Unmerited Favor (4 page)

Unfortunately, in many Christian circles, “grace” has become a cliché. You see, people are occupied with “doing.” They always want to know what you are doing right to get the results that you have. The point of this book is to encourage you to not focus on what you are doing, but to focus on beholding Jesus. Stop trying to merit God’s blessings and start depending on Jesus’ unmerited favor for every success in your life. When you stop doing and start depending on His divine favor, trust me, you will begin to experience the Jesus-kind of results.

In the same way, I am believing for the Jesus-kind of results in
your
life as I write this book. I do not want you to read what I have to say to you. I want you to receive what I believe Jesus has put in my heart for you. I am but a pointer and I am writing this book to point you to the person of Jesus! It is His manifested presence, His glorious power working in your heart and through your hands that will cause everything you touch to prosper with the Jesus-kind of results, such that even your harshest critic will have to conclude that the Lord is with you and is prospering the work of your hands!

Beloved, stop looking at your outward circumstances or the position you are in. Whether your employer is a believer or not, Jesus can make ALL that you do prosper when you depend on His unmerited favor in your career! And believe me, when that begins to happen, your employer will sit up and notice that there is something special about you. You will stand out in a crowd! Remember that the same Lord who was with Joseph is with you today. His name is Jesus and because Jesus is
with
you, you can expect good success in everything that you do!

Because Jesus is with you, expect good success in everything that you do!

For example, when you are placed over a sales project, believe that your sales team will hit record levels of sales never achieved before in your organization. When you are overseeing the finances of a company, believe that you will find legal ways to help your company save on operating expenses and increase its cash flow like never before. When you are placed in a business development role, believe that Jesus will cause doors that have always been closed to your company to be opened to you because of His unmerited favor upon your life. Perhaps your company is just a small IT start-up in the Silicon Valley, but for some reason, all the big boys in Microsoft, IBM and Oracle like you. They can’t put their finger on it, but there is just something special about you that makes them compete to find ways to collaborate with you, leaving you spoiled for choice!

Depend on Jesus and Jesus alone, if you  want to experience His success.

My friend, that’s the unmerited favor of God in action. In the natural, you may be unqualified and inexperienced, but remember that all your disqualifications exist in the realm of the natural. You, beloved, live and operate in the supernatural realm! The Lord Jesus is with you 100 percent. You are a successful person in the Lord’s eyes and as you depend on Him, He will cause everything that your hands touch to prosper.

Without Him, We Cannot. Without Us, He Will Not

Before I end this chapter, I want to teach you a powerful principle to help you understand God’s heart for your success. I trust that by now, you have no doubt in your heart that Jesus is infinitely interested in your success. However, you may be wondering, “If that’s the case, why isn’t every Christian I know experiencing the Jesus-kind of success in their lives?”

In more than two decades of ministry, I have learned this from the Lord:
Without Him, we cannot. Without us, He will not.
What this simply means is that we need to recognize the fact that if we do not depend on Jesus, there can be no real, long-lasting and abiding success—without Him, we cannot. The Bible tells us that unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain.
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Believers who want to experience His success need to recognize this truth and begin to depend on Jesus and Jesus alone.

There are some believers who may not articulate it, but in their hearts, they believe that without Jesus, they can still succeed. By believing and acting on this, they fall from the high place of God’s grace (His unmerited favor) back into the law, back into trying to merit and deserve success by their own efforts. God’s Word tells us, “For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace [unmerited favor].”
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These are strong words of warning. Once you start depending on your own merits and efforts to deserve God’s favor, you are back under the system of the law. You are cut off from Christ and have fallen from the place of having His unmerited favor work in your life. Don’t misunderstand me, Jesus is still with you (He will never leave you nor forsake you
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), but by depending on your self-efforts, you effectively cut off His unmerited favor in your life.

So what do I mean when I say, “Without us, He will not”? Well, Jesus is a gentleman. He will not force His unmerited favor and success down your throat. He needs you to allow Him to work in your life. He waits patiently for you to trust Him. He waits patiently for you to depend on His unmerited favor, the way Joseph trusted and depended wholly on the Lord’s presence, until His manifested presence took over, and His glory radiated from everything that Joseph touched.

Beloved, let’s learn quickly that without Jesus, we cannot succeed, and if we choose not to respond to His unmerited favor, He will not force it on us. God’s unmerited favor is ever-flowing toward us and Jesus is waiting for us to come to the end of ourselves. He is waiting for you to stop struggling in your own attempts to somehow “deserve” His favor, and just depend on Him. So start resting in Jesus’ unmerited favor and begin experiencing His manifested presence and glory upon everything you touch!

Chapter 3: Becoming Safe For Success

As much as we are interested in the Jesus-kind of
results
in our lives, it is of equal importance that we desire the Jesus-kind of
success
. God does not want us to have success that will crush us. I am sure that you have heard many stories of people who receive a sudden windfall when they come into a large inheritance or strike the first prize in a lottery. However, for some of these people, the sudden wealth did not give them a better life. Instead, in many instances, we know that it corrupted and destroyed their lives.

Often, these people were not able to handle their so-called success, and ended up leaving their wives and allowing their families to break down before their eyes. Perhaps they bought all sorts of things and lived in huge houses. Yet, they still felt a chronic sense of loneliness, emptiness and dissatisfaction. The sad reality is that many of those who chanced upon such sudden wealth squandered it all away, and some even became bankrupt. Such results are clearly not the Jesus-kind of results, nor are they the Jesus-kind of success. Let me make it clear from the onset: God has no problem with you having money, but He does not want money to have you!

“But Pastor Prince, how can you say that God has no problem with us having money? Doesn’t the Bible say that money is the root of all evil?”

Hold on a minute, that’s not in the Bible. Let’s be scripturally accurate. What the Bible says is this: “For
the love of money
is a root of all kinds of evil ...”
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Can you see the difference? Having money does not make you evil. It is the obsession with and intense love of money that lead to all kinds of evil. Just because a person has no money in his pocket does not mean that he is holy. He may well be thinking, dreaming and lusting after money all day long. You don’t need to have a lot of money to have the love of money. If a person is always purchasing lottery tickets, going to the casinos and gambling in the stock market, this person clearly has a love for money. He is obsessed with getting more money.

He wants to bless you so that you can be a blessing!

When God called Abraham, He said to him,“...I will bless you...and you shall be a blessing.”
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You and I, who are new covenant believers in Christ, are called the seed of Abraham,
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and like Abraham, we are called to be a blessing. Now, how can we be a blessing if we are not blessed in the first place? How can we be a blessing to others when we are always flat on our backs with sickness, living from hand to mouth, never having enough for our own family and always having to borrow from others? No way, my friend. God wants you healthy and strong, and He wants you to have more than enough financial resources so that you can be generous with your relatives, friends, community or anyone who needs help. How can you be in a position to help others if you need all the help you can get yourself? It’s definitely not God’s best for you if you barely have enough for yourself. He wants to bless you so that you can be a blessing!

The Gospel Of Jesus Christ Brings Supernatural Healing And Provision

“Oh, Pastor Prince, now I know that you are one of those health and wealth, prosperity gospel preachers!”

There is no such thing as a “prosperity gospel.” There is only one gospel and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Through Jesus’ finished work on the cross, you can depend on Him for His resurrection life to pulsate and flow in your physical body from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet. Sicknesses and diseases are not from God. On the cross, Jesus bore not just our sins, but also our sicknesses, diseases and infirmities, and “by His stripes we are healed”!
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That’s not all, my friend. On the cross, Jesus bore the curse of poverty! This is what the Word of God declares: “For you know the grace [unmerited favor] of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.”
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Read 2 Corinthians 8 for yourself. The entire chapter is about money and being a blessing financially to those who are in need. So don’t let anyone tell you that the verse is referring to “spiritual” riches.

One of the things that I always remind my church is this: Always read a verse in its context because when you take the “text” out of its “context,” it becomes a con! Don’t let anyone con you out of God’s blessings in your life. Let me ask you again: How can you be a blessing to anyone when you are always sick and always borrowing from one person to repay another? My friend, it is the devil who wants you sick and poor, but the God I know has paid a heavy price to redeem you from the curse of sickness and poverty!

Let’s understand how God deals with us from the point of
relationship
. As a parent, how would you teach your child character and patience? With sicknesses and diseases? Of course not! There are institutions where we put such parents! Again, as a parent, how would you teach your child humility? By cursing your child with poverty for the rest of his life? No way! Now, isn’t it amazing how everything becomes crystal clear when we start thinking from the point of view of a parent, and put our own children in the picture?

When you start to think along the lines of relationship, everything will converge and you will begin to see things from God’s perspective. He is our Father who operates on the frequency of relationship, and through His unmerited favor in our lives, we learn character, patience and humility as we rest from our self-efforts and depend on Him. The more we know our Father, the more we become like Him. This is how God causes us to grow from glory to glory in every area of our lives. It is simply by beholding Him!
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You know that as parents, we always seek the best things for our children. How much more would our Father in heaven want the best things for us, His precious children? In the same way that you want your children to be healthy, God wants you to enjoy His divine health. And in the same way that you want your children to always have more than enough, God wants you to enjoy His supernatural provision. When He provides, get ready for a net-breaking, boat-sinking load.
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Get ready for 12 baskets full of leftovers!
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The Bible puts things in perspective most clearly in Matthew 7:11—If you then, as imperfect parents “know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him”!

In the same way that you want your children to always have more than enough, God wants you to enjoy His supernatural provision.

Now, take a walk with me to the intensive care unit of any hospital. Look at the people there gasping to draw their next breath and groaning in anguish despite the painkillers being pumped into their ravaged bodies. Look at the inconsolable woman, who has just lost her husband, crying hysterically in the corridor. Then, look me in the eye and tell me that you really think that this is the work of our loving Father.

Then, walk with me through the malaria-infested streets of any slum, and look at the children scavenging through mounds of rubbish and gratefully eating any scrap of discarded food that they can find. Look at the young girls forced into prostitution and the scarred bodies of desperate parents who had no choice but to sell their organs to make ends meet. Then, look me in the eye again, and tell me that you believe poverty is from our Father.

Come on! Even the world has more common sense than some Christians! Look at what people like Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett and Bono are doing. They are using their fame, resources and time to fight against sickness and poverty. And here, we have believers who are completely blinded by legalistic beliefs, telling us that sickness and poverty are from God. I hope that you are beginning to see how warped and embarrassing this is.

God is not against you having money and material things. He is against money and things having you.

My friend, get this right: God abhors sickness and He loathes poverty. He gave everything He had to annihilate sickness and poverty when He gave us His only Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for us. He placed all of humanity’s sin, as well as the curse of sickness and poverty on the body of Jesus. Right now, humanity only has to respond to Jesus’ finished work, and their sins will be forgiven, their physical bodies will be healed and their poverty will indeed be history!

God wants you to be blessed spirit, soul and body. He is not against you having money and material things. But let me make it clear: He is against money and things
having you
. I often tell my church this: Use money and love people. Don’t love money and use people. God wants you and your family completely blessed and having more than enough to be a blessing. But at the same time, He wants to be sure that success will not destroy you and cause your family to disintegrate. To be safe for success, keep your heart ablaze with passion for Jesus and His presence, rather than on empty materialistic things.

Safe For Success—Keep Your Eyes On Jesus

The Word of God says, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
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Now, what is the kingdom of God? The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 14:17 that the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

When you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus and pursue the kingdom of God, which is Jesus’ righteousness, His peace and His joy, God’s Word promises that “all these things” will be added to you. “These things” refer to what you will eat, drink and wear. Jesus tells us that you do not have to be consumed by these concerns. If your Father feeds even the birds of the air, even though they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, how much more will He take care of you, who are of much more value to Him than the birds!
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Beloved, just keep your eyes on Jesus and His finished work on the cross. Not only will He add the things that you need in this life to you, He will also cause you to become safe for success. Now, turn with me to the Book of Jeremiah to see what the Lord says about having riches, wisdom and might.

“Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts
boast of this, that he understands and knows Me
, that I am the Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord.

—Jeremiah 9:23–24, nas

Let us be a people who will not depend on our own wisdom, might and riches (in summary, our own merits), but rather, let our boasting (dependence) be in understanding and knowing Jesus. Know that He is gracious and full of unmerited favor toward us. Know that He executes justice against all injustices. Know that He Himself is righteousness and He clothes us with His robes of righteousness. The more you focus on beholding Jesus in all His loveliness and the less you struggle to earn things by your own merits, the more you become safe for greater success in your life.

The more you focus on beholding Jesus in all His loveliness and the less you struggle to earn things by your own merits, the more you become safe for greater success in your life.

Let’s continue our study on the life of Joseph. There are still many precious gems hidden in his life that we have not touched on, and I want you to see what it means when a man is safe for success. In the previous chapter, we saw how the Lord’s manifested presence in his life made all that Joseph did to prosper. The results that Joseph produced were so spectacular that even Potiphar, an unbeliever with no spiritual discernment, could visibly see that the Lord was with Joseph. Potiphar was no fool. When he saw that whatever Joseph touched flourished in his hand, Joseph “found favor in his sight” and Potiphar quickly promoted Joseph to become the overseer of his house, putting “all that he had” under Joseph’s authority. Then, the Bible records that the Lord blessed Potiphar’s house “for Joseph’s sake,” and the blessing of the Lord was on all that Potiphar had in the house and in the field.
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