Grace Revolution: Experience the Power to Live Above Defeat (27 page)
Read Grace Revolution: Experience the Power to Live Above Defeat Online
Authors: Joseph Prince
Tags: #Religion / Christian Life / Personal Growth, #RELIGION / Christian Life / Spiritual Growth, #Religion / Christian Life / Inspirational
In the new covenant, God wants us to come back to believing and speaking. I am not denying that the darkness, barrenness, sickness, or infirmity that you may be faced with is there. I am asking you to speak by faith what you want to see. While God saw the darkness, instead of speaking what He saw, He spoke what He wanted to see. So the question you must ask yourself is this: What do you want to see in your
life? What do you want to see in your body, your marriage, your children, your family, your household, and your place of employment? Listen carefully: I am not asking you what you
currently see
. I am asking you what you
want to see
.
It is unfortunate that the enemy has been successful in deceiving many people into speaking negatively, often with bitterness and unforgiveness, over their own lives and the lives of those around them. Some years ago a pastor who has been used mightily by the Lord in healing miracles shared something very thought-provoking with me. He noticed that people who had been completely healed were susceptible to developing the same disease again when they harbored bitterness and anger against another person in their hearts.
There is a proverb that says, “A calm and undisturbed mind and heart are the life and health of the body, but envy, jealousy, and wrath are like rottenness of the bones” (Prov. 14:30
AMP
). Holding bitterness against someone is like you drinking lethal poison and expecting the other person to die. It is just not worth it, my dear reader. You are killing yourself slowly. I am not saying that the injustice inflicted upon you by this person is acceptable or insignificant. What I am saying is that today you can choose life and let go of that anger in your heart. Release that person, and most importantly, release yourself. Bless that person. Choose to love life and see many good days.
But Pastor Prince, you don’t understand. He doesn’t deserve my forgiveness!
Precisely. Forgiveness is for those who don’t deserve it. That’s what grace is all about. Remember what the Word says: don’t return evil for evil, reviling for reviling (see 1 Pet. 3:9). Instead, have a spirit of grace and bless those who curse you. Bless them and set yourself free to love life and see many good days. Amen!
Have a spirit of grace and bless those who curse you. Bless them and set yourself free to love life and see many good days.
The sad reality is that the enemy has successfully programmed death into the human language. We hear casual expressions in our daily conversations like, “That dress is to
die
for,” or “I am
dying
for that piece of cheesecake.” Come on, let’s change our vocabulary and saturate it with life. Instead of dying, let’s be living for something!
I like the salutation Jews use when they propose a toast. They say, “
L’chaim
,” which means, “To life!”
3
Don’t be preoccupied with what is dark and deathly; let’s celebrate the abundant life that our Lord came to bring us!
The power of life and death is in the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
Love life and see good days. Start by refraining your lips from speaking evil and begin filling your mouth with the good news of all the wonderful things our Lord has done and will continue to do in your life. When you change your words, you will change your life.
L’chaim
!
THE POWER OF IDENTITY
I
read the story of a businessman in New York City who was rushing to board a subway train on his way to work one wintry morning. From the corner of his eye, he saw a beggar with a cup of pencils in his hands sitting on the platform. Without thinking too much about it, he quickly grabbed some money from his wallet and dropped the notes into the beggar’s collection plate before boarding the train.
Just before the train doors closed, the businessman jumped back out onto the platform and took several pencils from the beggar’s cup. He apologized to the beggar, explaining that in his haste, he had neglected to pick up the pencils he had purchased. “After all,” he said, smiling, “you are a businessman just like me. You have merchandise to sell and it’s fairly priced.” After that the businessman boarded the next train and went about his day.
At a social event several months later, a well-dressed salesman approached this businessman and introduced himself. “You probably don’t remember me and I don’t know your name,” he said, “but I will never forget you. You are the man who gave me back my self-respect. I was a ‘beggar’ selling pencils until you came along and told me that I was a businessman.”
1
I share this story to highlight to you the power of identity. The businessman gave this beggar a renewed sense of meaning and identity by
simply speaking over him and calling forth a latent potential that was in him. By calling this beggar a businessman, he awakened in him a renewed sense of worth, value, and importance. The words gave the beggar a new perspective. And they gave him a new belief and vision that propelled him to walk away from the lie that a beggar was all he could be.
We can draw many parallels in this story for believers of our Lord Jesus. I believe that many who are struggling with sin, addictions, and destructive bondages don’t have the revelation of their new covenant identity in Christ. When you see a believer struggling with sin, it is often a case of mistaken identity. The best way to help him is to point him back to his righteousness in Christ, as the apostle Paul did to those in the Corinthian church who had fallen into sin. Paul didn’t point these believers back to the law of Moses. All he did was remind them of who they truly were.
When you see a believer struggling with sin, it is often a case of mistaken identity. The best way to help him is to point him back to his righteousness in Christ.
The Bible records the apostle telling them, “
Know ye not
that your bodies are the members of Christ?…
know ye not
that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s”
(1 Cor. 6:15, 19–20
KJV
, emphasis mine). Paul knew that if they were reminded of their righteous identity in Christ, they would repent. They would return to grace and turn away from their sins when they were reminded of their value according to the heavy price Christ had paid on the cross to ransom them.
I encourage you to use Apostle Paul’s method to encourage and lift up believers who you know are struggling with sin. Point them back to their identity in Christ. They probably do not know, or have forgotten, how they have been made the righteousness of God through Jesus’ blood. Because of this, like the beggar in the story, they are living a life of defeat. They are living far below the high place God has called them to. Believers in Christ are called to be the head and not the tail, to be above and not beneath, to reign over sin and not be defeated by sin!
I want to share with you this moving praise report from Melissa, a lady from Texas. I believe that you will be greatly blessed and inspired by the journey that she has taken to discover her true identity in Christ:
From a young age, I had always felt I was worthless. My mother, who was constantly fighting with my father when I was growing up, kept telling me I was a nobody just like my dad, and that just like my dad, I would amount to nothing. This feeling of worthlessness stayed with me and became stronger when I was molested as a child. I blamed myself for it happening—that it happened to me because I really was worthless and a nobody.
Growing up without having the love of my father, I became desperate to find and hold on to what I thought was love. I ended up having many relationships and partners. I was so afraid to let them go. I felt like I needed them to be there because I was so afraid to be alone.
All these things eventually led to my living a destructive lifestyle of sin in which I was deeply unhappy. I knew it was destroying me from the inside, but I didn’t know how to stop it. I felt confused, lost, and empty all the time. I didn’t think of going to God and church because people I knew would tell me, “You’re going to go to hell because of your choices and how you’re living. God’s angry with you. He’s disgusted with you and He’s not going to bless you.”
Because this was what I constantly heard, this was what I believed about God, and thought there was no way I could come to Him. Thankfully, I came across your television program late one night when I was channel surfing. I saw this Asian preacher on TV preaching and actually wanted to pass it up when something inside me said, “Just listen to what he is talking about.”
I’m so glad I did because you were talking about the finished work of Jesus at the cross, how Jesus loves us, and how much He loves me just as I am. I found that I couldn’t stop listening to the sermon. It was the start of my discovering how God gave His best—His Son, Jesus—for me, so that I could have a relationship with Him as my Daddy God and come into His presence without fear or shame.
At the end of the sermon, you invited us to pray and ask God into our lives if we’d never done it before. I prayed that prayer and told God, “I need You and I need Your help. I don’t
know how to change what I’ve become but I know that You’ll help me. Only You can help me get out of this lifestyle, the drugs, the alcohol, and having so many different partners. There’s a relationship I need to get out of right now but I don’t know how to. I’m so unhappy. There has to be more to life than the kind of life I’m living.”
As I was praying, I felt Jesus’ love just overwhelm me, and all the bitterness, confusion, unhappiness, and pain in my life just melted, as you like to say, “like butter.” I can’t explain it. The dull ache, the frustration, and the gnawing emptiness all just left, and for the first time, a joy I couldn’t explain came in.
The very next day, God opened doors for me to get out of the bad relationship I was in—effortlessly and without bitterness on both sides. Since that time, so many amazing things and blessings have happened. My relationship with my mother has been restored. Through experiencing Jesus’ love for me, I’ve been able to forgive my mother for the times I’d felt hurt and rejected by her, and I’ve come to genuinely love her. I’ve also been able to forgive other family members who had told me I was worthless and who didn’t want to have anything to do with me.
Everything is so different now. Today, I wake up and say, “Thank You, Jesus, for Your supply of grace to me. Thank You for all Your blessings. Thank You that You’ve already done everything for me. You will keep me on the path You want me to go.”
I know that Jesus loves me and that He has great plans for me. I see His favor in my life. My bosses tell me, “You’re doing such a good job and you’re always smiling.” People I meet tell me, “You look younger than your age.” I tell them all that it’s Christ in me.
Now, when I get a little frightened about things or situations in my life, I remember to cast all my cares to God. I plug into my iPod and listen to your sermons. Even though they are sermons I’ve heard before, I’ll still get something new out of them. I’ll see the beauty and love of Jesus all over again and feel His rest and peace wash over me. And when I make a mistake, I just say, “Jesus, thank You that You still love me even when I make a mistake. I am still forgiven—my past, present, and future sins are forgiven.” That gives me strength to get past that mistake and move on.
Even when I make a wrong turn, He always finds a way to bring me back. And whenever I’m in a negative situation, Jesus tells me the outcome is going to be good because He’s there and He’s working on it.
Sometimes, thoughts of my past would come back but I’ve learned to say, “I’m a new creation. I’m the righteousness of God in Christ. It’s not about what I’ve done but what Jesus has done.” Amazingly, the temptations that held me in the past have all lost their hold. It feels like I’d never lived a destructive lifestyle before. Today, my life testifies that Daddy God loves and saves. More importantly, the change has been effortless—it’s all by the grace of Jesus. It’s had nothing to do with my willpower but the divine power of Christ at work in me. Thank you, Pastor Prince, for unveiling Jesus’ beauty and love for me. I feel so loved by Him and I’m so grateful for His finished work at the cross!
Melissa, thank you for taking the time to share the precious journey you have taken with our Lord Jesus. It really blessed me to hear how you have discovered your righteous identity in Christ, and how
this has led you to experience so many breakthroughs in your life. I am so proud of you and so excited for all the good things that our Father in heaven has in store for your future. I have no doubt that your testimony will inspire many people to discover the power of their righteous identity in Christ!
My dear reader, I believe that you too have been greatly blessed and encouraged by Melissa’s praise report. Some of you may be able to identify with her about the people around her who kept telling her that she was a nobody and that she would amount to nothing. Those are the lies that the enemy wants you to believe. He will keep telling you those lies and surround you with people who will reinforce those lies in your mind until you believe that you are truly a worthless nobody. Why? Because when you start to have even the slightest belief that these people could be right, you will start behaving as if you are a valueless and worthless nobody. That is the negative power of wrong believing.
Unfortunately, that was exactly what happened to Melissa. When she began to entertain those lies of worthlessness, it drew her rapidly down a slippery slope of defeat. As she candidly describes, “All these things eventually led to my living a destructive lifestyle of sin in which I was deeply unhappy. I knew it was destroying me from the inside, but I didn’t know how to stop it.”
Many people harbor the misconception that those who are constantly partying, drinking, getting high, and sleeping around are having the time of their lives. Hollywood and the secular media have deified and glamorized the party lifestyle as cool and carefree.
They have sold the lie that the YOLO life—the you-only-live-once, consequence-free existence—is awesome. But if you peel back the curtains, you will see just how deeply unhappy and depressed these people entangled in a sinful lifestyle are. Our teenagers and youths are being bombarded with these images on their social media channels, in movies, and on television shows, where sinful lifestyles are not only tolerated but celebrated. This is what our kids are faced with daily in school and on their mobile devices.
How have many churches responded? By saying, “We have to go back to the Ten Commandments! We have to preach more on the law of Moses, on repentance, and on character.” But do you know what this generation hears when the churches say that? Melissa gives us a pretty good sense of what young people actually hear and what it made her believe: “I didn’t think of going to God and church because people I knew would tell me, ‘You’re going to go to hell because of your choices and how you’re living. God’s angry with you. He’s disgusted with you and He’s not going to bless you.’ Because this was what I constantly heard, this was what I believed about God, and thought there was no way I could come to Him.”
Is it any wonder some churches are losing the next generation? What Melissa has described is unfortunately what young people hear about their Father in heaven. They hear about an angry and capricious God Who is just looking for an opportunity to club them with a big stick and send them to an eternal furnace of fiery damnation. The church proudly proclaims, “We love the sinner but hate the sin.” But in reality, all that those struggling with sinful lifestyles hear is, “WE HATE THE SIN,” and they stay away from the church because they understandably equate that with, “WE HATE YOU.” That, my friend, is simply not the gospel.
The gospel is our beloved Lord Jesus reaching out to the woman at
the well who had had five husbands and was cohabiting with another man out of wedlock. The gospel is our Lord Jesus rescuing the woman caught in adultery from the religious mob that wanted to exercise its legal right to brutally bludgeon her to death with rocks. When you observe our Lord Jesus, He was always comfortable with those who were tangled up in sin, so much so that the religious leaders mocked Him and called Him a friend of sinners (see Matt. 11:19). He was undeterred by His critics, and just one encounter with His love and grace caused sinners to be transformed forever from the inside out.
My dear friend, that’s the grace revolution that we have been talking about throughout this book. Our Lord never endorsed people’s sinful lifestyles; He simply awakened them to His deep and personal love for them, and once they experienced His love, they had the power to walk out of the prison of sin, addiction, and bondage. Grace opens the prison doors for those trapped in sin. The woman at the well became an evangelist in her city and many came to know Jesus because of her. The woman caught in adultery walked away with the gift of no condemnation and the power to sin no more. The religious actively shunned the sinner; Jesus actively pursued the sinner.
Grace opens the prison doors for those trapped in sin.