Authors: Joseph Prince
Unmerited Favor
Your supernatural advantage for a successful life
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked “KJV” are taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Scripture quotations marked “NIV” are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked “NASB” are taken from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Unmerited Favor
ISBN 978–981–08–8372-0 © Copyright Joseph Prince, 2011
Joseph Prince Teaching Resources
www.josephprinceonline.com
All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without the express written consent of the publisher.
Dedication
This book is lovingly dedicated to:
Wendy
After all these years, I still look forward to coming home to you. If I had to choose again, it would still be you.
Jessica
You are the reason Daddy feels incredibly blessed.
Darren
Your wisdom has given this ministry wings.
New Creation Church
You help me see why Jesus loves the church and calls her His bride. Thank you for all your support and love.
Contents
Chapter 1: The Definition Of Success
Chapter 2: Everything You Touch Is Blessed
Chapter 3: Becoming Safe For Success
Chapter 4: Success Beyond Your Circumstances
Chapter 5: Practicing The Presence Of Jesus
Chapter 6” Your Right To God’s Unmerited Favor
Chapter 7: God’s Peace For Your Success
Chapter 8: Covenanted To Succeed In Life
Chapter 9: God’s Covenant Of Unmerited Favor With Us
Chapter 10: Perfected By Unmerited Favor
Chapter 11: Transforming The Next Generation
Chapter 12: Our Part In The New Covenant
Chapter 13: How Unmerited Favor Is Cheapened
Chapter 14: The Secret To Good Success
Chapter 15: The Blessed Man Versus The Cursed Man
Chapter 16: Walking In The Blessing Of Abraham
Chapter 17: Becoming An Heir Of The World
Chapter 18: Self-Occupation Versus Christ-Occupation
Chapter 19: The Prayer Of The Unnamed Servant
Chapter 20: Divine Wisdom To Succeed
Chapter 21: Greatly Blessed, Highly Favored, Deeply Loved
Introduction
This book is all about Jesus. It is about His passionate love for you and His desire for you to experience success in your life. But before we go on, let me ask you this question:
Do you believe that Jesus is interested in your success?
Take a moment to reflect on this.
My friend, I am so glad that we have the opportunity to talk about this today because I want you to know that Jesus delights in blessing you. It is His good pleasure to see you blessed in every area of your life!
1
Now, don’t put a limit on His blessings in your life. The blessings of the Lord are not (as some may erroneously believe) just seen in material things. Jesus is infinitely interested in your
total
well-being. He is interested in your family, career, fulfillment in life, marriage, ministry, and boy, does the list go on!
When it comes to your desires, hopes and dreams, there is no detail that is too minuscule, minute or insignificant for Jesus. Trust me, if it matters to you, it matters to Him! Even if you went to Him in prayer to remove that small pimple on your nose, He is not going to look at you and reply mockingly, “Hey buddy, don’t you know that I’ve got a whole universe to run? Come to Me when you have a bigger prayer request.” No way! A thousand times no! Jesus will never ridicule or deride your concerns as petty. He is never dismissive or condescending. He is not like some of your so-called “friends,” who may delight in poking fun at your shortcomings. If it bothers you, it bothers Him.
Jesus is someone whom you can be completely real with. You can hang out with Him and be yourself, with no pretense and no play-acting. Jesus is ever-loving toward you and you can talk to Him about anything. He enjoys conversing with you about your dreams, aspirations and hopes. He wants to heal you of things in your past that you may be struggling with. He is interested in your present challenges. He wants to weep with you when you are down and rejoice with you in all your victories.
Jesus is love and tenderness personified. Be careful not to confuse His tenderness with the effeminate and weak images that you have seen depicted in some traditional paintings of Him. He is tenderness and strength wrapped up in one. He is meekness and majesty, manhood and deity, velvet and steel. You see, sometimes, when we attempt to be assertive and strong, we bulldoze over people’s feelings and end up hurting them with our words. When we attempt to be tender, we overdose on niceness and reduce ourselves to doormats to be taken advantage of by others.
Let’s turn away from ourselves and look at Jesus. He could sternly force a pack of scheming Pharisees to back off in one instance, challenging them by saying, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”
2
In the very next moment, this same Jesus could look straight into the eyes of a broken woman caught in adultery, and with compassion resonating deeply in His voice, ask her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you? Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”
3
This is our God!
He embodies all the heroic qualities that humanity pines for. But instead of seeking Jesus, many in the world have settled for cheap Hollywood imitations of heroism based on artificial ideals of “manliness.”
In one moment, a tired Jesus could be fast asleep in a windswept fisherman’s boat, oblivious to the rough Galilean waters crashing against the hapless vessel. But in the very next moment, you see Him staring unflinchingly at the boisterous waves, His well-toned carpenter’s arms raised to the sky. With His single declaration of absolute authority over heaven and earth, the waves submitted and calmed instantaneously into a placid mirror of stillness.
4
Jesus is 100 percent Man and at the same time 100 percent God. As Man, He understands and identifies with all that you have gone through, are going through and will ever go through in this life. He knows, for example, what it means to be fatigued after a long day. But as a loving God, all His power, authority and resources are on your side.
Do you know that you are important to Jesus? Know with full assurance in your heart that Jesus knows you perfectly, and yet accepts and loves you perfectly. When you begin to understand that, you will realize that it is truly that unmerited favor, that favor from Jesus that you know you do not deserve, did not merit and cannot earn for yourself, that will perfect every imperfection and weakness in your life. If you are facing challenges, such as lack in any area, addictions, fears, sicknesses or broken relationships, Jesus’ unmerited favor will protect, deliver, prosper, bring restoration to and provide for you. His unmerited favor will transform you into wholeness, and it is the goodness of God, not your striving and self-efforts, that will lead you to live victoriously for His glory.
Several years ago, I shared with my church that there are essentially two ways in which you can go about your life. The first is to depend entirely on your self-efforts, and the other is to depend completely on the unmerited favor and blessings of God. As for me and my house, the choice is absolutely clear. I am leaning strong on His unmerited favor in every area of my life—my marriage, family, church and anything else that I may be involved in.
Now,
you
have a choice to make—to live your life based entirely on your own efforts, or based entirely on the unmerited favor of Jesus. There are only two ways—either you are depending on “deserved favor” through your self-efforts, or you are blessed by grace, which is
unmerited favor
, through the cross and the obedience of Jesus Christ! The first is the world’s way. The second is God’s way.
The world’s way to success is based on meritocracy. God’s way to success in the new covenant is in direct contradiction to that, and is based on His unmerited favor. You can’t earn it. You can’t deserve it. And you certainly can’t merit it. It comes by way of God’s grace and by the power of what was accomplished at Calvary. It goes against the grain of every world system you have ever learned or depended upon. God’s ways are higher and they always lead to good and abiding success.
My friend, there is no middle road. You cannot mix your own efforts with God’s grace. Choose His unmerited favor and all the glory redounds to Jesus. Every success, opportunity, blessing or breakthrough, be it in your health, family or career—success in every aspect of your life—comes by His unmerited favor. It is never you!
“Now Pastor Prince, shouldn’t there be a part for man to perform and another part for God to fulfill? Shouldn’t man do his best and let God do the rest?”
I am so glad that you asked this question!
You see, when people say that man has a part to play, what they end up doing is to come up with a list of requirements that man needs to fulfill to qualify for God’s blessings. They say things like, “In order for God to answer your prayers, you have to do this and do that, and not do this and not do that.” And all the while, this list of do’s and don’ts to qualify one for God’s blessings keeps growing.
Now, let’s stop right here. Doesn’t this list of requirements that you have to fulfill so that God will bless you sound awfully familiar to you? I believe that many of those who insist on these requirements are well-meaning, sincere people. But what they are doing is pointing others back to the old covenant of the law, whether knowingly or unknowingly!
That’s how the law of Moses works. Under the old covenant, God’s blessings were contingent on man’s fulfillment of a list of requirements. But we are no longer under the old covenant of the law.
This is not Christianity. The
new covenant
that we are under today is based completely on the removal of our sins by the blood of Jesus! “For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh,
how much more shall the blood of Christ
, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from
dead works
to serve the living God?”
5
Depending on your own efforts to deserve favor from God is considered “dead works.” It is God’s desire for us to depend wholly on the unmerited favor of Jesus.
Just to make it clear, it is not Joseph Prince who is finding fault with the old covenant. God Himself said, “For if that first covenant [the covenant of law] had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second [the covenant of grace].”
6
The Christian life today is not based on what you are doing or not doing. The reality is that the Christian life is not a religion at all. It is about having a relationship based completely on receiving WHAT GOD HIMSELF HAS DONE ON THE CROSS! When you receive completely what Jesus has
done
for you, your “doing” will flow effortlessly.
Hear what the great apostle of grace, Paul, had to say about this: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace [unmerited favor] of God which was with me.”
7
So my friend, in answer to your question, I would say don’t worry about what “man’s part” is. Focus, like Paul, entirely on Jesus’ part—His grace and His unmerited favor upon your life—and you will end up being energized by the Lord to pray more, read the Bible more and serve both God and your community more, simply because the unmerited favor of God is not in vain in your life. You will also realize that even the outworking of all that you do is not of yourself, but it is by His grace overflowing in you.
Some people think that grace will compromise God’s holiness. Absolutely not! The standards that grace sets are much higher than the standards of the law of Moses. When you are under grace, you will effortlessly fulfill and even superexceed the expectations of the law of Moses! Come on, are you getting this? If you can understand what I am saying in this introduction, you have already been blessed!
Now, let me bring this introduction to a close. I don’t know about you, but I feel the presence of Jesus as I write this to you. I have released what He has put in my heart for you. I want to give you a scripture premise for this book, because you may be asking why a book that’s supposed to be about unmerited favor is turning out to be all about Jesus!
If you have the Amplified Bible, turn with me to 2 Peter 1:2. It is important that you see this in God’s Word yourself:
May grace (God’s favor) and peace
(which is perfect well-being, all necessary good, all spiritual prosperity, and freedom from fears and agitating passions and moral conflicts)
be multiplied to you in
[the full, personal, precise, and correct]
knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
—2 Peter 1:2, amp
It really is that simple. The unmerited favor of God will flow like a mighty torrential river into every parched area of your life, be it your physical body, marriage, career or finances,
when you see Jesus
! The more you increase in the knowledge of our loving Savior Jesus Christ and His finished work at the cross, the more God’s unmerited favor will be multiplied in your life. And it is His unmerited favor that will cause you to enjoy success beyond your natural intelligence, qualifications and ability!
There are many quality writings by great men of God on favor, but what I want you to see in this book is that God’s unmerited favor is not a topic. It is not a teaching. GOD’S UNMERITED FAVOR IS THE GOSPEL! God’s unmerited favor is not a subject. It is a PERSON, AND HIS NAME IS JESUS. When you have Jesus, you have unmerited favor! Jesus and unmerited favor do not exist separately. Unmerited favor is embodied in His entire being and in His finished work at Calvary.
It is unfortunate that the word “grace” in the modern church has been made into a theological subject or classified as a doctrine. In the modern vernacular, the word “grace” has also been abused and devalued. For example, you are given “five minutes’ grace” before parking charges are levied when you drive into the parking lot of many shopping malls. How that cheapens the word “grace”!
To help the modern reader understand the fullness of grace, I am going to use the words “unmerited favor” and “grace” interchangeably in this book because grace is the undeserved, unearned and unmerited favor of God. To help you see grace in a fresh and new light, whenever I quote scriptures in this book and the word “grace” appears, I will add in parentheses, “unmerited favor.” I want you to begin to understand and see grace (unmerited favor) in its fullness.
This book is about your supernatural advantage for a successful life. By the end of this book, I trust that you will indeed begin to believe that God is personally interested in your success. You are His precious child and He wants to see you succeed and reign in life. When you believe that, you will also start to depend on His unmerited favor for success in every area of your life.