100 Days Of Favor (28 page)

That’s
what our young people need—a revelation of Jesus’ perfect love for them! There is a lost and dying world out there. My friend, the Ten Commandments
cannot
be the only thing that youths know about Christianity anymore! How can they help but think that Christianity is nothing but rules, laws and regulations on what they should or should not be doing? How can they help but imagine God to be someone who is angry with them and looking for opportunities to punish them? If the young people in your community are to come to Jesus, they will need to know that Christianity is
an intimate relationship
with a loving God. Once they know this, they will be banging down the doors of churches every Sunday to get in to hear Jesus and His grace preached!

Beloved, I pray that like the young man whose testimony you just read, you will continue to allow Jesus to show you more and more of His perfect love for you every day.

Today’s Prayer

Father, I thank You that You have not given me a code of rules to live by, but an intimate and loving relationship with You. I want to know You more and more each day. Show me more of Your love today, so that I may face every challenge with confidence and boldness.

Today’s Thought

It is God’s grace that is transforming my life.

Today’s Reflection On Favor

DAY 65

Whose Love Is Perfect?

Today’s Scripture

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. —John 3:16

W
HEN
I
WAS
the president of my youth ministry, I used to preach hard and strong messages, telling my youths, “You’ve got to love God! You’ve got to love the Lord with all your heart, all your mind and all your soul!” All that time, when I was preaching this to the young people, I was wondering to myself, “How in the world do I do that?” I would look at myself and check my heart, mind and soul—did I really love the Lord that perfectly? How could I expect my youths to love the Lord that way when I knew that I myself had failed? At that time, I was not established in the new covenant of grace yet. I did not know that by preaching that way, I was actually placing all my youths under the law because the sum total of the law is to love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength (Matthew 22:37–40), Mark 12:29–30).

When you are overflowing with God’s love, you will fulfill the law effortlessly without even trying.

Let me ask you this: Has anybody ever been able to love the Lord with all his heart, mind and soul? No one. Not a single person has been able to do that. God knew all the while that under the law, no one could love Him that perfectly. So do you know what He did? The Bible says, “For God
so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” I love that little word “so.” It speaks of the intensity with which God loves us.

When God sent Jesus, He was effectively saying this to us: “I know that you can’t love Me perfectly, so watch Me now.
I
will love you with all My heart, all My soul, all My mind and all My strength.” And He stretched His arms wide and died for us. This is what the Bible says about what Jesus did on the cross: “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God
demonstrates His own love toward us,
in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Romans 5:7–9).

My friend, the cross is not a demonstration of our perfect love and devotion to God. The cross is God’s demonstration of
His
perfect love and
His
perfect grace (unmerited favor) toward us, for it was while we were
still
sinners that Jesus died for us. He did not die for you and me because of our perfect love for God. He died for you and me because of HIS perfect love for us! Let me give you the Bible’s definition of love to make this even clearer for you: “In this is love,
not that we loved God, but that He loved us
and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). Beloved, that’s the emphasis of the new covenant of grace (unmerited favor)—HIS love for us, not our love for Him!

As we raise up a new generation of believers, let us raise up a generation that is impacted by God’s unmerited favor and that boasts in His love for us. When we receive His love for us and start believing that we are His beloved, look at the result that 1 John 4:11 spells out: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Notice that the love for one another comes after our experience of His love for us! It stems from an overflow. You cannot love others when you have not first been filled by His love. And when you are overflowing with His love, you will fulfill the law effortlessly without even trying because God’s Word tells us, “Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore
love is the fulfillment of the law
” (Romans 13:10). Step into that river today. Change the quality of your relationships by believing and being conscious of the fact that you are His beloved!

Today’s Prayer

Father, I know that I can never love You pefectly with all my heart, all my soul and all my strength. So I thank You that You love me every day with all Your heart, all Your soul and all Your strength. Whenever I see the cross, I see YOUR PERFECT love for me! Fill me with a greater revelation of Your love for me till I am overflowing with it and touching and impacting others.

Today’s Thought

Loving others comes naturally when I know that I am so loved by God.

Today’s Reflection On Favor

DAY 66

You Are An Heir Of The World!

Today’s Scripture

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. —Galatians 3:13–14

G
OD
’
S BLESSINGS ARE
part of our inheritance in the new covenant of grace, which Jesus died to give us. God’s Word tells us that “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us… that
the blessing of Abraham
might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” Isn’t it interesting that the Lord is very specific in mentioning that Christ became a curse for us on the cross, so that we can experience and enjoy the blessing of Abraham? He does not want us to simply experience any kind of blessing. He wants us to experience
the blessing of Abraham.
I think it behooves us then to find out what “the blessing of Abraham” is and who can receive it.

Every believer in Christ is an heir. “Heir” speaks of an inheritance that is yours not because of what you do, but because of whose you are.

The Bible tells us that “if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). Are you Christ’s? Do you belong to Jesus? Then that makes you an heir
according to the promise.
Every believer in Christ is an heir. Whenever you hear the word “heir,” it speaks of something good. It speaks of an inheritance that you don’t work for, an inheritance that is yours not because of what you do, but because of
whose
you are. In this case, as a new covenant believer in Jesus, you belong to Jesus and you have a blood-bought inheritance in Christ as the seed of Abraham. You, beloved, are an heir according to THE promise!

Now, there are many promises in the Bible, but what is THE promise that God made to Abraham? We can’t claim this promise if we don’t know what it is. We need to go to the Word (use the Bible to interpret the Bible) to establish what the promise is. And we find the answer in Romans 4:13—“For
the promise
that he would be the
heir of the world
was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.”

The promise to Abraham and his seed (you and I) is that he would be “the heir of the world”! In the original Greek text, the word “world” here is
kosmos.
Its meaning includes, “the whole circle of earthly goods, endowments, riches, advantages, pleasures.”
¹
Now,
that
is what you are an heir to through Jesus’ finished work! In Christ, you are an heir of the world—its goods, its endowments, its riches, its advantages and its pleasures. This is THE promise that God made to Abraham and his seed. Don’t apologize for it. It is your inheritance in Christ!