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.
(John 3:16 KJV)
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
So what does this mean for you today? I will tie all I have been teaching to John 3:16 today.
1. God does what He does for us because He loves us.
When you meet someone who goes out of their way to be nice to you or be a blessing to you, most people in today’s society would initially be skeptical of that person. They want to know why the person is doing what they’re doing. They want to know if the person has an ulterior motive. We live in a society where people are not accustomed to someone wanting to be a blessing to them without any expectation of anything in return. But this is exactly what happens when we deal with God. While we may have been conditioned by this world (and by the systems of this world) to think a certain way, when we come to God, we must learn to open our hearts to His goodness, His grace, and His love.
If you go to YouTube today and you search for “Discover your why,” or “Find your why,” you will find thousands upon thousands of responses. The point of these videos is to drive home the fact that you have to discover what your internal motivation is. If you discover your “why,” or in other words, discover your purpose, then your life will have more clarity because you will know what is driving you internally. Furthermore, if you can understand the “why” of another person, it will help you understand who they are and why they do what they do. What I want to drive home to you this morning, within the context of the series, is that God has a “why.” If you can understand God’s “why,” then you can better understand why God does what he does. Well, God’s “why” is love!
God does what He does because He loves us, and God’s love is one-sided. God is motivated by the fact that He loves us, that He made plans for us from the foundations of the world, and that He wants to see those plans come to pass in our lives before we die. The fact that we are humans and flawed is not a distractor to God in any way. He knows our thoughts before we think them, our words before we speak them, and our actions before we take them. He knows everything we have ever done and will ever do, and He chooses to love us anyway.
Love is God’s underlying motivation. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Jesus so loved us that he willingly went to the cross. The Holy Spirit so loves us that he deals with us on the inside, day after day, despite the mistakes that we make over and over again, and He still works with us to become the men/women we are called to be. I don’t know how to say this more clearly, but God does all He does for you simply because He loves you!
I know that our society is skeptical of people that want to go out of their way to bless you without any ulterior motive, but you have to be renewed from that line of thinking if you want to open your heart to God’s best. You have to believe that God wants to bless you because God wants to bless you because God is good. You have to believe that God wants to bless you because He made plans for you, and he is not distracted or demotivated by your lack of perfect performance. Your performance does not negatively influence God’s desires for you. God loves you unconditionally, and He wants to bless you because of this passionate and amazing love.
If you can ever get to the point where you believe what I’m saying, you will open your heart to the love of God, and you will exercise faith that is rooted and grounded in God’s love. Faith Works by love. Please take some time today to meditate and medicate on the love of God. Please pause for a moment, from time to time, to ponder, consider, and contemplate the fact that God loves you with this amazing love. You are God’s beloved. You are the apple of his eye. Angels in heaven were baffled by God’s love towards us. The psalmist said that angels questioned God concerning us. Angels had to ask, “What is man that you are mindful of him? In other words, angels were asking, “Why do you love these humans so much?” Angels were asking, “Hey God, why do you think about them so much?” And his answer is simple. His answer is, I am always thinking about them because I love them.
For weeks I have been telling you that faith Works by love. I pray that you’re getting it. Your faith will never be at the level that God wants you to be until you are convinced that God loves you and that his love towards you is unconditional. Now, when you get to that point, and the love of God fills your heart, you will believe God on a level that you’ve never believed Him before. You will dream God-sized dreams. You will see yourself the way God sees you. You will believe what God believes about you. You will peer into the invisible and believe the impossible. You will believe God to experience a life that far exceeds your wildest imagination because, at that point, you are convinced that God loves you.
Faith is not what happens when you convince God. Faith is what happens when God convinces you. And for God to convince you fully, you must be convinced that he loves you! Faith Works by love. Please believe the love and receive the love. The love of God will change you forever. Love is God’s why!
2. While love is God’s WHY, Grace is God’s HOW!
I have already explained to you that love is God’s “why.” Now that you understand that, I am going to take it a step further. Love is God’s why, but grace is His “how.”
I will attempt to explain God’s love and grace toward you in different stages. The first stage happened before you were born. God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten son to die for us. He did this, the Bible says, while we were yet sinners. He did this as an act of His unearned grace.
Grace is unearned, unmerited, and undeserved. So the fact that God sent his Son to die on a cross for us, and God’s Son actually went to the cross for us, is an act of amazing grace. Grace is how God did it, but love is why God did it. God sent his Son to die for us, and the Son willingly took our place on the cross simply because he loves us.
Once we get past that stage now, let’s talk about the actual act of salvation on our part. Jesus died on the cross for us 2,000 years ago. Eternal life has already been provided for the world. But when we were born, we were born ignorant of the gospel, and we needed someone to reveal Jesus to us. God loves us so much that he sent people to us over and over and over again in order to reveal Jesus in a way that we could see, hear and understand. It is this tireless dedication to us, where God basically tracked us down until we accepted Jesus, that led to our salvation.
The day we were born again, we received what God had already provided. God had already provided eternal life by grace, and we received it by faith. This eternal life was provided to the world simply because God loves us.
The next stage is our post-salvation life. Once we are born again, and we know we’re going to heaven, the fact that we are still here is evidence that God is not through with us. So this means that we have to spend the remainder of our days on this planet attempting to get out of us the things that got deposited in us before the world again. Even this is an act of love and grace. We know God’s grace is on us to do what we could never do without him, but honestly, we would never release the faith to tap into that race until we get convinced that God loves us. Set another way, the only way we will ever walk in the fullness of the grace for our assignment is if we get convinced that God loves us with everlasting love.
We see love and grace in operation when Jesus went to the cross for the world. We see love and grace in operation the day we made repented of our sin and made Jesus our Lord. And now, we see love and grace in operation of every day of our lives as we seek to become the men or women that God has called us to be.
The message for today is simple: I want you to believe that God wants to use you by his grace, which is unearned, unmerited, and undeserved. And I want you to believe that God’s underlying motivation is simply the fact that he loves you with unconditional love. If you can believe that God loves you, and you can believe that God wants to use you in a way that is unmerited and undeserving and that is not tied to your performance, you are now in a position to live a life of faith.
Faith taps into God’s grace, and faith works by love. I have been teaching you these concepts for a while. I pray that you are getting it and that you believe God loves you, not because you’re good, but because he is. As you enter this day, I pray that you open your heart to see the invisible, believe the impossible, and perform the supernatural. You have a God who loves you and who wants to use you buy his amazing grace. This is #TheGraceLife.
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I love You and I am not convinced that You love me. You love me with an everlasting love. You love me by grace and not my performance. You loved me before I ever loved You. You sent Your Son Jesus to die for me, while I was yet a sinner. When I repented of my sin and made Jesus my Lord, You birthed me anew, by Your Spirit, as an act of Your unearned grace, simply because You love me. And now, You work with me daily, because You love me with this uncdontinal love. You want to bless me solely because You love me. I am convinced of Your love and grace. 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.
