Today we will continue our series entitled “God’s Grace & Our Faith.” We have been looking at John 1:14&17, Galatians 5:6, and Ephesians 3:16-20 for a while now. I have been teaching you something that is building. I pray the love of God is filling your heart as you open yourself to the reality of God’s love. We will continue to flow in this vein today.
(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.
So what does this mean for you today? To answer this question, I will tie it to something I said yesterday. In yesterday’s message, I made the following statement:
“This is how it works: Love comes, the root comes, and then revelation comes. Once you are rooted and grounded in love, you will start to receive the revelation of the Holy Spirit concerning God’s best for your life. You will start to see, believe and pursue what He reveals. You will accept it and pursue it, even though you know you are not worthy of it, because, by that point, you will be convinced God loves you.”
I will now attempt to connect what I just said to Ephesians 3:20.
1. Dying to self brings you in alignment with your assignment and it positions you to become a conduit of God’s love and power.
Over the years, I have repeatedly taught you some version of the following:
a) God made plans for you before the foundations of the world,
b) He already gave you the grace to fulfill His divine plans for your life,
c) When we come to God, our plans and God’s plans may not be in sync,
d) When we are not in sync with God, one of us needs to change, and it will not be God,
e) Dying to sin and self brings us in alignment with God and His assignment for our lives, thus positioning us to experience the supernatural life we were destined to have.
I will now tie that to what I have been teaching in this series.
The point of Ephesians 3:20 is that God is able to do all these great and amazing things through us. God is limitless and all-powerful. So when He takes up residence inside of us, there is literally nothing that He can do. The issue is with us! The more of us we have in the way, the less God is able is free to do what he destined to do through us from the foundations of the world. This is where dying to self comes in, but this is also where the love of God comes in. You will never willingly die to self until you are convinced God loves you. Because dying to self requires giving up your plans for God’s. It requires giving up your will for His. Naturally speaking, it’s very hard for a human to give up things that he or she is wed to unless they truly believe in the person they are yielding to. This is where the love of God comes in. When you know God loves you and that He wants nothing but His best for your life, you are willing to give up anything for His desires, even when you don’t know what His desires are! This requires faith, and this is why faith works by love!
2. Once you are in alignment with God, your will and His will become ONE.
When you consciously make an alignment with your divine assignment, and you adjust your will and submit it to God’s will for your life, you find that you start to like what God likes, hate what God hates, and think as God thinks. Once you start living this way, you can virtually ask for whatever you want, and God will do it because what you want will be what He wants for your life. Since you have died to self, you are actually not asking for what you want. You are asking for what God wants because God’s desires have become your desires. This is the goal.
— Jesus said, “If you live in me and what I say lives in you, then ask for anything you want, and it will be yours” (John 15:7). Basically, at this point, your will is God’s will because your will has been aligned with and submitted to whatever God wants for your life.
— If you ever get to the point where you ONLY want what God wants, you will live an amazing life because God’s plans are better than yours! It is at this point that Ephesians 3:20 will become your reality. Paul says, “He [God] will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He [God] will outdo them all!” Simply put, once you die to self and you are willing to get yourself out of the way, God is free to do, through you, what He planned before the world began.
3. You should WANT to die to your plans because God out-planned you before the world began.
Let’s say you plan out your ideal life. Let’s think about what that would look like:
— Imagine you got up every morning and put forth the maximum effort you can as a human.
— Imagine you did everything right and everything aligned perfectly with your plans.
— Imagine every person you need to help you accomplish your goals showed up for you on time and willing to help 100% of the time.
— Imagine you always had all the money and additional resources you needed to accomplish your goals and succeed in every endeavor.
— Imagine every panned out, every plot, plan, project, thought, scheme, and strategy. I mean absolutely everything you put your hands to do, PROSPERED!
Can you see it? Can you imagine it? Do you have a picture of what your perfect life would look like? If so, then Paul teaches us that GOD IS ABLE to do far beyond that! If we die to self and our plans and then accept the plans God made for us before the world began, God is able to, as Paul says, “… achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination!” Paul goes on to say, “God will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.”
God’s plans are greater than your plans. God’s ability far surpasses your human ability. You are finite and flawed. God is infinite and perfect. If you die to self and you willingly allow God to live in you, with you, and through you, you will live a life that far exceeds anything you could have ever imagined. I am a witness. That is already my reality! I pray it becomes yours!
God is able to live an amazing life, THROUGH YOU, if you let Him! This is #TheGraceLife, and I am convinced it is the way God wants us to live!
4. Opening your heart to the love of God is the foundation for your faith and God’s grace.
Yesterday I told you that love comes, then the root (of love) comes, and it is established in your heart. Once it is, then the revelation of who God called you to be comes. Said another way, until you are convinced that God loves you, you are: a) not truly willing to give up your plans for His, b) not in a position to hear what God is saying to you about your future, and c) definitely not in a position to believe what God believes about you.
— The love of God is what helps you to open your heart to the enormity of your assignment.
— The love of God is what helps you to willingly give up your plans for God’s plans.
— The love of God is what helps you to believe what God believes about you.
— It is the revelation of God’s love that positions us to believe. This is where Paul says God reveals “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!” After we get the revelation of God’s love on this level, Paul says, “God is able to achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination!”
If you want God to do what He planned to do in/with/through you before the world began, without any hindrances, you must get to the point where you are convinced that God loves you with an unconditional and everlasting love! Faith works by love!
That’s enough for today.
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I rest in Your love so long that I get to the point where I trust You with all my heart. Since I trust You, I am able to die to self. I give up the plans I made for my life, and I open my heart to the plans You made for me. There will be some areas where You let me know that what I wanted is actually what You want for me, so I will continue to pursue those things. But there will be many areas where what I wanted was either off course from my destiny or I was thinking TOO SMALL for you. Either way, when there is a disconnect between my plans and Your plans, I yield to Your plans. Your plans win every time. Living this way, YOU ARE ABLE to do infinitely more than my greatest request, much more than my most unbelievable dream, and freely exceed my wildest imaginations! This is how 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.
