Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship
Scripture clearly shows that learning to be genuinely GRATEFUL for all the good things in our lives can become a powerful spiritual FORCE that PRODUCES prosperity and success. Unfortunately though this key biblical principle is often overlooked or ignored or forgotten because we're so intent on our own agendas and priorities, so much so that the Lord has prompted us to bring this subject to you again with hopes that you'll be especially blessed and edified.
Previously we discussed the power that THANKSGIVING has to connect us to God's GRACE which is most often defined as His UNMERITED FAVOR. Why does Holy God make His FAVOR available to sinful people? Since it's UNMERITED it means there's nothing we can do or say to deserve it; we can't perform any good works to attract it because then it would be deserved favor. No, the only reason God makes His FAVOR available to sinful people is because He loves us and because Jesus has already paid for all our sins. That's why the New Testament is often called the COVENANT OF GRACE. Not only that, as a result of what Jesus did at the Cross, God makes His GRACE available to EVERYONE. It's available to EVERYONE because the payment that Jesus made was for the sins of the whole, entire world (1 John 2:2).
Now we all need God's GRACE to get born again (Ephesians 2:5). Long before Jesus came physically to earth the spirit of man had been disconnected from the presence of God starting the moment that Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden. So to be "born again" means to be reconnected to His presence, it means that the spirit part of you has been regenerated to LIFE. It wasn't possible to be born again and reconnected to the Spirit of God until Jesus completed His work at the Cross; but once that happened, once the sins of all people had been paid for, God made His GRACE available which includes His total and complete forgiveness for ALL time. God's GRACE is now available to anyone who will RECEIVE it. How do we RECEIVE God's GRACE? There's only one way: we receive God's GRACE by FAITH (Ephesians 2:8). God loves people and makes His unmerited FAVOR/GRACE available; people love God in return and receive that GRACE by FAITH. That's the basic system in the Kingdom: God makes GRACE available and people then receive that GRACE by FAITH. Our job is the RECEIVING BY FAITH part and there's nothing, absolutely NO thing we can do to deserve any of it. If there were something, anything at all other than our FAITH, we wouldn't have needed Jesus.
After we're born again, GRACE continues to be available to help us deal with the ongoing circumstances of our lives. GRACE is not just about being born again; it's also about dealing with the issues of life. In a time of need we can always find what we need at the throne of GRACE (Hebrews 4:16). Most Christians think about GRACE only in terms of getting born again. But the Apostle Paul mentioned many times that it was by GRACE that he was able to accomplish all that he did for the early church. So GRACE is also God's unmerited/undeserved EMPOWERMENT to overcome the persecutions, temptations, trials and tribulations of life to accomplish God's plans and purposes for His Kingdom. In short, GRACE is God's EMPOWERMENT to achieve VICTORY in life. The challenge for Believers is to strengthen the connection to God's empowerment so we can enjoy the blessings of God as an ongoing condition of Christian life.
Downloading God's Grace
Every Believer should be knowledgeable about their connection to God's FAVOR and EMPOWERMENT. Indeed, the GRACE of God is available to us in overflowing sufficiency (2 Corinthians 9:8) to produce victory in every area of life: spirit, soul and body. But we can only "download" that EMPOWERMENT and make use of it in relation to the strength of our FAITH. How does our FAITH get strong enough to produce victory in every area of life? Strength of FAITH comes by hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17). Understanding the Word then is what maintains and strengthens our connection to the EMPOWERMENT we need to produce success. Grace and peace are multiplied to us by UNDERSTANDING His Word (2 Peter 1:2) and everything we need pertaining to life and godliness is available through the knowledge of His Word (2 Peter 1:3). In short, making use of the connection to God's empowerment REQUIRES the study of and meditation on the Word. Therefore, we can see that the availability of God's Word is an integral part of His GRACE; they go together. He has made His Word available in written form for our EMPOWERMENT but we have to RECEIVE it in FAITH, just as we do His GRACE, and then apply it in our lives so that we can be BLESSED in everything we do (James 1:25). The way to receiving more GRACE in one's life goes directly through increasing one's understanding of the Word.
Now we've also discussed in this series that GIVING THANKS is part of staying connected to God's GRACE. It's not a substitute for knowledge and understanding of the Word but they work together to keep us connected to God's EMPOWERMENT. It takes both being grateful and understanding the Word to stay connected to God's GRACE. So now we have working together God's GRACE, God's Word, our FAITH and our THANKSGIVING. When they all work together efficiently we will be wonderfully joined to His EMPOWERMENT.
But there's still one other aspect to deal with: we have an enemy who wants to separate us from God's empowerment. In other words, He wants to interfere in our "downloading process." He tries to do this by sending persecution, trials and tribulations against us along with lies, deception and manipulation to try to fool us into giving up on God's GRACE. But through Christ we Believers under the New Covenant now have all the authority Satan used to have but we have to remember to use it and keep him under our feet. The Bible says we're supposed to RESIST the devil and he'll flee from us (James 4:7). How do we RESIST him? By speaking the Word of God to Him the same way Jesus did (Matthew 4:1-11), by commanding him out loud to flee (James 4:7) and by GIVING THANKS to God. Even the strongest of Christians forget the last one sometimes but take a look at 1 Corinthians 10:10 which shows us that we can keep the door closed to the "destroyer" with our gratitude which is to say by GIVING THANKS. Therefore, THANKSGIVING is a weapon against the enemy, it shuts him out from our lives, it protects us and it connects us to God's GRACE. When a few things aren't going right in your life, it's not God's fault; it's the enemy that comes to kill, steal and destroy (John 10:10) as well as the consequence of our own bad choices and decisions that the devil used to affect your life. So instead of focusing on those relatively few bad things in your life, start THANKING God for the many good things He's done and the enemy will soon depart. When the devil sees you're serious and that he can't prevail against you, he will flee. He has to!
Grace is Never Connected to Works
Now the main point of today's article is that God doesn't owe any of us anything; there's nothing we can do to deserve anything from Him. Sometimes Believers lose sight of this and it starts to interfere with their lifestyle of GIVING THANKS. If you're committed to GIVING THANKS, it's not that God is responding to you with more empowerment because of something you've done. Rather, it's about the change that occurs in you, YOU are the one that changes as your FAITH becomes increasingly able to RECEIVE greater empowerment. God does NOT owe us anything whatsoever in return for anything we've ever done including our THANKSGIVING. This is a real important point because if we start GIVING THANKS and we don't see our circumstances improving like we think they should, then many of us have a tendency to become resentful and angry with God for not responding to our good works. There are NO good works that can impress God, THANKSGIVING included. Jesus already did the work and He was the only one who could've ever done it for ALL time (Hebrews 10:12).
Some Believers think that just because they're children of God, He ought to do something to bring them out of their particular circumstances. It's the least He could do! But friend God has already done everything He's going to do about those circumstances. He sent Jesus to the Cross who truly did NOT deserve to go there and now it's up to Believers to resist the enemy (James 4:7) and grow their FAITH so they'll be able to RECEIVE the victory He's already provided through Christ. When we start sensing the emergence of any anger or resentment against the Lord, it's time to intensify our THANKSGIVING. There's nothing left over that He owes us anyway. Meanwhile, it's impossible to be angry and resentful at the same time that we're pouring out our sincere THANKS for all the great things He's done.
Other Christians are mixed up about the New Testament and believe that God has personally sent them their trials and tribulations either to teach them something or to punish them for their sins. In my view neither of these ideas is scriptural. I don't see in the Word that God ever does anything bad to us and in fact what I DO see is that all good things come from Him (James 1:17) which means that all bad things come from the devil who's the only other possible source. Accordingly, God uses the Holy Spirit to teach us ALL things (John 14:26), not the enemy. Why would He have sent Jesus to the Cross to destroy the works of the devil (I John 3:8), to redeem us from the Curse (Galatians 3:13) and then turn around and somehow use what Jesus destroyed to put us back under the Curse to teach us something instead of just using the Holy Spirit like He said He would?
The other confusion is about God punishing us for our sins. Many Christians believe that He's doing that and a lot of churches teach it every Sunday. But the way I see it the New Testament actually says that God is no longer holding us accountable for our sins (2 Corinthians 5:19, Romans 4:15, Romans 5:13) because Jesus has ALREADY been judged for them. All our sins past, present and future have ALREADY been paid for. They've ALREADY been totally forgiven forever. In fact, God has chosen to NOT even remember them (Hebrews 8:12, 10:17). Since our sins have already been forgiven and God has chosen to forget about them, He's not holding anybody accountable right now. There will be a future Judgment some day, but for Believers our sins will have ALREADY been judged because we have trusted in Christ. Non-believers though will have a problem. No one will wind up going to hell because of their sins but many wind up there because they rejected Jesus.
Another place we can get off in the wrong direction is to start thinking that other people owe us something because we have so many problems or we're in such an exalted position or for whatever reason. Friend, we don't deserve anything from people either and as soon as we start getting all resentful at other people because we feel we're owed something the more likely we are to get ourselves in trouble with unforgiveness and hardness of heart. And then that leads to the thinking that God owes us something too and we develop resentment against Him. People will always disappoint us because they think we ought to owe them something and it usually doesn't even occur to them that they might owe us something. The only thing we OWE other people or they should rightfully OWE us is LOVE (Romans 13:8). Keep away from an attitude of somebody owing you something so you don't dilute your lifestyle of GIVING THANKS. God's GRACE is more than sufficient for you to deal with your abuse at the hands of other people.
And still another area people can get separated from their GRACE is by feeling sorry for themselves because of their circumstances. Sometimes people get so wrapped up in their trials and tribulations they try to get others to pity them so they can attract attention. Sometimes they want you to believe that their suffering has elevated them up to just below Jesus and that you owe them something because of their plight. Many, many people think they're owed something from other people and from God because of the suffering and inconvenience they have to carry. They're carrying the whole load instead of giving it to God so they can make us feel sorry for them and set up some sort of guilt trip that they will benefit from. But friend, GRACE is undeserved, remember? If we start thinking we deserve something then what we DO receive won't be GRACE. Actually we have to pursue and protect a mentality of being content with who we really are: we're just people who don't deserve any of the great things God has made available. We have to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and replace that with GIVING THANKS.
In sum, no body owes anybody anything except LOVE. God loved us first and He asks that we love and trust Him in return. Beyond that He doesn't owe us anything either and there's nothing we can do to change that. If we could do something then Jesus died for nothing and God WOULD owe Jesus a life. The Truth is we are the ones who owe something. We won't have to pay what we owe. Indeed, we owe Jesus for our lives but the debt's been cancelled. Let's just keep things like they are which is why the GRACE of Almighty God is not in any way available to us because of something we've done, something we think was a good work that is absolutely worthless compared to what Jesus did.
Thanks for stopping by tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on February 2. In the meantime may the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing, compelling you to PROSPER in every area of life!
Sinners' Prayer
If you've never invited Jesus to be the Lord of your life, you need to and you can do it today just by saying out loud the following simple prayer:
Jesus I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and that God raised you from the dead. I acknowledge that my sins have been forgiven and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.
If you were sincere as you prayed this prayer, God has already come into your life and you are a new creation, a totally new species recreated in His image. Now ask the Lord to lead you to a good faith-based, bible-teaching church where you can be equipped to fulfill your potential in the Kingdom of God.
And, when you get a chance have someone help you look up the following scriptures because they confirm what you've done by saying this prayer today and believing what you said:
Romans 10:9
2 Corinthians 5:17
Ephesians 2:8
Prayer Requests
If you have a Prayer Request, please connect to the Link below and follow the promptings. The PLN staff members pray over Prayer Requests every Tuesday morning at 10:00 AM eastern time. Agree with us for God to answer your petition.
http://www.creditcounseling.net/prayer-request.aspx
Donations
If you've been edified by Prosperous Life Newsletter, you may want to consider making a SEED FAITH offering to support the Ministry (Galatians 6:6-7). God has instructed us to simply provide folks with an opportunity to sow seed into good ground so in due season you'll be eligible to reap a harvest and the rest is up to you as the Spirit leads. For your information PLN is a nonprofit gift to the Body of Christ so your financial offerings will usually be tax deductible (consult your tax advisor). Just go to the secure Shopping Cart on the Cornerstone web site by connecting through the following link. We appreciate your support and generosity.
http://www.creditcounseling.net/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1
About Prosperous Life Newsletter
PLN is an outreach ministry of Make A Way Ministries domiciled in Miami, Florida. It is in its 17th year of distribution and has been published continuously since January 1998. It's an e-publication primarily about finances in the Kingdom of God and is sent ONLY to our email list of MINISTRY MEMBERS. If you're reading this and aren't yet on our growing email list, please let us know and we'll be so very happy to add you to the list.
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