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.
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 CEV
“But God treated me with undeserved grace! He made me what I am, and his grace wasn’t wasted. I worked much harder than any of the other apostles, although it was really God’s grace at work and not me.”
Scripture(s) we will study today:
Galatians 3:4 NIV
“Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain?”
Galatians 3:4 TPT
“Have you endured all these trials and persecutions for nothing?”
Galatians 3:4 ERV
“You have experienced many things. Were all those experiences wasted? I hope not!”
Romans 5:3-4 TPT
“We also celebrate in seasons of suffering because we know that when we suffer we develop endurance, which shapes our characters. When our characters are refined, we learn what it means to hope by experiencing God’s faithfulness.”
James 1:2-4 TPT
“My fellow believers, when it seems as though you are facing nothing but difficulties, see it as an invaluable opportunity to experience the greatest joy that you can! For you know that when your faith is tested it stirs up in you the power of endurance. And then as your endurance grows even stronger, it will release perfection into every part of your being until there is nothing missing and nothing lacking.”
Setting the Stage:
I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s message from Galatians 3:4. Today, I want to dig even deeper into this verse. Someone sent me a text yesterday saying they were amazed at how much we got out of one verse yesterday. But we are just skimming the top of the revelation. The Bible is absolutely loaded with revelation for those living #TheGraceLife. Paul asks this penetrating question: “Have you experienced so much in vain?” The Passion Translation asks it this way: “Have you endured all these trials and persecutions for nothing?”
Here’s what I’ve discovered after walking with God for over 29 years and teaching His Word for 28 of those years: The experiences you go through, by the grace of God, are never random, pointless, or wasted. But here’s the key: you have to see them through the right lens to unlock their purpose.
The Galatians had suffered real persecution for the gospel. They had been rejected by family, criticized by religious leaders, and faced real hardship for their faith in Christ. Now Paul is asking them, “Are you really going to make all of that meaningless by abandoning grace for Law?”
In context, he was speaking to people who were either once Jews or people who were being influenced by Jews. These people had normal lives until they believed on the Lord Jesus. Embracing Jesus and His grace, and abandoning the Law and the pressure to perform, had caused them to be persecuted to a great degree. So, it i understandable how some were willing to go back. But Paul was saying that if they did, all that suffering would be in vain.
What Paul understood (and what we must understand) is that suffering under grace produces something eternal, while suffering under Law produces only frustration. When you suffer for the right reasons (walking in grace), God uses every experience to develop character, deepen faith, and prepare you for greater glory. But when you suffer for the wrong reasons (trying to earn God’s favor through performance), that suffering is empty and produces nothing but stress, struggle, and strain.
So, what does this mean to you today? A few things.
1. Every Challenge You Endure Under Grace Becomes a Seed That Produces an Eternal Harvest.
Every trial, every challenge, every season of testing you’ve experienced while walking in God’s grace has been a seed planted for your future harvest. God doesn’t waste anything when you’re living #TheGraceLife.
How this applies to you:
— Every challenge you’ve faced while trusting in God’s grace has been building something inside of you that couldn’t be developed any other way. Your character, your faith, and your dependence on God have all been developed through your experiences. These are not things that can be produced in Bible study. They are produced in real life. Which is why I say you cannot just know God from a book.
— The Galatians had suffered persecution specifically for believing the grace message. This wasn’t random suffering; it was targeted opposition because they chose grace over Law. When you choose to live by the grace of God, instead of performance, not only will you receive persecution from the world, but you will also be opposed by religious people who don’t understand the freedom you walk in.
— God has been preparing you, through every experience, for something greater than what you’ve seen so far. The trials you’ve endured under grace haven’t been punishment; they’ve been preparation. Every difficulty has been developing capacity in you for what’s coming next.
— Nothing you’ve gone through has been wasted. Every tear, every struggle, every moment of feeling misunderstood while walking in grace has been creating something eternal in you that will benefit not just you, but everyone you’re called to influence.
— Your experiences under grace are part of your testimony. The very things you’ve endured while learning to live by grace will become the foundation of your ability to help others who are struggling with all sorts of issues. Why? Because the grace of God applies to every area of life. So, while people may not be facing what you have gone through, you will be equipped to minister to them, because it won’t be you doing it. It will be God, through you, using your experiences as references of His power and glory.
— When you document your grace journey, you’ll see patterns of God’s faithfulness that weren’t visible while you were going through the experiences themselves. What felt random in the moment will reveal itself as something God is strategically orchestrating for your good.
— Every season of your life under grace has been building toward your divine purpose. The challenges developed strength, the victories built confidence, and the failures taught you dependence on God’s grace rather than your own ability.
2. Just Like Your Motivation Matters When Dealing with Your Heart, Your Foundation Matters When Dealing with Suffering.
This is crucial: The same experiences can be either meaningful or meaningless depending on whether you process them through grace or Law. Paul’s concern wasn’t that the Galatians had suffered; it was that they might make their suffering pointless by abandoning grace.
How this applies to you:
— If you go back to performance-based Christianity after experiencing grace, you essentially nullify everything you’ve learned and grown through. It’s like building a house and then tearing down the foundation. If you do that, everything collapses.
— Suffering under grace produces character; suffering under Law produces only guilt and frustration. To be clear, there are millions of people who are Law-based, very religious, and rigid. As a result, their lives are full of frustration because they are dealing with the fruit of their own flesh. When they go through trials, in the flesh, it does not produce for them an eternal weight of glory. It is just beating them down.
— If you look back at your struggles and see them as evidence that you weren’t performing well enough, they become discouraging. If you see them as God developing you for His purposes, they become empowering.
— The foundation of grace gives eternal significance to temporary struggles. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:17 that our “light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” Under Law, troubles are just troubles. Under grace, troubles are achieving something eternal.
3. Maturity Means Learning to Value Process Over Instant Results.
One reason the Galatians were tempted to abandon grace was that grace-based transformation takes time, while Law-based behavior modification can produce immediate external changes. But Paul knew that external compliance with the rules without internal change by the spirit is worthless.
How this applies to you:
— Grace transforms you from the inside out, which takes time. Law changes you from the outside in, which can happen quickly but doesn’t last.
— Every experience you’ve had while walking in grace has been part of a process that’s much bigger than any single event. What you thought was just a difficult season was actually God developing something in you that couldn’t be developed any other way.
— Spiritual maturity means trusting God’s timing and process instead of demanding immediate results. The experiences you’ve gone through under grace have been preparing you for assignments you haven’t even received yet. God is in it for the long haul. God is not concerned about the “BIG THING” you may be freaking out about today. He is looking at the bigger picture.
— Every season of your life has been necessary for what God is building in you. The struggles developed perseverance, the victories built confidence in God’s goodness, and the waiting periods taught you to trust His timing rather than your own understanding.
— God’s plans for your life are so much bigger than your immediate circumstances. What you’re experiencing right now is just one chapter in a much larger story that God is writing through your life.
— The value of your experiences will often only be fully understood in hindsight. What didn’t make sense when you were going through it will become clear when you see how God used those experiences to prepare you for your next level of assignment. This has happened to me many times.
4. You Cannot Know God Just from a Book; You Must Experience Him Through Life’s Seasons.
Here’s what religion gets wrong: Religion thinks you can know God completely through studying about Him. Grace knows you discover who God really is by experiencing Him through every season of life.
How this applies to you:
— Your deepest knowledge of God comes from experiencing His grace in real situations, not just from reading about His character in books. The Galatians knew God was faithful because they had experienced His faithfulness through persecution, not just because they had studied theology.
— People will debate your theological knowledge, but it’s harder to debate experiential knowledge. Once you have experienced the God of the impossible and how He made the impossible possible for you, no one can take that away from you. And your testimony will have a weight connected to it that will help break down the walls around the hearts of the people you minister to because your testimony will be authentic. This is not something you can get from a book.
— Every time you had to depend on God’s grace in a real crisis, you gained experiential knowledge of His character that no classroom could provide. These experiences become the foundation of unshakeable faith because they’re based on personal encounter, not just intellectual understanding. This is heart knowledge, not just head knowledge.
— Your experiential knowledge of God becomes a reference point for others who are struggling. When someone doubts God’s goodness, you can share not just what the Bible says, but what you’ve personally experienced.
— When you share your experiences of God’s grace with others, you’re not just sharing information; you’re sharing revelation that came through a relationship. This is what makes your testimony powerful. It’s based on personal encounter, not just Bible study.
— The very experiences that stretched your faith to the breaking point are also the ones that became the experiences that gave you the most intimate knowledge of God’s character. When you had nowhere else to turn, you discovered aspects of God’s nature that you never could have learned from a book.
That’s enough for today.
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I thank You that every experience I’ve had under grace has been a divine investment in my future!
Nothing I’ve gone through while trusting in Your grace has been random, pointless, or wasted.
I refuse to make my grace journey meaningless by going back to performance-based religion.
My trials under grace have been building character, deepening faith, and preparing me for greater glory.
I value the process of grace-based transformation over the shortcuts of law-based behavior modification.
My testimony is built on Your perfect grace working through my imperfect life, not on my perfect performance.
Every struggle while learning to live by grace has been preparing me to help others choose grace over works.
I am living #TheGraceLife in 2025 and beyond, and GREATER IS COMING FOR ME!
I declare this by faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen!
This is Today’s Word! Apply it and prosper!
