main Points:

• David Wilkerson confesses deep discouragement with modern Christian counseling, not because it's wrong but because so many troubled believers sit through months of biblical counsel and simply don't get it, treating God's commands as suggestions instead of commandments.

• In every marriage feud he's mediated, both spouses say the same thing about the other: they're stubborn, they don't get it, why won't they change? Everybody is waiting for somebody else to change, which is precisely why nothing ever does.

• Paul describes a veil over the heart that blinds people to Scripture even while they study it diligently. That same veil sits over sincere Christians today who read commands about forgiveness and reconciliation and still can't apply them to their own lives.

• No amount of unforgiveness, however justified it feels, escapes the judgment seat of Christ. A thousand sympathetic counselors telling you that you have the right to leave your marriage means nothing if it contradicts Scripture. God hates divorce, not because he's harsh, but because he's already promised all the grace needed to make any marriage work.

• The Greek word for "turn" means to change course entirely, not merely feel sorry. You cannot wait for your spouse to change first. God changes you, and then your circumstances stop having the same power over you because you've been changed above them.

• Change requires an "open face," an honest, intense desire to reverse course and let the Holy Spirit expose everything hidden, even things you didn't know were there. Wilkerson admits the digging never really stops until the day Jesus returns.

• When real change begins, God commends the changed person to everyone's conscience, meaning a spouse, boss, or child will know without a single word being said that something genuine has shifted. That quiet, undeniable witness is what Wilkerson calls the real power to change people.

https://wcmin.us/SS260920c