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!

Most of us think that if we could change our circumstances, we could have the lives we want. However, today’s scripture shows us that that is not what Jesus said. Do you see from His words that your life today is a reflection of what has been hidden and carried in your heart all this time?

If you don’t want your life to remain the same, the solution is not to change your circumstances. It is in changing your heart, changing what you believe.

My friend, for every area of weakness, failure, or defeat that you may be experiencing right now, I assure you that there is some wrong believing in that area. Search the Scriptures for the truth. Your answer lies in right believing.

Now, commit this to memory: right believing always leads to right living!

Say it out loud, for this is a powerful revelation you cannot afford to miss.

Let me share with you a powerful testimony of a precious brother in my church who struggled with a smoking habit. He had been smoking for many years and went through at least one pack of cigarettes a day. Besides feeling lousy every time he smoked, he felt condemned and constantly heard the voice of the accuser bombarding him with accusations:

How can you call yourself a Christian? Look at you—you are still a smoker! Give up, you hypocrite! You are not worthy of being a Christian.

The more he heard the accusations, the more he smoked. Though he tried to muster his willpower to overcome this destructive habit, he could not do it. He knew that his body was a temple of God, and he sincerely wanted to glorify the Lord, but there was no power to do so.

Then, he heard me preach on how the Holy Spirit is present in him to convict him of righteousness and how the more he believed that he was righteous because of Jesus Christ, the more his behavior would line up with what he thought. So he began to confess this daily: “I am the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ,” even when he succumbed to the temptation and lit up. Every day, he would wake up, staring at himself in the mirror, and say, “I see a righteous man standing in front of me.”

This brother believed that he was righteous, not because of what he did but because of what Jesus had done. And the more he thought that he was the righteousness of God in Christ, the more his nicotine addiction faded.

He began to have a supernatural strength to cut down his daily tobacco intake within a short time. He began to replace the voice of the accuser that called him a hypocrite with the voice of the Holy Spirit that declared, “You are righteous in God’s eyes. God sees you as righteous as Jesus Christ today.”

The voice of the Holy Spirit became louder and louder until he finally heard only His voice, and one day he woke up and realized that the desire for cigarettes was no longer there! Hallelujah!

Can you see? Deliverance from destructive habits comes simply by believing the voice of the Holy Spirit and seeing yourself as the righteousness of God in Christ every day.

Just being faithful in believing and confessing, “I am the righteousness of God in Christ,” will cause a power to be released in your life that overcomes the bondage to cigarettes, pornography, alcohol, drugs, or gambling. Today is the day that the Lord will set you free from every lie, guilt, and condemnation that the accuser has been bombarding you with.

Please pray this prayer with me right now. My friend, let’s silence the voice of the accuser and allow Jesus to set you free to reign:

Psalm 103 is one of my favorite psalms of David, a beautiful psalm that describes who and what God really is—a gracious and merciful Savior. Believing right begins with what you believe about God and must be based on the solid foundation of God’s Word.

To know the truth about who and what God is, we can’t go by feelings, circumstances, human conjectures, or what we may have heard someone say about God. We have to go to the source!

If you heard a rumor that someone you knew was saying horrible and negative things about you, don’t believe it immediately. Go to the source first. Ask this person if this is what he or she said or if this is what he or she meant.

Many people allow precious friendships and relationships to become fractured because they believe the rumors. They become bitter, angry, and disappointed without ever verifying with the person if he or she had said those nasty things.

In the same way, in the world we live in, there are all kinds of wrong beliefs perpetuated about God: “God is angry at you.” “He is disappointed with you.” “God is allowing all these negative things to happen to you because He’s punishing you for your past sins.”

Please do NOT believe all this baseless gossip about God! Such impressions of God have damaged many people’s relationships with Him, and they live with a distorted perspective of who God is.

Instead of receiving His love, grace, and forgiveness, they become afraid, distant, and fearful of Him. Instead of allowing Jesus to come into their situations, they live their lives running away, avoiding, and hiding from Him.

Come on, let’s honor God and go to the source. Look again at what the Bible says about Him in today’s scripture reading: He is “slow to anger, and abounding in mercy . . . as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” This is our God! This is why you can always run to Him and believe that you can freely receive His help!

In verse above, we see a powerful and graphic agricultural imagery used to help us understand the violent suffering our Lord Jesus endured for our healing.

Psalm 129 is messianic, and this is a picture of the scourging Christ went through. I was reading this verse one day, and I felt the Lord saying to me, “Meditate on why I used words that are associated with farming.” That made me wonder, Why did the Lord say, “They plowed My back” rather than beat, scourged, or hit?

Plowers drag a sharp plow that digs into the soil to break up and make deep furrows in preparation for seeds to be sown, as pictured on the following page. I believe that was what happened to our Lord Jesus’ back. When The Roman soldiers scourged him, it was as if His whole back had been plowed.

Furrows made in the ground by a plow allow for seeds and irrigation.
In Psalm 129, the furrows speak of the scourging Jesus received for our healing.

Victims of Roman flagellation were scourged using a whip made up of several long leather thongs embedded with shards of broken bone, metal, and hooks. With each stroke, the thongs would wrap around the victim’s body, and the shards would lodge in his flesh. When it was jerked away, the flesh of the victim would be ripped off and left in shreds, making deep, long furrows across his back. By the time our Lord’s tormentors were done, I believe there wasn’t a single sliver of skin left on His back. Psalm 22, a messianic psalm, tells us that even His bones were exposed and stared back at Him (Ps. 22:17).

It was not by coincidence the language of sowing was used to describe our Lord Jesus’ horrific scourging. Furrows are made so seeds can be sown. When you feel like you have no faith to believe in healing, our Lord Jesus says you just need faith as small as a mustard seed (Luke 17:6). It is not about how strong your faith is—just sow your little seeds of faith into the good ground of our Lord. The more you see what He has done for you, the more your faith will grow, and the more you will experience a harvest of healing.

When His back was lashed into furrows, He was allowing the seed for your specific healing to be sown, whether it is high blood pressure, a tumor, or your child’s asthma. Whatever condition you or your loved one might be suffering from, Jesus’ suffering and sacrifice speak of how the price for your healing has been paid in full. It speaks of how you are so loved. Now reach out by faith and receive your healing. And even as you wait for your hundredfold harvest, may you experience His love for you never like before!