Grace Revolution: Experience the Power to Live Above Defeat (13 page)

Sally’s blessings didn’t stop there. She goes on to share the following:

Thank you, Sally, for sharing your wonderful testimony. I rejoice with you and have no doubt your story will encourage many people and set them on the road to freedom.

My dear friend, if you are experiencing the condemnation and misery that Sally experienced, hear these precious, reassuring words from
your heavenly Father: “You are JUSTIFIED through faith in My Son’s sacrifice.” Be set free from the voice of condemnation and, like Sally, begin to live life full of joy, peace, and hope!

It is so important you hear the right gospel—the one that tells you that you are forgiven and justified by faith—because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Let’s look again at this vital truth that the apostle Paul taught to the early church:

As we established in the previous chapter, “salvation,” besides the wonderful blessing of being saved from hell to go to heaven, also encompasses whatever deliverance, preservation, and safety you need in the here and now.

What do you need saving from today? Are you suffering from a debilitating sickness? Are you in the grip of anxiety, panic attacks, or deep depression that keeps you imprisoned at home? Perhaps you feel the heavy burden of guilt and condemnation because of a long-term addiction. My friend, I am here to tell you that your deliverance, your preservation, your answer is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ—
the
power of God unto your salvation.

The gospel of our Lord’s grace is what will free you and keep you free. The Bible doesn’t say that medicine, psychology, money, or the Internet is the power of God unto your salvation. These are good and have their place, but they are not the power of God that frees you and gives you lasting breakthroughs. Only the true, unadulterated gospel of His grace can accomplish that.

So whatever your challenge, don’t give up, dear reader. God knows exactly what you are going through. He cares for you and wants you free in every area of your life. That is why He has placed this book in your hands. Just keep reading. Just keep hearing the true gospel that reveals to you your total forgiveness, your everlasting righteousness or justification in Christ, and His unconditional love for you. And I have no doubt that God’s power will break those chains and open those prison doors for you!

The devil is a cunning adversary. He gets people to depart from the simplicity of the gospel into works because he knows that many believers are sincere in wanting to please God. He knows that they have an enthusiasm or zeal for God. But he also knows that man has something called pride. So what does he do? He takes advantage of their pride and misdirects their zeal by using the law. He tells them, “You want to get right with God and please Him? Then here are His
laws to obey and obey perfectly.” In the book of Romans, Paul talks about this misguided zeal, which was prevalent among his Jewish brethren:

The same thing is still happening today. Many believers, in their zeal for God or their pride, are trying to please God and become righteous through trying to keep the law. They don’t understand that God makes an individual righteous solely by grace through faith. They reject God’s way and cling to what they think makes them righteous—their obedience to God’s laws.

Yet the irony of it all is that in trying to keep God’s laws to be righteous, people produce works of the flesh such as adultery, fornication, hatred, heresies, and drunkenness (see Gal. 5:18–21). Why? Because “the strength of sin is the law” (1 Cor. 15:56). The law arouses or stirs up the sinful passions within our flesh (see Rom. 7:5).

We see a classic example of this truth being played out in the Old Testament. At Mount Sinai, when God’s people presumed that they could be righteous before God by obeying His laws (see Exod. 19:8, 24:3), it produced a work of the flesh. They built a golden calf and worshiped it, breaking God’s very first commandment not to have any other god (Exod. 32:1–8). In the New Testament, we have the case
of Paul. He said, “I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not covet’” (Rom. 7:7).

My friend, this is the result of coming under the law and trying to obey God’s laws to be made righteous. Works of the flesh are produced, as opposed to the fruit of the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22–23 lists the fruit of the Spirit as “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” Notice that Paul mentions the fruit of the Spirit only in the fifth chapter. In the first four chapters he talks about grace, contrasting it with the law and contending earnestly for justification by faith, because the Galatian Christians were going back under the law. Paul was essentially bringing them back under pure grace, before talking to them about the fruit of the Spirit.

Can you see how the fruit of being under grace is the fruit of the Spirit? Notice also how Paul calls it the
works
of the flesh and the
fruit
of the Spirit. What’s the difference between “works” and “fruit”? Works are a result of
self-effort
that comes from being under the heavy demands of the law.
Fruit
is a result of life! Just as a tree will naturally produce good fruit when it is well watered and receiving the right amount of sunlight, so a Christian will produce good fruit without self-effort when he or she is well watered by the word of His grace and exposed to the sunshine of God’s love.

Beloved, if you want to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit, make sure you are not hearing the law preached, but the unadulterated grace of our Lord Jesus. Make sure you are hearing the ram’s horn being
sounded from the pulpit to remind you that you are justified by faith in the Lamb Who died for you. This will help you to build your life upon the solid Rock of Christ and the firm foundation of His finished work. Contend earnestly to hear and to live by the real gospel, by grace through faith. It will usher you into the promised land, for the gospel is the power of God unto your salvation in every area of your life.

C
ruel words spoken in anger. A betrayal of trust. Promises broken. A destructive relationship you knew you should not have entered into.

Have you been down those dark paths before? So many people are living in the shadow of guilt and condemnation. The mistakes of their past haunt them and it is a painfully lonely and arduous journey for them.

Perhaps the paralyzed man who was let down through the roof by his four faithful friends in the book of Mark understood a little of this. The Bible tells us he was paralyzed to the point where he could only lie on a mat, which was how his friends carried him to the house Jesus was in. With the man lying inert on his mat, his four friends lowered him through the roof, right in front of Jesus—the only way they knew to bring their crippled friend before Jesus and secure his healing. Scripture tells us that when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mark 2:5).

To all who were watching this scene unfold that day, that must have been a very strange thing for Jesus to say—“your sins are forgiven you.” The man was clearly paralyzed. He was obviously there for healing. What had forgiveness to do with his condition or healing?

But Jesus knew it was exactly what this poor man needed to hear for his healing to manifest. And indeed, at Jesus’ next words, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home,” the paralyzed man “jumped up, grabbed his mat, and walked out through the stunned onlookers” (Mark 2:11–12
NLT
). What had transpired? Jesus saw, when no one else could, that the man needed to hear he was forgiven, that God was not condemning him. And those words opened the door to his healing and broke him loose from his paralysis. No wonder the onlookers were stunned—the man went from being immobile and helpless to being active, strong, and completely whole right before their eyes!

My beloved friend, if you are paralyzed by a heavy sense of condemnation over something in your past, I want you to know beyond any doubt that God is not withholding your breakthrough from you. He loves you, understands your pain and suffering, and has forgiven you through the cross. He wants you to know that your past does not have to poison your future. God has amazing plans for your future. No matter how many dark days you have experienced, your brightest and most glorious days are still ahead of you.

And this is why I am so sure: the living Word of God declares, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9). This means that God has prepared many wonderful open doors of opportunity, favor, and success for you to walk through in the days ahead.

The Scripture goes on to say that even though you may not be able to see right now the good things that God has for your future, “God has revealed them to us through His Spirit…. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1 Cor. 2:10, 12). Isn’t that just the best news? The Holy Spirit is in us to reveal to us the things that God has freely given to us. These are precious and priceless gifts, such as the gift of forgiveness, the gift of no condemnation, the gift of righteousness, the gift of eternal life, and the different gifts of the Spirit that God has placed in all our lives!

Because you are a believer in Jesus Christ, not only have all your sins been forgiven, but you have also been justified by faith and made righteous by His blood. And the Holy Spirit lives
in
you! You have something that the patriarchs of the Old Testament never had. Abraham, “the friend of God” (James 2:23), never had it. Moses, who led the children of Israel out of Egypt, never had it. And even David, whom the Bible calls “a man after [God’s] own heart” (Acts 13:22), never had it. They had the Spirit
on
them, but not
in
them. Back then the Holy Spirit would come and go (see 1 Sam. 16:13–14, Ps. 51:11). You and I, however, have been so perfectly cleansed by the blood of Jesus—once and for all—that the Holy Spirit now lives
in
us and abides with us
forever
(see John 14:16–17)!

The apostle Paul tells us that when we believed in Jesus, He identified us as His own by giving us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee that He will give us the inheritance He has promised and that He has purchased us to be His own people (see Eph. 1:13–14). My friend, when you believed the gospel and got saved, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. The Holy Spirit is God’s seal upon your life to attest that you have been given the free gift of righteousness and the gift of eternal life through Jesus’ finished work. That is why when you hear the purity of the gospel of grace being preached, the Holy Spirit in you responds with great joy and great peace.

I have received so many testimonies from people who shared that when they first heard me preaching on the love of God and His beautiful grace, they felt as if they were getting born again, all over again. When they heard the gospel being preached, the shackles of Christian religion, legalism, self-righteousness, and years of toilsome condemnation started to break off one by one. Precious intimacy with the Lord Jesus was restored. Fear was replaced with His perfect love, insecurities with His assurance of grace, and self-doubt with His strong embrace of affirmation. That’s what the preaching of the gospel of grace does. It changes lives!

Listen to this praise report by Pete from Oklahoma, who shares,