Today we continue our series entitled, “Pursuing Grace-Based Success!”
Here are our foundational scriptures:
(Ephesians 2:8-10 ERV)
8 I mean that you have been saved by grace because you believed. You did not save yourselves; it was a gift from God.
9 You are not saved by the things you have done, so there is nothing to boast about.
10 God has made us what we are. In Christ Jesus, God made us new people so that we would spend our lives doing the good things he had already planned for us to do.
(1 Corinthians 1:30,31 NLT)
30 God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.
31 Therefore, as the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord.”
(2 Timothy 1:9 NKJV)
Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began.
Today we will also look at this verse:
(3 John 2, AMP)
“Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in every way and [that your body] may keep well, even as [I know] your soul keeps well and prospers.”
So far in this series, we have looked at the definition of Godly success, the difference between working hard on your own and working by God’s grace, and the fact that God loves us. I spent time on the love of God because faith works by love (Gal 5:6). The Apostle John said, “So we know the love that God has for us, and we trust that love” (1 John 4:16). When you know God loves you, and you get to the point where you trust in His love, you are in a position to embrace, access and enjoy God’s grace for earthly success.
The reason I take my time on topics is because it takes time to renew your mind. If your thinking and God’s thinking about a given topic are not in alignment, you will never maximize that area of your life until you renew your mind. In our scripture today, the Apostle John said, “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in every way and [that your body] may keep well, even as [I know] your soul keeps well and prospers.” Let’s consider this scripture in light of all the others we have studied thus far in this series.
So what does this mean to you today? A few things.
1. You will never experience success on the outside until you see it on the inside. Your legs will never take away. Your soul has never been.
2. The moment you were Born-Again, your spirit was changed instantly by the Holy Spirit. But your soul was not. Your soul must be changed by the word of God. The word of God helps you to renew your mind.
3. The day you were Born-Again, you were a new man, living in an old body, but you were in need of a new mind. You need a new mindset to maximize your purpose and potential. You must reframe your thinking to align with God’s thinking, and you must build up the faith to believe what God believes about you.
4. For those of you that watch today’s word daily, my prayer is that your mindset is continually being reshaped and reframed to align with God. It’s the same with me. It should be the same for all of us. When we come to the word of God, the word of God contains the character attributes, nature, and ways of God. And whenever our ways do not align with God’s, God is not going to change, so we must change.
5. Your soul is comprised of your mind (the way you think), emotions (the way you feel), and will (the way you make decisions). Soul prosperity is about aligning your thinker, feeler, and chooser with God and His word.
6. Soul prosperity is key to life prosperity. The way God’s process works, He seeks to make you prosperous in your soul (first) before He can manifest prosperity in your life. Because material possessions can ruin a fool. People tell God they want things, but God will never give you what He knows will destroy you. He wants to see you prosperous in your soul before He opens the door of divine favor.
7. If God gives you what you have been praying for before you are ready to handle the weight of the anointing attached to it, then what was supposed to be a blessing will become a curse. This series is about success, and to be clear, you must be ready to handle success. Many preachers preach about handling trouble and overcoming problems. I teach on that as well. But you must also be prepared to handle success. If you are not ready for it, success can destroy you.
8. One of the reasons why I teach so much about God’s unfailing love and His unearned grace is because meditating on love and grace will keep you humble, especially when God favors you with a success that far exceeds your dreams. When God opens that door, and you walk through it, experiencing a life you never imagined, if you don’t remain humble in your heart, then your mindset will ruin the experience. Before you know it, what was meant to be a blessing to you will wind up derailing you from your destiny!
9. Continually meditate on God’s love and grace. God wants you to know that He individually and uniquely loves you and that He wants to bless you because of His unearned and amazing grace. You become stable in life when you recognize and embrace God’s love and grace. Come what may, you never think more highly of yourself than you ought, and you never delve into thoughts of despair or depression. You remain steady, stable, fixed, and focused, becuase you know God loves you, and He is using you by His grace. This type of steady and consistent mindset is required for long-term Godly success!
10. You should confess every day that you are God’s beloved and that your life is a grace-case. When you feed on this truth, you will become more and more conscious of it, your heart will remain open to God, and God will be free to use you for His glory. And when He does, becuase your mindset is right, you will never get too high (to where you are conceited or arrogant), and you will never get too low (to where you are overwhelmed and depressed) because you have developed a prosperous soul. A prosperous soul keeps you in alignment with your divine assignment! As a result, YOU LACK NOTHING!
That’s enough for today.
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I thank You for teaching me about grace-based success.
It is Your will that I prosper and be in health. I am on this planet because You sent me here for my divine purpose. You made plans for me before the foundations of the world, and my assignment is to FIND, FOLLOW and FINISH those plans before I die!
As I seek to experience Your grace to do what I was born to do, I submit myself to the process of mind renewal. I know my life-prosperity is connected to my soul-prosperity. So if there is any area of my life where my soul (the way I think, feel and make decisions) does not align with Your will, I submit myself to changing.
I align my soul with Your will for my life. I will see myself and think of myself the way You see and think of me. I believe what You believe about me.
I change on the inside, knowing that internal change is required before I see external success. And as I do, 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.
