The Power of Right Believing: 7 Keys to Freedom from Fear, Guilt, and Addiction (35 page)

Imagine that all this has happened to you. You’ve just experienced
your father’s warm embrace and forgiveness. Now, does this make you want to rebel against your father again by leaving home and going back to the filthy pigpen, wallowing in the mud and feeding on things that will never satisfy you? Of course not!

There is a great misunderstanding that believers who struggle with and indulge in sin, and who are still in love with the world, do so because they don’t love God enough. That’s what we hear from a lot of preachers who tell believers to love God more, thinking that if people love God more, they would love sin and the world less.

But God opened my eyes one day to the real reason believers are still entangled with sin and the world. I’ve never heard anyone preach this before, so this is fresh from heaven. The apostle John tells us, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). Notice that it is the love
of
the Father, not the love
for
the Father. So people who love the world and are trapped by worldly pursuits are actually people who don’t know or don’t believe in their hearts the love of the Father for them.

Unfortunately, we hear a lot of messages that are all about our love
for
the Father—“You’ve got to love God more! You’ve got to love God more!” What we really need is more preaching that is all about the love
of
the Father. It will never be about our love for Him, but
His
love for us.

Beloved, when people come to truly know and believe the Father’s love for them and have it burning in their hearts, they will no longer want to go out and live like the devil. There is just something powerfully transformative about grace. If you’ve tasted and savored grace from your heavenly Father, you never want to live in the wilderness of sin, away from the Father’s embrace, ever again.

Living from Grace to Grace

Let’s continue talking about the younger son. Does receiving forgiveness and grace from his father mean that he will never fail again? Of course not. But every time he fails, he knows now that he doesn’t have to run away and hide in guilt and fear because he knows his father’s heart. This is what it means to live from grace to grace—even if you stumble, it’s an upward stumbling. You are conscious of the fact that there is fresh grace each day, in superabounding measure to swallow up all your failures. This is the goodness of God that leads you to repentance (Rom. 2:4).

Some people think that repentance must involve crying their eyeballs out. I’ve seen people do that, but they return home and their lives are not changed. Conversely, I’ve seen genuine repentance when people encounter God’s grace by listening to a message or reading a book like this, and there are no dramatics involved. But when they go back to their families, you realize something in them has changed as days pass. Their thoughts and their beliefs have changed.

This in time brings about a complete shift in their lifestyles, behaviors, attitudes, and actions as they continue to grow in grace. Addictions start to lose their hold over their lives. Fears, doubts, and insecurities begin to dissolve. They begin to experience favor and succeed in their relationships, careers, and ministries. Instead of
envying pigs’ food, they now feast at the Father’s table of abundance. Instead of living defeated in sin, they now live in the victory of their Father’s love. That’s what right believing in the Father’s love brings.

I received an awesome testimony from twenty-five-year-old Nathan from New York, who shared about the breakthrough he experienced when he encountered the Father’s love for him. He recounted how, since the age of fourteen, his life had revolved around drugs, pornography, sex, and gang violence. Growing up in such an environment, he never had a chance to see a different way of life. He never enjoyed a proper childhood and never experienced love and acceptance from his family members, who saw him as nothing more than a “war machine.” With no father figure in his life except a man whom his mother married and who beat him regularly from the time he was three, Nathan struggled with his identity, his addictions, and his anger.

But his turning point came when he learned that his Daddy God loves him. He wrote:

I heard a sermon of yours about being God’s beloved. I had never heard someone speak about Jesus as someone who died for my sins because He loved me so much. I thought there was no way anyone would die for me if they knew what I’d done. But the love I felt as I listened was something I’d never experienced before.

I had to know more, so I bought your book
Destined To Reign,
and the Lord’s words through your book changed my life… I’ve dropped every bad habit—everything—in my past and have given myself to the Lord Jesus Christ. Every day seems new to me, and I see
life in a different light now. I know that I have a Father in heaven who loves and accepts me. I know that He hears my prayers and won’t be slow to answer them.

I am so glad Nathan had a revelation that despite his failings, his Daddy God has never stopped loving him. And simply by resting in his Daddy’s love, he has been set free not just from his addictions, but also from the anger and self-doubt that had bound him for almost half his life.

In the same way, I pray you will have a revelation that you are right now loved by the Father and close to His heart. That He always hears your prayers and is more than able and willing to lift you out of every dark pit and set you in His love and light.

In the parable of the prodigal son, both sons were far away from their father, even the older son, who was technically at home with him.

Have you experienced your Father’s love?

Right now, I want you to do something: close your eyes and just say, “Daddy.”

That’s a prayer right there. In fact, that’s the deepest, most intimate prayer you can pray.

Call upon your Daddy God because He loves
you
and cares for
you
. You never did anything to make Him fall in love with you. And beloved, there is nothing you can do, nothing you could have done, that will ever take away His love for you.

Already Beloved, Already Qualified

I want you to know today that as a child of God, you don’t need to qualify for His love in any way. You are
already
His beloved. You may feel that you are far away from Him, but your Father sees you. He has been watching and waiting for you to come home, ready to sprint toward you to embrace you. He wants to lavish His love and kisses on you, over and over again.

You don’t need to earn your Daddy’s love. ALL that He has is already yours. He’s not asking you to serve Him in order to earn His blessings. ALL that He has has already been freely and unconditionally given to you.

Jesus said, “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matt. 6:26). My friend, stop toiling. You are a child of God. You are of more value than many sparrows, and your Daddy even numbers the very hairs on your head (see Luke 12:7).

He gave up His only Son to die an agonizing death on the cross for the chance that you might one day accept His love.

So come. Come to the Father. Come with all your failings, with all your brokenness, with all your inadequacies.

Come as you are. As you realize that you are the object of His love, I pray that whatever is negative or destructive will be flushed out from your life and you will experience breakthrough after breakthrough like never before.

I
n this last chapter of our journey in discovering the power of right believing, I want to leave you with one simple but critical truth.

Even if you forget everything else you’ve read in this book (of course, I pray that you don’t!), memorize this truth I’m about to tell you. Feed on it. Let it take root in your spirit and become an anchor in your life. I promise that you will never be the same again.

Are you ready? Here it goes:

As a child of God, no matter what happens in your life, your Father in heaven loves you dearly and nothing you do can ever change that.

Will you believe that today?

Whether you are going through good times or facing challenging times, you need to know that your Abba loves you. There is nothing that you can ever do to make Him love you more, and nothing that you can ever do to make Him love you less.

Even—or perhaps
especially
—when you feel like you have failed, know that you will
always
be the apple of His eye.
Always.

God loves you with an everlasting love (see Jer. 31:3). A love that is the same yesterday, today, forever. Feel your Daddy God enfolding you in His embrace right now. You are safe. You are utterly loved and completely accepted. He loved you before you ever knew Him. His love for you has
nothing
to do with anything that you have done for Him. And that is why you can be secure in the knowledge that
nothing
you do will ever affect His unwavering, unconditional love for you.

There is nothing for you to prove. You only need to rest. Rest and receive your Abba’s love for you. Let your life become established and grounded in a love so perfect that no challenge or adversity will be able to knock you down. If you think that you’ve messed up, now is the time to turn to your Father. In His loving arms you will find hope, security, and refuge from any storm.

I love how the apostle Paul puts it: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?… Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:35, 37–39).

Beloved,
nothing
and
no one
can ever separate you from the love of your Father. Don’t you just love that complete sense of assurance in the unshakable foundation of God’s promise to you? There are no caveats or disclaimers when it comes to the love of your heavenly Father. The Bible plainly states that
nothing
shall be able to separate you from the love of your Father in heaven. It’s an absolute declaration and promise. “Nothing” means
nothing
. As a believer, this means that even your mistakes, failings, and sins cannot separate you from the love of your Father. Hallelujah!

In fact, it is the Father’s love for you that gives you the power to overcome every mistake, failure, and sin in your life. The Bible puts it this way: “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). What this means is that the more you experience the love and grace of your heavenly Father, the more you fall in love with Him and out of love with sin.

Like many of the testimonies we’ve read throughout this book, you will find destructive addictions losing their grasp over your life. I like how the New Living Translation translates Romans 6:14: “Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace.” Isn’t that beautiful? Today you are living under the
freedom of God’s amazing grace—His unmerited, undeserved, and unearned favor in your life. Grace gives you freedom. Freedom from lack, from fear, from addictions, from the torment of guilt, and from every curse and every sin!

Knowing Your Value Makes a Difference

Did you know that the enemy has no hold over people who know their Father loves them? If Adam and Eve had believed in God’s love for them, the devil would not have been successful in tempting them. Unfortunately, they chose to believe the lie that the serpent had planted by portraying God as stingy and selfish, as if He was withholding something good from them.

That’s why I want you to be anchored in the Father’s love. You will be unshakable. You will have no desire to touch certain things, go to certain places, or be associated with certain people. You will keep away from negative influences because you trust your Father’s heart for you and believe that He only wants what’s best for you. You rest, knowing that He is watching out for you to protect you and insulate you from harm.