(Ephesians 3:20 MSG) God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
This morning I will share a different type of message. Yesterday was a big day for my family and I feel led to share a personal testimony. I have been teaching you about God’s amazing grace and how we can achieve grace-based success. I am a witness.
My mother came to the United States in 1970 in search of a better life for herself and for the children she would one-day have. She and my father settled in Brooklyn and I was born two years later as the first of my family to be born in this country. My parents divorced when I was three, my mother did a great job of raising me as a single parent, but our financial situation forced me to be raised in the ghetto. We took public assistance and looking back I am very thankful for the role food stamps, WIC, medicaid, and the other Welfare services played in our lives. We certainly needed the help back then and the government provided it.
The environment I grew up in was full of negative influences. Drugs (both taking and selling), alcohol, violence, and even murder, were commonplace. I remember walking through abandoned buildings full of broken glass and broken dreams, hoping to one day leave New York City. There was time in my life when just being alive at the age of 18 seemed like an achievement. I painfully watched as many of my friends wound up either in jail or the morgue. My saving grace was that I had a mother who prayed for me, who taught me how to live Godly values, and who was a beacon of hope in the midst of darkness. By God’s grace I joined the Army at the tender age of 17 and I left East New York, Brooklyn.
I could tell you my wife’s story, but I don’t want to be long. All I will tell you is that she grew up in abject poverty in Dominica and her financial situation growing up made me look rich. Isabella and I both enlisted in the United States Army, by God’s grace we both became officers, we both graduated from college, and we both went on to earn graduate degrees. Yesterday we celebrated Ricardo jr.’s graduation from college and he is the first of four children, being the oldest, to do so.
As Isabella and I stood in the Culinary Institute of America yesterday, we were very proud and thankful. Not only did God get Ricardo jr. into the best Culinary school in the United States (and some consider it the best in the world), but he graduated with his Bachelor’s degree in three and a half years. As I stood in the auditorium and I thought about my life, all I could do was thank God for His grace and kindness towards me. The scripture I share with you this morning, Ephesians 3:20, is a scripture that defines my life. We serve a God is who able to do FAR more than we could ever imagine, guess or request in our wildest dreams! I can certainly say that God has been good to me by His unearned and amazing grace.
So what does this mean to you today? A few things.
- God made plans for you before the world began and His plans far exceed anything you can come up with.
- True success can only be found when you discover, develop, and then deploy into God’s purpose for your life.
- God specializes in taking people the world would never consider candidates for greatness and doing exceedingly great things through them.
- God routinely turned cowards into champions, weaklings into warriors, nobodies into somebodies, and bottom-rung into top-tier.
- Powerful things happen when you choose to make an alignment with your divine assignment.
- If you are willing to endure the process of dying to self and become the person God destined you to be, you will experience an amazing and fulfilling life.
- When you walk with God and you have died to self to the point where you are living the life He birthed you to live, you will get more done than you ever expected, experience more success than you ever imagined, change more lives than you ever dreamed of touching, and do it all without worry or stress.
- God’s vision is too big and His blessing is too strong for Him to just be concerned with you. When God looks at you He sees your children and your children’s children. When God leads you to die to self and to accept His best for your life, He is attempting to get you in alignment with His will so you, your children and your grandchildren can all be blessed.
- The seeds you sow today can still be producing a harvest two generations from now, so think carefully before you make key decisions.
- God is good and He wants to bless you because He is good. Stop fighting Him. Surrender to Him and experience the life you were born to live… a life of grace-based success!
Closing Confession: Father, I thank You for teaching me about Your grace and my requirement to live by faith. The more I study Your grace, the more I realize why You want to bless me and use me. You made plans for me before the world began and You made those plans by grace. Those plans contain my life’s purpose and part of my purpose is to become a conduit through which You are able to impact and influence the world – both the people of the world and the systems of the world. I have made many plans in my day. I have formulated plans I thought were big and bold. But the more I walk with You, and the more You reveal to me what You actually want to do with my life, the more I realize my plans were small. You are able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above anything I can ask, think or imagine. You are a good God, You have been very good to me, and You continuously reveal to me how much You want to bless me. Not because I am so good, but only because of Your grace. So Father, I submit and surrender. I die to self to the point where Your plan for my life becomes my plan for my life. Where Your opinion of me becomes my opinion of me. I accept everything You want to do IN, WITH and THROUGH me. And as I die to self, I know Your blessing will freely flow to me, my children, and my children’s children! I declare this by faith! In Jesus’ name. Amen.
This is Today’s Word! Apply it and Prosper.
