Today, we continue our series entitled “Living the Grace Life,” where we will learn to embrace and walk in God’s unmerited, unearned, and often undeserved favor throughout 2025.
As part of this series, I am teaching a verse-by-verse exposition of the book of Galatians. Let’s get into it.
Key scriptures for this year:
2 Corinthians? ?9?:?8? ?TPT??
“Yes, God is more than ready to overwhelm you with every form of grace, so that you will have more than enough of everything—every moment and in every way. He will make you overflow with abundance in every good thing you do.” ?? ??
Galatians? ?5?:?4? ?TPT??
“If you want to be made right with God by fulfilling the obligations of the law, you have cut off more than your flesh—you have cut yourselves off from Christ and have fallen away from the revelation of grace!”
Romans? ?6?:?14? ?ERV??
“Sin will not be your master, because you are not under law. You now live under God’s grace.” ??
1 Corinthians? ?15?:?10? ?NIV??
“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”
Scripture(s) we will study today:
Galatians 1:16 TPT
“…to reveal his Son in me so that I would proclaim the good news of him to the non-Jewish people. After I had this encounter, I kept it a secret, sharing it with no one. And I had no desire to run to Jerusalem and try to impress those who had become Apostles before me.”
Galatians 1:16 ERV
“God was pleased to let me see and know his Son, so that I could tell the Good News about him to the non-Jewish people. When God showed me his Son, I did not ask any person for advice.”
Galatians 1:16 NIV
“…to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being.”
Setting the Stage:
Yesterday, we talked about how God’s calling doesn’t make sense to human logic. Today, I want to focus on something even more profound: Why God intentionally reverses course on what makes human sense. Think about this for a moment. God had two main assignments in the New Testament: reaching the Jews and reaching the Gentiles. He had two main instruments: Paul (the most educated man in Jewish Law) and Peter (an uneducated fisherman).
Any business consultant would have matched Paul with the Jews and Peter with the Gentiles. But God did the exact opposite!
This wasn’t a mistake. This wasn’t poor planning. This was a divine and intentional reversal of human norms. God purposefully ‘flipped the script’ to demonstrate that success in His Kingdom doesn’t come from human qualifications but from divine grace. It’s not about your performance but about God, His plans, His purposes, and His empowerment to do what we could never do without Him!
God sent the Jewish expert where his Law-based expertise was useless, and He sent the untrained fisherman where Law-based expertise was everything. Why? Because God delights in showcasing His sovereignty by putting us in situations that force us to rely on His grace rather than our credentials.
So, what does this mean to you today? A few things.
1. God Often Calls You Where Your Strengths Become Irrelevant.
Paul spent decades becoming an expert in the Law. He could quote Scripture in Hebrew, debate theology with the best scholars, and navigate every aspect and even nuance of Jewish tradition. Then God sent him to people who didn’t care about any of it!
How this applies to you:
— God may call you in such a way that your greatest natural advantages might be completely useless in your divine assignment. This isn’t to frustrate you. It is to deliver you from relying on self. Self-reliance is the opposite of God’s grace.
— God often positions you where your resume means nothing so that His grace can mean everything.
— What you consider your strongest qualification might be exactly what God wants you to lay down to pick up His supernatural power.
— When God sends you where your strengths don’t matter, He’s preparing to show His strength through your weakness. This is what He did with Paul. Or, when God sends you where you are clearly unqualified, and He gives you wisdom that confounds those who are qualified, once again, His strength is made perfect in your weakness. This is what He did with Peter.
— Your expertise can become a hindrance if it makes you think you don’t need God. Paul’s knowledge of the Law could have made him self-sufficient among Jews, so God sent him to Gentiles.
— Sometimes, God has to neutralize your natural abilities to activate your supernatural capacity. Living #TheGraceLife requires dying to self and relying on God.
2. When You Operate in Your Strength, You Make Jesus Irrelevant.
This is a sobering truth: when you can accomplish something in your own strength, you don’t need God’s strength. And when you don’t need God’s strength, you’ve essentially made Jesus irrelevant to that area of your life.
How this applies to you:
— If you can do your assignment without prayer, without the Holy Spirit, and without supernatural intervention, then you’re not walking in your divine purpose—you’re just having a career. You are operating as a mere man, and you are no different from the world.
— The danger of operating in your natural strength is that it produces natural results. But God called you to produce supernatural results that can only be explained by His grace.
— When you succeed in your own ability, people applaud you. But when you succeed beyond your ability, people see and applaud Jesus.
— Self-sufficiency is the enemy of God-dependency. The very talents that make you successful can make you spiritually bankrupt if they cause you to operate independently of God.
— Paul could have impressed Jews with his knowledge, but that would have made the Gospel secondary to his intellect. Among Gentiles, the Gospel HAD to be primary because his scholarship meant nothing to non-Jews. They could care less about how much he knew about something that did not even apply to them. (Side note: I am baffled at why so many Gentiles (non-Jews) fight tooth-and-nail today to hold on to a Law that was not written for them).
— Every time you accomplish something without desperately needing God, you’ve robbed God of His glory and yourself of the opportunity to expereince a manifestation of God’s grace.
— This is why God often calls you to do things that stretch you. You have to get beyond yourself to operate in faith, and when you are living by faith, totally relying on God and His grace, it makes Jesus relevant again! This is what God wants. He wants to be the center and circumference of your life!
3. God Wants Your Life To Showcase His Sovereignty, Not Human Desires.
From a human perspective, what God did with Paul and Peter seems illogical. It was like sending a master chef to teach auto mechanics while sending a mechanic to teach gourmet cooking. But that’s exactly the point!
How this applies to you:
— God’s strategies often contradict every human principle you can imagine. He does this to prove that the power is from Him, not from human wisdom.
— When your assignment seems to waste your preparation, God is usually preparing to use you in ways that exceed your preparation. He wants to use you in a way that is beyond you!
— What looks like poor planning from earth’s perspective is perfect planning from heaven’s perspective.
— God intentionally puts you in situations where your natural abilities are insufficient so that His supernatural ability becomes undeniable.
— If what you consider to be God’s plan for your life makes perfect sense, it might not be God’s plan. His ways are higher than our ways! God often leads us to do things that make no human sense. This puts us in a situation where we have to live by faith. To do what God is leading us to do, we will have to go against common sense and often go against the counsel of people who love us. However, if we are to live by faith and tap into God’s grace, we must be willing to do whatever the Holy Spirit leads us to do, even if it means taking a risk and appearing foolish.
— The Apostle Paul had parents who raised him to become part of the Jewish religious elite. His parents, his family, and his friends were all invested in his success. He was a Pharisee himself and the son of a Pharisee. He had extensive interaction with the Sanhedrin. And when God got a hold of him, he had to leave ALL OF THAT and go in a different direction. Can you imagine how much pushback he got from his family and those he loved? In the end, Paul’s life did NOT turn out the way he planned. It did NOT turn out the way his parents planned. He did NOT become the person all of his friends and family EXPECTED him to become. But guess what? He became who God called him to be. Paul was willing to forfeit the life he created for the life God called him to. Are you willing to make that same sacrifice? I know that I have, and I will continue to!
4. The Way God Leads Us to Succeed Proves It’s All Grace.
When Paul succeeded with Gentiles, and Peter succeeded with Jews, nobody could attribute it to their natural abilities. It was, undeniably and unmistakably, the grace of God!
How this applies to you:
— When you succeed where you shouldn’t, it becomes a testimony to God’s grace, not your ability. Conversely, if you succeed at something you are not called to do, the only thing on display is your humanity and selfish desires. So, while the world may call you a success, God won’t. God does not measure success the way the world does. God measures success in PURPOSE!
— Grace-based success is more powerful than ability-based success because it points to God, not to you.
— The way God does things creates undeniable testimonies. People can’t explain away what only God could have done.
— Your success in an area where you’re naturally weak becomes a platform for God’s glory. To say it another way, when you thrive where you should fail, skeptics are silenced, and God is glorified.
— Divine reversals produce divine results that demand divine explanations. Your life becomes a testimony of God’s grace, not your effort.
— If God has you in a situation that seems backward to the standards of the world, get ready! He’s about to do something that only He can get credit for. This is #TheGraceLife, and it is how we are supposed to live!
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I thank You for divine reversals that showcase Your sovereignty!
When You send me where my strengths are useless, I rejoice because Your strength will be revealed.
I lay down my natural advantages to pick up Your supernatural enabling.
I will not complain when my preparation seems wasted—I know You’re preparing to use me in ways that exceed my preparation.
I celebrate when I’m weak because that’s when Your grace is strong.
I trust Your wisdom when You deploy me into areas, situations, and realms that defy human logic.
When I am underqualified or even flat-out not qualified, and you want me to do something anyway, I will launch out, in faith, without a doubt, without wavering, fully relying on Your grace.
And lastly, Father, when You lead me in a direction that goes 180 degrees against what
I wanted and what the people around me expected, I know You are about to do something in and through my life that will bring glory to Your name. So, I am willing to do it by faith, even at the risk of looking foolish!
I am living THE GRACE LIFE, and GREATER IS COMING FOR ME!
I declare this by faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen!
This is Today’s Word! Apply it and Prosper.
