Today we will continue our series entitled “God’s Grace & Our Faith.” For the past few days, we looked at John 1:14&17 and Galatians 5:6. I recently added Ephesians 3:16-20. We will continue to flow in this vein.
(John 1:14 NIV)
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(Jon 1:17 NIV)
For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
(Galatians 5:6 KJV)
For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.
(Ephesians 3:16-20 TPT)
16 And I pray that he would unveil within you the unlimited riches of his glory and favor until supernatural strength floods your innermost being with his divine might and explosive power.
17 Then, by constantly using your faith, the life of Christ will be released deep inside you, and the resting place of his love will become the very source and root of your life.
18–19 Then you will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences—the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions. How deeply intimate and far-reaching is his love! How enduring and inclusive it is! Endless love beyond measurement that transcends our understanding—this extravagant love pours into you until you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God!
20 Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.
For the past few months, I have been teaching you something that is building. I first started teaching you about the grace of God (which I have been teaching on for years). I then taught you how you are no longer under The Law of Moses. I told you that Jesus ushered us into a dispensation of grace. I then started teaching you about your requirement to live by faith and how faith works by love. While I am still teaching on that, I spent time teaching you about the amazing nature of God’s endless and unconditional love. Today I will attempt to tie all those things together.
So what does this mean for you today? A few things.
1. To comprehend the deepness of God’s love, you must embrace the reality of God’s grace.
a) Your human performance could never measure up to the size of God’s divine call on your life.
— The reason why I keep driving home the love and grace of God is that without understanding both, you will invariably live beneath God’s best.
— If you think you have to perform for God to bless you, you will always live beneath God’s best because your performance will never be good enough to match God’s goodness and grace towards you.
— On your own, you could never be good enough to earn what God called you to do. The good news is that Jesus was good enough FOR you.
b) Grace does not come BY works; it comes FOR work.
— God called you by grace despite your flaws and despite your bad actions. He then gives you the grace to perform good actions, actions that are pleasing in His sight, actions you could never perform without Him.
— My point is that while you cannot work FOR grace, you are most certainly called to perform work BY grace. It is the grace of God that enables, empowers, and employs you to perform what God called you to do.
— Because God loves you with unconditional love, He showers you with His grace to do what you could never do without Him.
— If you open your heart to God’s love and grace, you will be able to expand your capacity to believe God to the point where you SEE yourself doing what He called you to do. At that point, you will have the faith to STEP OUT and actually attempt it. When you do, your faith will tap into God’s grace. God’s grace will kick in where your human ability runs out, and you will experience the supernatural. This is how God uses you on this planet to perform His will, and it all starts with God’s love. If you don’t believe God loves you, you will never start the process. Faith works by love. When you know you are loved, and you launch out in faith, your faith will tap into God’s grace, and God will do, through you, what you could never do without Him!
c) God is looking for you to open your heart to His Great Grace in this season.
— For the past two years, at the end of every message, I have you to say, “GREATER IS COMING FOR ME!” I believe this with all my heart. I believe this is what heaven is saying. But on earth, we will not receive what heaven is releasing if we don’t have these two mindsets: 1) God loves me, and 2) God wants to bless me because He is good, not because I am.
— You cannot work FOR your divine assignment; you just yield to it because you know God loves you, and you trust Him. Once you yield to it and embrace it by God’s grace, you are in a position to launch out in faith, and God’s best will be manifested in your life.
*** May the grace of God flow in your life in this season like never before! And may it flow because you are convinced God loves you!
2. It takes the Holy Spirit to comprehend how high, wide, and deep God’s love is.
— God’s love for you is far deeper than your human capacity to comprehend. Love is something humans practice. God doesn’t practice love. God IS love. It takes the Holy Spirit for us to get a revelation of God’s love.
You must understand how God’s love is different than the human concept of love. There are different types of love:
a) Starge: A family type of love – how you love your brothers and sisters.
b) Eros: A physical type of love – how you love your spouse. This is where we get the word erotic.
c) Phileo: A brotherly love – how you love your friends (Philadelphia).
d) Agape: The Love of God – that comes from God. You can only love this way once the Holy Spirit has poured this love into your heart (Rom 5:5).
- This love is not conditional.
- This love takes no account of the evil done to it.
- This love does not keep good records of bad things.
- This love is immutable – it does not change!
- This love is eternal – it will never stop!
— God’s love (agape) for you is truly unconditional. Your love for God was birthed out of the good things He has done for you. But His love for you was birthed out of His goodness and grace, and it has nothing to do with what you do for Him. God started loving you before the world began.
— God is not mad at you. He is not out to get you. If God wanted to get you, there would be no place you could hide. He is seeking you out but not to hurt you. God is chasing after you to bless you because He loves you.
— You will have a hard time believing and receiving all the good things God wants to do in, with, and through you by grace if you fail to embrace His love. And to do so, you must open your heart to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
— What God wants to do for you by grace (completely unmerited, unearned, and undeserved) is almost too good to believe, but you can believe it when you come to the understanding that God wants to bless you simply because He loves you.
— When you accept and believe the love of God by the Holy Spirit, your faith walk will go to an entirely new level. Most believers attempt to live by faith based on their perception of how good they are being towards God. Meaning that if they feel like they are doing pretty good, then God is going to answer their prayers and respond to their faith. However, that is not the message of the New Testament at all. That is performance-based religion and not the grace-based relationship God wants to have with you.
— When you understand the message of the New Testament, you embrace the grace of God because God loves you. When you are convinced God loves you, your faith will be strong because your faith will be rooted in God’s love and His grace towards you and not in your goodness towards Him! At this point, Paul says, “the resting place of his love will become the very source and root of your life.”
*** I pray you get delivered from performance-based religion, so you can fully embrace the love and grace of God! Once you do, you will start living as the man/woman God destined you to be from the foundations of the world! This won’t happen because you are good. It will only happen becuase God is good!
That’s enough for today.
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I am learning to rest in Your endless and amazing love. You love me with an everlasting love. You want to use me by grace because You love me, to accomplish all You called me to do from the foundations of the world. There was a time when I could not accept Your best because I kept factoring in my performance. My performance never measured up to the size of the call on my life. But those measuring days are over!
I know I am not good enough, but Jesus was good enough for me. I know I am not worthy, but Jesus was worthy for me. So I simply accept Your assignment by grace, and I pursue it by faith. I open my heart to receive what You have already provided.
Living this way, You empower me to do what I have never done without You, to see what I have never seen, to impact lives I have never touched, and to experience the best in every area of my life. Not because I’m so good, but because You’re so good! Not because of my performance, but only because of Your amazing and unearned grace! The resting place of Your love has become the very source and root of my life! Therefore, I know GREATER IS COMING FOR ME! I declare this by faith. In Jesus’ name, Amen!
This is Today’s Word! Apply it and Prosper.
