Grace Revolution: Experience the Power to Live Above Defeat (28 page)

I love the powerful Scripture in the book of Romans that says, “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son” (Rom. 8:3). The answer, my friend, is found not in the law, but in the Son. The law was given by a servant,
Moses; grace came through the Son, Jesus. The grace revolution begins with a person and His name is Jesus. When you have Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you have everything. You have, most importantly, a new and righteous identity in Christ.

We learned in the previous chapter that the law is about doing, whereas the righteousness of faith speaks. I wrote this chapter because I want to encourage you to have a daily consciousness of your righteousness in Christ by speaking and confessing your righteousness out loud. Now that you have made it through so many chapters of this book, I believe that you know you are righteous in Christ, and that righteousness is a gift you cannot earn. While knowing this is fantastic, I want you to take a step further with me today and begin to practice confessing your righteousness in Christ daily.

Throughout the day, whether you are driving to work, shopping for groceries, or preparing a meal for your family, just say quietly under your breath, “I am the righteousness of God in Christ. All the promises, blessings, and protection that belong to the righteous are mine” (see Prov. 10:6). This is the word in season for you, and I want to challenge you to cultivate a robust revelation of your righteous identity in Christ by repeatedly confessing your righteousness in Christ. If you listen closely to what Melissa shared in her testimony, that is what she continually did to experience lasting breakthroughs in her life.

Quite often a person experiences a breakthrough but that breakthrough doesn’t last. Why? Because after some time, they forget the scriptural revelation they received that gave them the breakthrough in
the first place. Many believers don’t realize this, but revelations can be stolen and forgotten. That’s what happened to the Corinthian church and Paul had to step in to remind them of their righteous identity in Christ.

This is also why it is so essential for you to be part of a local church where you can keep on hearing and hearing messages that are full of the person of Jesus, and be surrounded by Christ-centered leaders and friends who will always point you back to the Lord. The grace revolution is not just about momentary breakthroughs; it is about experiencing permanent breakthroughs.

One of the most powerful and practical ways for you to experience such breakthroughs is to keep speaking forth your righteous identity in Christ. Listen to how Melissa practiced this and experienced lasting breakthroughs in her life: “Sometimes, thoughts of my past would come back but I’ve learned to say, ‘I’m a new creation. I’m the righteousness of God in Christ. It’s not about what I’ve done but what Jesus has done.’ Amazingly, the temptations that held me in the past have all lost their hold. It feels like I’d never lived a destructive lifestyle before. Today, my life testifies that Daddy God loves and saves. More importantly, the change has been effortless—it’s all by the grace of Jesus. It’s had nothing to do with my willpower but the divine power of Christ at work in me.” Wow, this is so good, Melissa! When you hear her share, all you hear is our Lord Jesus and how it is all about
what He has done. Amen! All praise, honor, and glory belong to our Lord Jesus—to Him and Him alone!

My dear friend, when you are stressed out and a thousand things are screaming for your attention, say quietly under your breath, “I am the righteousness of God in Christ.” When you read some horrible news in the morning papers and your heart is gripped with fear for your loved ones, just say quietly under your breath, “I am the righteousness of God in Christ.” And when you are feeling the strong temptation to indulge in a secret addiction that nobody knows about, now you know what to do: say quietly under your breath, “I am the righteousness of God in Christ.”

Your victory is directly related to how conscious you are of your righteous identity in Christ. If you truly desire to see more breakthroughs in your life and experience the power to live above defeat, speak! Speak out, speak up, and speak without doubt. And I promise you that you will start living more stress-free, more fearlessly, more boldly, and more victoriously than ever before!

S
he had given up all hope that she would one day have a child. But everything changed when she stood before the faithful prophet Elisha.

Elisha had asked his servant Gehazi to find out what he could do for this woman who had been a gracious and generous supporter of his ministry. Gehazi told the prophet that she had no son and her husband was old. Upon hearing this, Elisha quickly called for her. And as she stood in the doorway, before she could even cross the threshold to enter the upper room that she and her husband had constructed for Elisha, he looked at her and said, “About this time next year you shall embrace a son.”

Surprised by the prophet’s words, the woman forgot all decorum and blurted, “No, my lord. Man of God, do not lie to your maidservant!” But sure enough, she soon conceived, and a year later held her miracle child, just as Elisha had prophesied.

The boy grew up with a precocious talent for all things outdoorsy. He loved climbing and swinging from the trees in their backyard. He brought such gaiety to the household and had such a contagious laugh that even the reapers in the field loved having the boy around as they labored. But one morning, while accompanying his father, who was working with the harvesters, the young boy suddenly cried out that
his head was hurting. Thinking that the boy had simply been out in the heat of the blazing sun for too long, the father instructed a servant to carry him home, where his mother held him on her lap.

Then the unthinkable happened. As his mother gently stroked his head, the boy fell unconscious and died at about noontime. The woman was deeply distressed by the sudden and inexplicable turn of events, but she did not tell anyone what had happened. Instead she carried her little boy to the upper room and laid him on the prophet Elisha’s bed. She then asked her husband for a donkey so that she could hurry to the man of God and come back.

Perturbed by her sudden desire to look for Elisha when it wasn’t a day of any religious significance, her husband asked, “Why are you going to him today?”

Fighting back all her tears and emotions, she simply replied, “It is well.”

As she approached Elisha’s home on Mount Carmel, the prophet saw her in the distance and sent Gehazi to run to her and ask her, “Is it well with you? Is it well with your husband? Is it well with the child?”

Once again, she said, “It is well.” But the moment she came before Elisha, she fell at his feet. Elisha followed her back to her home, prayed to the Lord, and supernaturally raised her precious boy back to life (see 2 Kings 4:8–37).

What a powerful account in the Bible. I believe we can all learn something from the woman’s response to probably the toughest challenge she had ever faced in her life. She held back the turmoil in her heart over the death of her child and spoke contrary to her natural
circumstances. Outwardly everything was not well. Yet she kept saying to herself and the people around her, “It is well. It is well. It is well.” She didn’t speak what she saw; she spoke what she wanted to see. She kept her eyes and her faith on God, and believed with all her heart that in God, all things were well and all things would work out for her good.

My friend, you may be going through some adversity in your life even as you are reading this. Be encouraged by this story of the Shunammite woman and start speaking well over your current challenge. Refrain your lips from speaking evil. Declare, “It is well, in Jesus’ name.” Many times the simplest prayers are the most powerful prayers. If you have suffered a great loss, or are going through a very challenging season in your life, please know that I am by no means belittling or dismissing what you are going through. I have personally suffered the loss of a loved one and I know how unbearable the pain can be. But I humbly encourage you to strengthen yourself in the Lord and declare, “It is well. It is well. It is well.”

Horatio Spafford penned the beautiful and renowned hymn
It Is Well with My Soul
during the most traumatic and turbulent time in his life. In 1873 he wanted to travel to England with his family, but decided to send them ahead, as he had business matters to attend to. As his wife and four young daughters sailed across the Atlantic, their ship collided with another vessel in a horrific accident and over two hundred people, including all of Spafford’s daughters, died. En route to be reunited with his devastated wife, who had survived, Horatio worshiped the Lord. As his ship passed close to where his daughters
had died, the words of this hymn flowed from within him: “It is well (it is well), with my soul (with my soul), it is well, it is well, with my soul.”
¹

Many people think that God has full control over the world today and so pin the blame on Him for disasters, tragic accidents, and sicknesses. Some people become atheists because they say they can’t worship a capricious God Who would allow children to suffer terminal diseases. Sadly, what they don’t understand is that there is a devil who is very real, active, and destructive in this world. God is
not
the author of calamities and diseases. Our Lord Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly! But the devil is a thief. He comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy (see John 10:10).

The world we live in today is a fallen world. God gave Adam and Eve dominion over this world, but the moment Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit, sin and death corrupted it. Adam and Eve ceded control of this world to the devil. Satan is called “the prince of the power of the air” in Ephesians 2:2, “the god of this age” in 2 Corinthians 4:4, and “the ruler of this world” in John 12:31.

Now, this
does not mean
that Satan rules the world completely and has unlimited power in the world. Please pay absolute and close attention to this. I don’t want you to miss this. It is very important that you know and understand that believers of the Lord Jesus Christ are
no longer under the dominion of Satan’s power and influence in this world. In Christ, we may be
in
this world, but we are not
of
this world (see John 17:11, 14). We belong to a higher power and His name is Jesus. The Bible also tells us, “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

That is why we can stand firm, stand strong, and stand proud upon the promises of God, and speak, “It is well” over every area of our lives. We are
His
! We are not like sheep without a shepherd. All the blessings, promises, and protection that belong to the righteous “are Yes, and in Him Amen” (see 2 Cor. 1:20). We need only receive them by grace through faith. They are not received through our works, so no man can boast, but purely through faith in His unmerited favor (see Eph. 2:8–9).

Just take the promise in Proverbs 11:21 (
KJV
) that says, “The seed of the righteous shall be delivered.” This means that your sons and daughters shall be kept safe and protected in Jesus’ name. There may be times when you hear about a disaster and your heart breaks for the families going through the horror. At the same time, fear can begin to work its way into your heart. Perhaps you begin to be anxious about the safety of your children. Our children are so mobile these days. They are traveling all around the world on exchange programs and meeting new people all the time through their friends and through social media channels.

When fear grips your heart, that is the best time to claim this promise in God’s Word. Just say, “Lord, I thank You that I am the righteousness of God in Christ, and You promised in Your Word that the seed of
the righteous shall be delivered.” And don’t stop at your family. You can use your authority as a believer to pray for those who are suffering!

My dear friend, if you are not established in the gospel of grace, all kinds of teachings that you have received will begin to put doubt in your heart:

Do these questions sound familiar to you? My dear reader, when you are not anchored on the person of our Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work, all these questions will make you self-focused, self-absorbed, self-conscious, and self-occupied. And self-occupation is the complete opposite of true holiness, which is about being completely occupied with our Lord.

When someone tells you that you have to obey more in order to
be made righteous, they are essentially making righteousness a work, when in truth, new covenant righteousness is a gift received by faith. So today, because you are a believer, I encourage you to say, “By faith I have been made righteous and the seed of the righteous shall be delivered.” Furthermore, Psalm 112:2 (
KJV
) declares this of the believer: “His seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the upright shall be blessed.” Amen!

I want to encourage you to take the gospel of grace seriously. There is a real enemy and his aim is to deceive you into thinking you have to work for your righteousness, so he can keep you constantly feeling inadequate and disqualified. But the truth is this: the blood of our Lord Jesus has qualified you!

Today God’s Word, God’s power, and God’s protection over you are far stronger than anything the enemy can throw at you. The devil is the ruler of this world, but don’t forget what God’s Word proclaims over you: “He Who lives in you is greater (mightier) than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4
AMP
). You are so utterly cleansed by the blood of our Lord Jesus that today the Holy Spirit, God’s own Spirit, lives in you. And He Who is in you is
greater
than any demon, any adversity, and any bondage. Amen!