Destined to Reign (34 page)

He loved you so much He did not withhold His Son, His only Son, the Son whom He loved, for you.

As I read the passage, I realized just how much God loved me. He loved me so much He did not withhold His Son, His only Son, the Son whom He loved, for me. By this time, I had begun to cry afresh in my study, but these were no longer tears for my daughter. They were tears that came from a deep and intimate sense of God’s overwhelming love for me. At that moment, I felt His love all over me. And right there and then, my daughter stopped crying in the other room. From that point onwards, she was completely healed! As I was experiencing a fresh revelation of His love for me, the miracle for my daughter happened! Beloved, good things happen to those who know that God loves them.

The Law Is A Heavy Burden

The reason people are full of bitterness, anger and resentment is not that God does not love them. It is that they think that they must earn God’s love by their conduct and doing good works. When Jesus said, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”
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, He was not talking to people who were tired from working in their secular jobs. He was talking to people who were under the burden of the law. He was talking to those who were laboring under the law to please God, those who were heavy laden with the law. He was telling them to cease from their self-efforts and to let Him give them rest. You see, the law demands, whereas grace imparts rest. The law says, “Do good get good. Do bad get beat!” Doesn’t every other belief system say that?

Sometimes, when I hear the way some preachers preach, I really wonder, has the cross changed anything? The system of being blessed when you do good and being cursed when you fail was already in place before Jesus came. Why are they still teaching that we are under that system today? Come on, my friend, don’t negate the cross of Jesus. The cross of Jesus changed everything. Jesus received all our “bad” and we took on all His “good”! That’s the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is based entirely on His grace!

You Are God’s Beloved

When Jesus was baptized in the river Jordan, a voice from heaven said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
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This is recorded in the Bible for your benefit. Today, God has accepted you in the Beloved. Right now, He is well pleased with you because you are in Christ. Today, the way in which Jesus is God’s beloved Son is the same way in which you are God’s beloved child. In fact, Jesus prayed to the Father that His disciples (that covers us also) would know that the way in which His Father loves Him is the same way in which His Father loves them
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.

Immediately after Jesus was baptized, He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. What did the devil say to Jesus? He said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”
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Notice that the devil craftily dropped one vital word when he taunted Jesus to prove that He was the Son of God. God had audibly announced that Jesus was His “beloved Son”, but the devil made no mention of the word “beloved”. He deliberately dropped the word “beloved” when he came to tempt Jesus. He does the same thing with you today because he knows that if he reminds you that you are God’s beloved, all his plans, plots and evil strategies to tempt you will be foiled.
Once you know that you are God’s beloved, whatever the devil wants to bring against you will fail
.

People give their lives to sin when they feel rejected and unwanted. But when they know that they are God’s beloved, no temptation can succeed against them. Let’s look at Jesus’ reply to the devil’s first temptation. The first temptation was for Him to turn stones into bread. Is there any law in the Old Testament that says that you cannot turn stones into bread? No. So what was the devil saying?

When the devil said, “Command these STONES to become bread,” he was, in fact, telling Jesus to get His nourishment from the law that was written on STONES. Now, look at Jesus’ reply: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word
that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
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When Jesus referred to the “word that proceeds from the mouth of God”, He was referring to the
rhema
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word or “now word”. What did God just say to Jesus before He entered the wilderness? He had said, “This is My
beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased.” This is the word that we are to live by today as well!

You are God’s beloved through Jesus Christ. We are not to live by the Ten Commandments written and engraved on stones. There is no nourishment in the ministry of death and condemnation. Jesus died on the cross so that we can be in Him, and so that we can live by the same word that proceeded from the mouth of God when He called Jesus His beloved. Today, God sees you in Christ. Hear Him say to you, “You are My beloved, in whom I am well pleased”!

Roll Away The Stone

The Lord told me many years ago, “Son, your ministry is to roll away the stone.” Let me explain to you what this means. In the story of Lazarus
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, Jesus commanded the people to roll away the stone from Lazarus’ tomb. Even though the people protested that Lazarus had already been dead for four days and that the stench would be terrible, Jesus persisted because He knew that Lazarus had been resurrected.

You see, even though Lazarus was alive, the resurrection life could not flow as long as he was bound behind the stone. The stone had to be removed for resurrection life to come forth. That is what my ministry is about — rolling away the stone. There are many believers who
have
resurrection life because they have been saved, but they are not experiencing breakthroughs in their bodies, finances, family lives and careers because they are bound hand and foot, and trapped behind the stone. Before resurrection life can flow, the stone must be rolled away!

My friend, the stone is a picture of the law. The law was written and engraved on stones, and as long as believers are under the law, the ministry of death and condemnation binds them. My commission from the Lord is to roll away the stone from believers who are saved and born again. You need to remove the law that binds. When you roll away the stone, that’s when Lazarus comes forth, that’s when you see the glory of God!

People are afraid that if you roll away the stone of the law, you will give people a license to sin. But have you noticed that people are already sinning without a license and that being under the law has not stopped sin? The answer to sin is found in grace. It is grace that will stop sin. We are not rolling away the stone from dead, stinking flesh (the lost) but from resurrected people (believers). Just like Lazarus, who had already been made alive, the stone proves to be a hindrance to their coming forth.

My friend, knowing that you are made God’s beloved by His grace will give you dominion in life to overcome sinful habits and temptations. Temptations cannot succeed when you have a revelation that you are God’s beloved. When you know how precious and valuable you are to God, and the depths of your Abba’s love for you, why would you want to waste your life engaging in sins that only bring destruction and death?

Temptations cannot succeed when you have a revelation that you are God’s beloved.

When the devil tries to throw temptations against you, he will never remind you that you are God’s beloved. He wants you to question your identity and position as a beloved child of God because he knows that once you doubt that you are God’s beloved, he can make you feel alienated from God. He can heap guilt and condemnation on you and tempt you further. He will say things like, “How can you think those thoughts? You call yourself a Christian?” So even when you fail, continue to see yourself as God’s beloved. You are still the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus!

Be Occupied With His Love

“But Pastor Prince, how can I say that I am still the beloved of God when I have failed?”

You can because His love for you is constant and unconditional! Are you loved by God because of what you have done? No, it is because of what Jesus has done on the cross! So God will not stop loving you because of what
you
have done. In fact, He loved you when you were still in your mother’s womb and will continue to love you when you see Him face to face.

Let me share with you my experience with God’s love when I have failed and blown it. You know, Wendy is a wonderful wife. Not only is she really beautiful, she’s very wise as well. Sometimes, she makes a certain suggestion to me and when I implement exactly what she suggested, people tell me, “Pastor Prince, this is a brilliant idea!” She really makes me look good. So obviously, she is really smart. But no matter how wonderful or smart she is, there are times we have “intense discussions” because she does not see “my wisdom”. (You know, we pastors don’t quarrel. We just have “intense discussions” with our spouses. Also, we never worry. We just have “concerns and apprehensions”.)

The worst time to have these “intense discussions” is when we are on our way to church and I have to preach! In the past, these heated discussions would sometimes last for more than a day. But ever since I discovered how much the Lord loves me, right in the midst of the icy silence that usually follows these intense discussions, I would hear Jesus saying to me, “Son, do you know that in the midst of your anger, I still love you?”

Previously, I would not entertain that word from the Lord because I was taught that the moment you get angry or fail, you are out of fellowship with God. I was taught that the moment I failed, the blessings would disappear and His favor would stop! And because I believed that, it influenced the way I lived my daily life as well as my relationship with my wife. As a result, I used to get even angrier with her because I would blame her for causing me to be out of fellowship with God. So the anger just kept festering and growing.

But I know the truth today. I know that even when I fail, God and I are still “tight” (we are still “cool”, you know what I mean?) because of the blood of Jesus. God still sees me as His beloved. I have the gift of righteousness apart from my performance. I know that God still loves me, that our fellowship is not broken and that His favor still flows in me.

Beloved, there is nothing you can do today to make God love you more, and there is nothing you can do to make Him love you any less. When you fail, that is the time you need to feed on His love for you. Begin to see yourself as the disciple whom Jesus loves. Personalize His love for you the way John did it. He referred to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” five times in his own gospel! (Get my sermon CD
Becoming A Disciple That Jesus Loves — The Secret Of John
. It will definitely bless you!)

The sun shines on every blade of grass in a field. But when you personalize God’s love for you, it is like you are taking a magnifying glass and putting it over one blade of grass. Doing so intensifies the light and heat over that one blade and before long, it will burn. Beloved, it is not enough to know that God loves
everyone
. You need to know and believe that He loves
you
, and let that revelation burn in your heart, especially when you fail. And as you keep on feeding on His love for you, His love will start overflowing in you. That’s what I do.

When you are full of His love for you, all anger dissipates. Once I had the revelation of His love for me even in the midst of my failures, I found that the “intense discussions” with Wendy became shorter and less frequent, and the love of Christ became more and more real. Instead of stewing in anger, I found that it became easy for me to turn to Wendy in the midst of our “discussions”, smile at her and quickly reconcile with her. That’s what happens when you are occupied with His love and not your own failures! By the way, today, my wife and I have one of the most exciting marriages on God’s green earth, totally by the grace of God.

Be A David Who Takes Down Goliath

Beloved, start practicing God’s love for you and it will translate into victory in your daily life. There was an ugly giant by the name of Goliath. I am sure you are familiar with the story of how a young shepherd boy named David came against Goliath and defeated him. There are no insignificant details in the Bible. Even the names in the Bible carry secrets for our benefit.

The name “Goliath” comes from the Hebrew root word
galah
, which means “to exile”
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. To be exiled is to be stripped of everything you are and everything you own. So Goliath’s name essentially means that he had been stripped of everything — an exile. What a name! Goliath is a picture of the devil — Jesus has stripped him of all his weapons against us
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. The name “David” on the other hand means “beloved”
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. The battle in the valley of Elah was thus a battle between a beloved of God and a stripped exile. Now catch this revelation! It takes someone who knows that he is the beloved of God to bring down a giant! This is the secret of becoming a giant slayer! It doesn’t matter what your giant is today. It could be a marital problem or a financial situation. Begin to see that you are God’s beloved and your giants will come tumbling down.

Begin to see that you are God’s beloved and your giants will come tumbling down.

My friend, God loves you. You are His beloved child regardless of what you have done. He loves you as you are because you have been washed whiter than snow with the blood of Jesus. Live every day by these words from your loving Father in heaven: “You are My beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” His favor is all over you, in your family, in your place of work and in everything that you do. You are a blessing everywhere you go.

If God did not withhold His Son from you, why would He withhold healing, financial provision, protection, peace of mind and all the other blessings from you? When the Almighty God is your loving Father and you are His beloved, what fears can you have? Fear of the past, the present and the future? Fear of not having enough? Fear of sickness? Fear of death? Fear of punishment? Beloved, when you have a revelation of how much God loves you and that He sees you completely righteous by the blood of Jesus Christ, all your fears will dissipate, for if God is for you, who can be against you?