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.
I hope you can see by now that God can favor you to experience divine success while you are on this planet. Not only can He do it, I believe He wants to do it. He wants you to maximize the purpose and potential He placed IN you before the world began. He wants you to die empty. He wants you to arrive at His overall expected end for your life!
I don’t think anyone plans to fail in life. We all want to succeed. The challenge for many believers is trusting God and His grace in the process because it is much easier for some to feel comfortable when they are in charge. If they are the Captain of their own ship, charting their own course, working by their own strength, and charging down their own path, then they feel comfortable because they have control of their own lives. But this reliance on self and self-effort is not the message of the New Testament at all. We are called to deny ourselves and pick up our individual crosses in order to follow Jesus (Mat 16:24). Living by faith means dying to self and relying on God and His grace.
In John’s Gospel, the Apostle said, “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). The Old Covenant was focused on man and man working for God. The New Covenant is focused on God and God working for man. Jesus delivered us from having to live by self and self-effort. Jesus restored God’s Covenant of grace. But to fully embrace the grace of God, you must trust God and His love towards you.
In his first letter, the Apostle John said, “Anyone who says, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God,” is a person who lives in God, and God lives in that person. So we know the love that God has for us, and we trust that love. God is love. Everyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in them. If God’s love is made perfect in us, we can be without fear on the day when God judges the world. We will be without fear, because in this world we are like Jesus. Where God’s love is, there is no fear, because God’s perfect love takes away fear. It is his punishment that makes a person fear. So his love is not made perfect in the one who has fear.” (1 John 4:15-18 ERV)
So what does this mean for you today? I will give you a series of quick thoughts on this.
1. There are two primary ways to live your life: You can either depend on God’s unmerited favor (His grace) or on your ability (as a human) to accomplish things.
— Some people rely on themselves because they don’t know God, and they don’t know of any other way to live. They feel like they have to “make” their own way in life.
— Some people rely on their flesh because they don’t trust God enough to “let go the reins.”
— Others won’t give up control of their lives because they are simply too selfish to do so.
— Whatever the case, you can trust in yourself, or you can trust in God!
2. Human strength is limited at its best. You can only go so far powered by your own abilities.
— This is one of the reasons why you need the grace of God.
— God calls you to do things you CAN NOT do. These are things that EXCEED your human ability, power, and strength. So if you don’t understand this, and you start taking on the PRESSURE TO PERFORM, trying to please God with all YOUR MIGHT, all you are going to do is burn yourself out becuase you were never designed to perform God’s will without His grace.
3. True prosperity in life is found by focusing and trusting in Jesus.
— He made plans for you before the world began.
— He gave you an assignment and the grace for the assignment before you were born.
— He gave you your divine purpose, and your prosperity is tied to it.
— This puts you in a position where you must trust and rely on the grace of God.
4. If you don’t believe God loves you, you won’t believe His plan or His promises for your life.
— Faith works by love (Gal 5:6). Your faith will only be strong when you are convinced that God loves you with unconditional love.
— This is why you should remind yourself of God’s unmerited and unconditional love every day.
5. Confidence (a.k.a. faith) in God’s love for you is critical to living a successful (prosperous) life as a Christian in this world.
— When you trust in God’s love for you, you will believe His plan and His promises, and you will rely on His grace.
6. The more you mature and develop in God’s love towards you, the more you will freely access His grace, live by faith, and enjoy freedom from the power of fear.
— The Bible teaches us that there is NO FEAR in love; that perfect love casts out ALL FEAR!
— You cannot be IN FAITH and IN FEAR at the same time. They cancel each other out.
— Since God has called us to LIVE BY FAITH and since you cannot be in FAITH and in FEAR at the same time, then if you live by FAITH every day, then FEAR will have no power over you!
— The only way to truly overcome FEAR is to fully open your heart to God’s amazing, unearned and unconditional love.
— When you are fully persuaded that God loves you, you have nothing to fear! Fear will have no power over you!
7. People who are stressed, distressed, perplexed, and possibly even depressed are people who are not resting in the love of God. To be clear, you CAN be a Christian and still battle all of these things. This is why I am teaching you about it. I want you to overcome it!
— God wants you to be a success, but He does not want you stressing over it.
— God leads you to do things that are so big that there will come the point where you literally have to put the “THING” in His hands. If you don’t, you will find yourself trying to do the will of God, but you will be stressed out in the process becuase there is TOO MUCH OF YOU in the way!
— If you are pursuing the success God is leading you to (you put in your resume, you put in your college application, you submitted your proposal, etc.), but still, you are stressed out while you are waiting on the results, then your stress is coming because of a lack of faith and a failure to trust God.
— In John 14, Jesus taught us that we have to literally “LET” our hearts be troubled. We have to give permission to our hearts to be afraid. And God will allow whatever we allow. God will permit whatever we permit.
*** The closing thought for today is this: when you are convinced that God loves you, and you are fully persuaded that you are doing what He told you to do, then you must stop stressing. Your anxiety is an indication that you do not trust God. When you know God loves you, you believe you are doing what He told you to do, and you trust Him in the process, FEAR and STRESS have NO POWER over you!
That’s enough for today.
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I thank You for teaching me about grace-based success.
I also thank You for taking the time to teach me more and more about Your amazing grace and unconditional love for me.
You loved me, even when I had nothing to do with You. You loved me while I was an unashamed sinner. So I am fully persuaded of Your love now!
The more I grow and develop in Your love, the more I can access Your grace with my faith.
There was a point in my life when I was the Captain of my own ship, when I charted my own course, and I lived based solely on my own strength. Those days are over!
Following Jesus means believing, accepting, and pursuing His plan for my life. My plan is no longer the plan. I have given up my life for You, and in so doing, I have found the life You destined for me to have.
I can give up control because I know You love me, and I trust Your love. Your love frees me from the power of fear.
I enter this day and the rest of my life with fearless confidence because my confidence is not in me. My confidence is in You and in Your love towards me. 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.
