Tag: Christian stuffs

What qualifies you for God’s protection?

I ask this question because I have heard many ministers whose teachings make it seem like you have to qualify for God’s blessings. They make it sound like God blesses you only if you can love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This also applies in the area of your protection. When they read, “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him,” they conclude that God’s protection is dependent on us fulfilling the condition of loving the Lord perfectly.

Unfortunately, such teaching robs you of the faith to believe in God for divine protection over yourself and your loved ones. Anything dependent on our efforts is on a shaky foundation because no matter how “good” a Christian we think we are, our love for the Lord will fail.

That is precisely why God sent His Son. He knew that man would never be able to fulfill all His commandments. In sending His Son, He said to us, “I know you can’t, so let Me love you with all My heart, all My mind, and all My strength.”

Therein lies the beautiful love story we call the gospel of Jesus Christ.

God SO loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son to save and ransom us. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself fulfilled all the requirements of the law. Today, even when our love for Him wavers, He still delivers us from evil even when we fail!

One Scripture that beautifully encapsulates the crux of the new covenant of grace is 1 John 4:10: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation [the atoning sacrifice] for our sins.”

I pray that your heart will be anchored on this revelation. The emphasis of the new covenant is God’s love for you, not your love for God.

Am I saying that your love for God is unimportant? Of course not. I am saying is that our love for Him will constantly waver, but His love never fails.

The Bible declares that “the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases” (Lam. 3:22 ESV). I am so grateful that we are under the new covenant of God’s amazing grace, where we can depend on His unconditional, unchanging, and irrevocable love for us!

God’s word tells us that “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52).

This is an excellent verse to pray and speak over your children—that they first increase in favor with God and then in favor with man. Your “vertical relationship” with God should always be given priority over your “horizontal relationship” with the people around you.

Like Jesus, you can increase in wisdom and in God’s unmerited favor. How?

You have probably noticed that some believers seem to experience a lot more unmerited favor than others. I believe that this is because these believers understand the key to accessing God’s favor.

Romans 5:2 clearly spells out that “we have access by faith into this grace [unmerited favor] in which we stand.”

To gain access to your computer or your bank account, you need a password. To gain access to and increase in God’s unmerited favor, the “password” or key that we need to have is faith, faith to believe that YOU, _______________ (insert your name), are highly favored!

One of the things that I have taught my church members to do is to declare over themselves that they are greatly blessed, highly favored, and deeply loved.

“How do we know that we are greatly blessed, Pastor Prince?”

Read Hebrews 6:13–14 for yourself. God wanted us to be so anchored in the sure and steadfast knowledge that He will bless us, the seed of Abraham, that He swore by Himself, saying, “Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you.”

“How can we say that we are highly favored?”

Ephesians 1:6 tells us that by God’s grace (unmerited favor), God “made us accepted in the Beloved.” In the original Greek text, the word “accepted” is the word charitoo, which means “highly favored.”

“And are we deeply loved by God?”

God didn’t just love us. John 3:16 says that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” He demonstrated how He SO loved us when He sent Jesus to die on the cross for us.

I pray that the verses I have shown you here will help you believe that through Jesus, you are indeed incredibly blessed, highly favored, and deeply loved. If these truths are still not established in your heart, start speaking them.

Look at yourself in the mirror every morning and declare boldly, “Because of Jesus’ perfect work on the cross, I am righteous by His blood, and I am greatly blessed, highly favored, and deeply loved! I expect good things to come my way. I expect success, and I have a confident expectation of good!”

Once you receive Christ, you are standing on favor ground. You are no longer on condemnation ground. God looks on you as His favorite child!

“But Pastor Prince, how can God have so many favorites?”

Hey, He is God. Don’t try to limit an infinite God with your finite mind.

The Bible tells us that God counts the very hairs on each of our heads (Matt. 10:30). I love my daughter very much, but I have never counted the number of strands of hair on her head.

His love for each of us is intimate and deeply personal. In His eyes, we are all His favorites!

Beloved, just because you don’t know the Bible from cover to cover, don’t be intimidated by learned theologians who use very high-sounding theological words to try to dismiss the gospel of glorious grace.

The gospel is so simple that even fishers such as Peter could grasp it, yet it could also confound intellectual scholars such as Nicodemus (John 3:1–10). The learned Nicodemuses of today might hear the gospel of grace preached and be left wondering, “How can these things be?”

In contrast, the woman at the well in John 4, who encountered Jesus and His grace, couldn’t help but proclaim, “Come, see a Man!” and point people to the Savior! Today, precious people led the grace revolution just like the woman at the well.

We have received so many testimonies of how imperfect people have risen to become evangelists of the gospel of grace. They may not be as qualified as the Nicodemuses of this world, but what they do have is a life transformed and restored after an authentic encounter with our Lord Jesus Christ.

Edwina is another case in point. Although she was born again when she was sixteen, every church she attended taught her to keep God’s laws to please Him. Believing that God was waiting for her subsequent wrongdoing in order to condemn her, she became rebellious, started having premarital sex, had an abortion, and ended up attempting suicide more than once. She shared:

I got married and had kids at a young age. When I got older, I tried my best to keep my life order. I attended church, stayed faithful to my husband, and worked hard. But my husband was a womanizer, heavy smoker, gambler, drug addict, and an alcoholic. I sent him to work in Singapore to keep him away from drugs.

When I eventually joined him there, he was in massive debt, still an alcoholic, and had a few girlfriends. I felt that he only wanted me to help pay his debt, and it was not worthwhile to remain faithful. I started an online chat relationship that led to an affair. I felt wanted again, but it just didn’t feel right.

Devastated, I cried out to God. Then, I remembered that my Filipino pastor had mentioned New Creation Church. So I attended a service with my husband, and I cried throughout the sermon.

Pastor Prince shared how Jesus loved the woman caught in adultery unconditionally, giving her the gift of no condemnation to empower her to stop sinning. It was the first time I heard about a God who didn’t condemn me.

I kept returning to New Creation Church, with or without my husband. I also listened to Pastor Prince’s sermons on my way to and from work. Not only did my affair come to an end, but Jesus also turned the water into wine in my marriage.

I now love my husband even more than before, and my husband also loves me. He has quit smoking, gambling, and drinking. We believe his debt cancellation is also on the way, in Jesus’ name!

I’m now so in love with Jesus and feel comfortable in His presence, whether I’ve done well or not. And I’m seeing more right living in my life now. I’m more honest and loving. I don’t boast in myself, but I boast in what the Lord has done in me.

Thank you, Pastor Prince, for being faithful in preaching the truth. And thank You, Lord Jesus, for loving me.

Beloved, as He did with the woman at the well and with Edwina, the Lord knows everything about you—every failure, every sin, and every shortcoming. Yet He still loves you with an everlasting love, a completely unconditional love, a love that nailed Him to the cross.

The truth is that you are, right now, the righteousness of God through Jesus’ precious blood. You can have a genuine and intimate relationship with THE LORD, YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

The enemy may have stolen the intimacy and closeness between you and the Lord, but I want you to know that God is restoring relationships today. The grace revolution is a restoration revolution, and the grace revolution is here.

As our heavenly Father has promised, He is setting up shepherds all around the world who are preaching THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. And His precious people shall no longer be fearful, no longer be discouraged, and no longer be lacking.

Right now, I pray that as you receive the good news of the gospel of grace, you are being set free from every bondage that is weighing you down. In the name of our Lord Jesus, I see you healed from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet. I see you freed from that secret addiction that has held you captive for years. I see you whole in all your relationships. Amen!