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? A few things.
1. God wants you to accept and embrace the reality of His love based on His unearned grace.
I have been driving home this point for weeks, but I will add to it today.
— You will never become the man/woman God called you to be until you see yourself as the man/woman ON THE INSIDE first! I have taught you this principle before. If you can’t SEE IT, you will never BE IT. So SEEING it firest, on the inside, is critical. My point here is that you will never see yourself this way until you are convinced God loves you.
— Once you are Born-Again, you are declared righteous because of Jesus. You are not free TO sin, but you are free FROM sin. You are free from the power of sin. Sin is no longer your issue. God is not stumbling over your sin; you are, and you need to stop if you want to walk in God’s best.
— You can’t live your life focused on sin and your performance and be led by the Holy Spirit at the same time. If you allow God’s Spirit to lead you daily, your focus will no longer be sin. Your focus will be the purpose God sent you to this planet to achieve, and you will be too busy walking in your purpose to consume yourself with sin.
— The transformation I am talking about happens on the inside first. You will never prosper in life beyond the level of prosperity you experience in your soul (3 John 2). Your soul contains your mind (the way you think), emotions (the way you feel), and will (the way you make decisions). When you were Born-Again, your spirit was renewed, but your soul was not. Your spirit WAS saved instantly, your soul IS BEING saved (or changed) progressively, and your body WILL BE changed eventually. So, for now, your focus is the salvation (or transformation) of your soul. For you to experience life prosperity, you must first experience soul prosperity.
— You will never consistently walk in what you do not believe. You may deviate from your belief system from time to time and have outlier-type experiences here and there, but your life will consistently produce what you quite literally believe. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Prov 23:7).
— The life you experience on earth is a manifestation of what you believe in your heart. This is why God deals with you on the inside, first, so you can change on the outside. What I am teaching you now is that you won’t experience true transformation until you are convinced that God loves you.
— God does not just teach us through the book; He teaches us through encounters. In the world, they look to teach only through books and repeating what was taught (rote memorization). The Bible is not looking for you to quote it. The Bible is looking for you to live it and experience it. And this all starts with the love of God.
— Once you open your heart to God’s love and you free yourself from performance-based religion, you are in a position to be used by God to change the world. You will start to see yourself the way God sees you, and once you believe it on the inside, it is only a matter of time before God’s reality (in your heart) manifests itself in your life!
2. For your faith to be strong, it must be rooted and grounded in the reality of God’s love towards you.
Paul said, “the resting place of his love will become the very source and root of your life.
— God is love. Your faith must be rooted and grounded in God’s love. Love is an inside job. God is not focused on your outer man. Your outer man is wearing away day by day. God’s focus is the inner man. While your outer man is wearing out, your inner man is being renewed by the Holy Spirit! This is why divine change happens on the inside first.
— Love is something that takes place internally, and we get to express it externally.
— On those occasions when I become a conduit of God’s love, and I love another person with the love of God, what is happening is an external manifestation of an internal reality. Said another way, what I am doing externally is a reflection of what is going on in my heart, internally, by the Holy Spirit! The love of God has come TO me, and at that moment, it is flowing THROUGH me! That’s how ministry takes place.
— You won’t comprehend the revelation of God’s goodness in your life until you develop a root of God’s love in your heart. God’s love is so amazing that when you first come to God, and your heart is “full of other things,” the Holy Spirit works with you to uproot roots of bitterness, unforgiveness, malice, selfishness, and sin. God replaces those roots in your heart with His amazing and endless love. Everything in the Kingdom of God is rooted and grounded in God’s love, so for you to walk with God effectively, your heart must be conditioned to love.
— Once the love of God becomes the source and the root of your life, your faith will be strong because the root of your faith will be God Himself. In other words, for your faith to be strong the way God wants it to be strong, it cannot be contingent upon you! When your faith is based on God’s love, your faith will not fail because God will never stop loving you. But if your faith is based on your performance (meaning that if you do something wrong, you think you can no longer believe God because God will not bless you), then your faith will constantly fail because your performance will inevitably waiver!
— If you want to walk in strong and unwavering faith, your faith must be rooted in the reality of God’s unwavering love!
3. It takes a while to wrap your mind and heart around the immeasurable nature of God’s love, but when you do, it will change you forever.
— You will have difficulty receiving God’s best until you know He loves you and that He wants to bless you simply because He is good!
— 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.
— When you know God loves you with unconditional love, you can embrace the grace and the anointing to pursue and experience what the Holy Spirit reveals.
— God says to you, “I want you to know the love I have for you. This love goes beyond anything you can comprehend in your head. The only way for you to know this love is for me to pour it out into your heart by my Spirit” (Romans 5:5).
— When you allow a root of God’s love to form in your heart, you can see yourself the way He sees you! Once you do, it sets the stage for the greatest life you can live. It’s the life God called you to live! It’s the life God planned for you before the world began. But you will never experience this life until you are convinced that God loves you!
That’s enough for today.
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I declare, by faith, that I rest in Your love. You pour Your love into my heart by the Holy Spirit. I receive Your love. I believe Your love. I am fully persuaded by Your love to believe what You believe about me. You are not tripping over my performance. You are not dissuaded by my flaws. Therefore, I won’t be either. From now on, I focus my attention on the revelation of the Holy Spirit, and I refuse to factor IN the flaws You chose to factor OUT. You use me despite my performance, not because of it. You choose to use me because You love me.
When Your Spirit begins to pour Your love into my heart, with the goal of making it the ROOT of my life, He also works with me to UPROOT every root of bitterness, unforgiveness, malice, hurt, pain, selfishness, and sin I was carrying around. Things are being UPROOTED from my heart to the point where Your love is the only ROOT that remains. I a free to be the man/woman You called me to be becuase I know You love me, and I believe what You believe about me! This is why I am convinced GREATER IS COMING FOR ME! I declare this by faith. In Jesus’ name, Amen!
This is Today’s Word! Apply it and Prosper.
