Sid Roth - Jesus Showed Me What Most Believers Miss About His Blood
Many believers carry the emotional trauma of shame. They think they have to live with it. It's part of them. That's a lie. Buried shame places limitations on intimacy with God. My guest conquered shame and now wants everyone everywhere to be free. It's so good to be free.
Sid Roth: Welcome, Holy Spirit. I am so glad You're here. I plead the Blood. I surrender this platform to You. Have Your way. God, show us Your glory. My guest, Michelle Steele, was raised in an affluent family but became a drug addict, a criminal and a prostitute. She tried to take her own life twice, died, saw hell, came back and, while still high on drugs, went to church. Michelle, what happened in that church?
Michelle Steele: I was asleep through the service. And thankfully the preacher, who knew the condition that I was in and knew the situation that I was facing, came to the chair I was sitting in and woke me up. And he said to me, "Michelle, do you want help"? And I said, "I do". I stood to my feet, and I said, "Yes, sir. I want help". And when I picked myself up off the floor, I thought at first that he had knocked me down.
Sid Roth: Mm-hmm.
Michelle Steele: I had no understanding about the Bible. I had no understanding about the power of God. But before I could accuse him of knocking me down, I realized I was sober for the first time in 8 years.
Sid Roth: Hmm.
Michelle Steele: I was in my right mind, and I could think clearly. And he presented the Gospel to me. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord, and I knew I was changed. I went home that night, and I threw away all the drugs that I had, flushed them down the toilet. And because that church was in revival, I began attending church every night. So I am there learning about God, learning about the plan that God has for my life. It was such a far cry from the life that I had lived before, the addiction, the prostitution, the crime. I had not had a foundation of the Word until that time of sitting in those and where the power of God was moving and the Word of God was being presented to me. And I began to see God restore my life. I got custody of my children given back to me. I got a real job for the first time in my life. I began walking in line with the Word of God, and God brought a wonderful man, my husband today, Philip Steele, who loves me like Christ loves the church. And God began to show me His restoration, and as we began to put our family together, put our lives together, I had the custody of my children back, and we were expecting our first child together. I was so excited because in my life before Christ, there was no joy about being pregnant. It was a very difficult lifestyle. But here I am with a man who loves me, serving God. This is going to be great, until I began to show signs that I was losing my child. And my husband, who was raised in the Word of God and knew God's ability to heal the child in my womb, he said, "Let's believe God". And when he said that, he was on board. He was in faith. But, Sid, something happened that I didn't realize until sometime later the full extent. I had a sense of shame stand up in me that I didn't even realize was there.
Sid Roth: It was buried.
Michelle Steele: It was buried. It was under the radar.
Sid Roth: Yeah.
Michelle Steele: It wasn't something I could put my finger on. I knew that the Blood of Jesus had... at that time, I received Him as Lord and Savior, had cleansed me of the wrongdoing, had taken it off my record and had expunged the guilt...
Sid Roth: Right.
Michelle Steele: ...of what I had done. I believed that, but I had a shame about the life I'd lived before Christ. And that shame began to tell me, "This is happening because of all the sin that you did before. This is happening because you aborted your baby before you got saved".
Sid Roth: Oh.
Michelle Steele: And all of that shame was in the place of the righteousness that should have been operating at that moment. I should have been able to reach into the covenant I had with God and receive help in my time of need, but instead, I accepted what shame told me, and we ended up losing that baby. And it was a very difficult situation for someone who had just began walking with the Lord. I had people come to me and say, "Well, we don't know why God does some things like this, and we don't know. God just needed another angel in His choir". And none of those things...
Sid Roth: No.
Michelle Steele: ...helped bring me peace where I was.
Sid Roth: Well, they weren't true.
Michelle Steele: Yes. It wasn't the goodness of God. My husband, he spent some time in prayer, and he came back to me, and he said, "Michelle, I found the answer in John 10:10. 'The devil comes to steal, to kill and to destroy.' And somehow, he found an open door, but I covenant with you as your husband. He's not going to find a way back into our lives".
Sid Roth: And then her miracle child. What happened?
Michelle Steele: When we, a year later, began to find out that we were expecting again, I was at a different place in my spiritual walk because of a study that I had had with the Blood of Jesus.
Sid Roth: Hmm.
Michelle Steele: And this study revealed to me why I couldn't find my Shield of Righteousness, my Breastplate of Righteousness, when I needed it previously. And this study had put me in a different place. When my child was born, she was born with an injury in the womb. She had experienced trauma in the birth canal. And when she was born, she began to turn blue, and every time they would bring her to me, she would turn blue, and they finally took her out and had to emergency transport her to the children's hospital. But this time, when my husband took hands with me, and he said, "Let's believe God," I took hands with him and said, "My heart is fixed. Trusting in the Lord, I will not fear". And we were able to stand. And within a week of her being in the NICU of the hospital, the doctors came in one day, and they said to the interns that he was leading through the intensive care unit, he said, "This is our miracle baby. She has healed herself". Well, we know it was the work of God that brought restoration to her. But when I look back at the two situations and the way that I was able to respond differently, I would have to recognize it was the faith I had in the Blood that caused me to respond differently than I responded the first time.
Sid Roth: And most people, they don't even... In churches, they don't even talk about the blood of Jesus, or if they do, they don't understand. Tell me just very briefly the difference between guilt and shame.
Michelle Steele: Guilt is a condition that you find yourself in because of wrongdoing, because of a sin you have committed. For instance, you could find someone guilty in a court of law by presenting the evidence of what they did. If you were to confess to something, you would say, "I'm guilty of that". It is the condition or the standing that a person is in. But shame is the painful feeling in the conscience that that sin produces. I had dealt with the guilt, but I'd never dealt with the shame. Guilt affects the way God can relate to you, but shame affects the way you relate to God.
Sid Roth: Hmm.
Michelle Steele: And that's what I had missed. And in that study of the blood, that's where I saw them differently. It was in that study of the blood, because if you would have come to me and said, "Well, don't you believe"?
Sid Roth: I'll tell you what. Hold that thought. When we return, Michelle will teach about how to apply the blood of Jesus, and I haven't even heard this before, to our conscience and overcome all shame and all guilt and how to use the Blood as a tool for deliverance. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Wow. I don't know about you, but I want Michelle to teach me and you about what Jesus taught her about the blood of Jesus.
Michelle Steele: When you recognize the difference between the guilt and the shame, that teaches you how to apply them separately, the blood being applied in both directions. If you would have asked me, "Do you believe that the blood of Jesus has paid your sin debt"? of course. I believe.
Sid Roth: Of course.
Michelle Steele: That's why I was able to receive Him as my Lord, because I put faith in His sacrifice that His blood was the appropriate sacrifice to cleanse me of the record of my wrongdoing, to take that, all of the sin that was piled up in my life and remove it off my record. But because I didn't understand that shame was not supposed to be still operative in my life, I had never applied the blood or didn't even know I could. I just had only really interacted with the blood that one time in my Christian life until I began to read, and then I found a scripture in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 9, and it says "If the blood of bulls and goats was good to sanctifying of the flesh under the old covenant, how much more shall the blood of Christ purify the conscience so that we can serve God"? And I began to verbally say out of my mouth, "I believe that the blood of Jesus, I apply the blood by faith to that area of my life". Whenever shame would try to surface, I had to stop and deal with it and apply the blood to it and release my faith in the blood to cleanse me of that shame.
Sid Roth: Would you lead us in a prayer that we'll repeat after you right now?
Michelle Steele: Absolutely, absolutely. Say this with me. I believe the blood of Jesus is supernatural in its power. The blood of Jesus cleanses me in every area including my conscience setting me free from shame, condemnation, and every ounce of feeling that separates me from God. I believe the blood of Jesus has purified me. The blood is supernatural because Jesus, His blood was different from the blood of any man walking on this Earth. The blood of Jesus had no connection to Adam's DNA. The Book of Acts Chapter 20 says, "The blood of Jesus is God's own blood". He says that through His own blood that the Church of God, which He has purchased with His own blood, the blood of Jesus, was supernatural because Jesus is the Word made Flesh. Jesus was legally born into the Earth through the womb of a woman but with no connection to Adam. So His blood was sinless at its onset. And then Jesus walked in this Earth and never sinned. And because He never sinned, that blood remained an accurate sacrifice and a redeeming sacrifice. The only entrance we have into the presence of God is by the blood. Even under the Old Testament, it said that even the high priest could only enter in not without blood. From the beginning, God has provided the blood as a means by which, under the Old Testament to cover, but under the New Testament blood of Jesus, it is an entrance for us. And because, it says in Hebrews 9, we purge our conscience, then it says, let us draw near with a full heart of assurance because we've been cleansed from the evil conscience. And when you really begin to build faith in the blood, the evidence is in the way you enter into their presence of God. You won't draw back. You won't enter in with a lot of excuses or failure, feelings. Sure, if we sin, let's confess our sin, but He wants us to come by the blood. He wants us to come confident. It says we enter in with boldness. That boldness is by the blood, it says in Hebrews 10.
Sid Roth: People hear her teaching and read her books, and I'll tell you what. They start doing what she says, and they get free. I want you to tell me when we return about one person that heard your teaching and the great miracle that happened in their life, because that miracle is about ready to happen to you. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Michelle, a woman heard your testimony and told this same story to her son. Tell me what happened.
Michelle Steele: This young man had been in a life of addiction. He was actually put into jail and was facing some charges for crimes he had committed during a drug time that he had been on. And she had heard my story at a service that I had been at, and I had prayed with her. But she was his adopted mother, and there was shame and some rejection that he had dealt with as a result of being adopted. And when she began to tell the story to him and share with him, he was able to identify from the hope standpoint. But being able to apply the blood in the areas of shame that, not necessarily things that you've done. Sometimes, there are things that are done to you that cause shame. People that are molested as children live with the shame of what the person who violated them did to them. People who were adopted feel that rejection and that shame from that. So there are areas of shame that he didn't know how to deal with, and those areas were helping hold that addiction in his life because he wasn't able to walk free of it. And so when he was able to receive that and understand how to apply the blood of Jesus, he could walk free from that in a way that he wasn't able to before. And he got set free from drugs and ended up experiencing the Favor of God and being able to walk free without any prison time and is now serving God today and walking with the Lord.
Sid Roth: Well, Michelle had an open vision. That means, I guess, that you're awake.
Michelle Steele: Yes.
Sid Roth: And you see it happen like on a TV screen almost.
Michelle Steele: Yes.
Sid Roth: Tell me what happened.
Michelle Steele: In this, I went up for prayer in a service, and the Power of God came on me when the minister prayed for me, and I began to see in the Spirit. I was there in this vision.
Sid Roth: Mmm.
Michelle Steele: And there was a multitude of people. I was on a small, little pedestal above them, just barely lifted to the place where that they could see me, but I was wearing tattered garments. And I wasn't embarrassed about the tattered garments. As a matter of fact, I wanted them to know about my tattered garments. And there was an unrest. In that multitude of people, you could sense the unrest and the dissatisfaction and the frustration in their life. But I began to lift up my voice and to explain, garment by garment, why this garment was tattered and what had happened to cause these tattered garments. And the moment that I had their attention, I pointed them to Jesus. He was up on a high pedestal in glory, in this brilliant light. When I came out of that vision, I knew that those tattered garments were the parts of my testimony of things that God has delivered me from. The prostitution, the near-death experiences: All that God has done for me is to help point people to Jesus.
Sid Roth: You are a free woman.
Michelle Steele: Yes, sir.
Sid Roth: And if someone said to me that observed you earlier today, "I see something so special in her eyes," and I said to him, "You know what you see? You see the Light of God". Is the Light of God in your eyes? Do you want to know God? If God could forgive Michelle of what she did, and if God could forgive me of what I did, God is more than able to forgive you of what you did. I want you to repeat this prayer out loud. Mean it to the best of your ability, and it's time for you to know God and shine the Light of God and let all people know there is a living God that loves you and loves them. This is God's moment for you to have your own encounter with the living God. It may not be at this second, but you open the door and watch God embrace you. Repeat out loud this prayer, and mean it. Mean it to the best of your ability. That's all God is asking. Say it out loud: Dear God, I've committed many sins. I'm so sorry. Thank You for Your Blood, Your precious Blood. It washes away all my diseases. I plead Your blood on my conscience. All shame is gone. And now that I'm clean, Jesus, come and live inside of me. I make You my Savior. I make You my Lord. Amen.