Reign In Life: 90 Powerful Inspirations For Extraordinary Breakthroughs (9 page)

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Authors: Joseph Prince

Tags: #Devotional, #Grace, #Joseph Prince

BOOK: Reign In Life: 90 Powerful Inspirations For Extraordinary Breakthroughs
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My friend, to reign in life it’s important you believe with all your heart that God is for you and not against you. His truth, His righteousness, His gospel, His salvation, His Word, and His Spirit declare that your sins have been punished on the cross. God is on your side. And if God is for you, who can be against you?
Today’s Thought
If God is for me, who can be against me?
Today’s Prayer
Father, thank You for providing me with the invincible truth of Your Word that guards my heart from all fear, guilt, and condemnation. Thank You that no word of condemnation formed against me shall prosper because You are for me and not against me. I choose to live by this truth, and I believe that eternal life, deliverance, preservation, restoration, and safety are mine today because of Christ. Abba, Father, because You are for me, I can face today and every day with boldness and a confident expectation of good things happening to me. Amen
.
Then shall my enemies turn back in the day that I cry out; this I know, for God is for me…In God have I put my trust and confident reliance; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?
P
SALM
56:9, 11
AMP
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the L
ORD
, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope
.
J
EREMIAH
29:11
So we take comfort and are encouraged and confidently and boldly say, The Lord is my Helper; I will not be seized with alarm [I will not fear or dread or be terrified]. What can man do to me?
H
EBREWS
13:6
AMP
Today’s Scripture
Bless the L
ORD
, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases
.
P
SALM
103:2–3
L
et me share with you a testimony of how believing in God’s love, grace, and goodness brought healing to one precious lady in Singapore. Connie was diagnosed with a tumor on the pituitary gland in her brain. The MRI scan showed that the tumor was a macro-growth of about 1.5cm. She was presented with two options: immediate surgery to remove the tumor (the risk of surgery being a 20 percent failure rate and the possibility of going blind in one eye) or medication. She was told that if she decided on medication, it would take a long time to work, with most tumors shrinking only after a year or so. This is Connie’s story:
Pastor Prince, what the doctors said about the tumor was devastating news to me and my family. I remember telling myself that if I were to lose my eyesight, I would not want to live anymore
.
It was during this time that my family resolved to commit the whole thing to God, to trust and rely on Him entirely and pray for healing. We opted to go with taking medication. Despite wanting to believe in God’s love and goodness toward me, I was constantly plagued with questions such as, “Does God love me anymore? Does He even care? Is He punishing me for something wrong that I’ve done? Should I just grit my teeth and accept the situation?”
It was only when a colleague and friend at my workplace started passing me your sermon CDs to listen to that I was reminded once again of my Savior’s love, grace, and goodness toward me. I believe that as I listened to the Word preached via the CDs, my body began healing
.
Within a month of the medication, the level of prolactin in my blood decreased and the balance of chemicals in my body became stable. After two more months, the MRI scan showed that the tumor had shrunk to half its original size. I was very encouraged and, most importantly, I felt confident and secure that my God was doing His work of healing in my body, that He loves and cares for me enough to know that I was hurting and to do something about it
.
The best news came when the MRI scan showed that the macro-tumor was GONE! The doctor was amazed and kept saying that in most cases, even when a tumor had shrunk by so much, there would still be remnants of tumor cells. But in my case, the tumor was completely GONE, with no trace of any tumor cells at all!
No words can describe how grateful and thankful I am to God. I know that it is God who has healed me. But what’s more important is the fact that I stand tall as a child of God, and I know that I am the righteousness of God because of what Jesus has done on the cross for me. Knowing that I am deeply loved and cared for by God makes me so secure in my relationship with God. I want to give all the glory and praise to God. I am what I am today—healed, whole, and at peace—only because of the preaching of the gospel of grace!
My friend, if Connie had believed that God was punishing her for some sin, she would have just gritted her teeth, accepted her sickness as punishment, and never sought God for healing. But praise God that He brought light into Connie’s situation and showed her how much He loved her!
If you want to see the power of God’s grace operating in every dimension of your life, I challenge you to believe in His love, His gift of righteousness, and His forgiveness. There is power to heal now if you would turn to and rest in His finished work and in His love for you. His love never fails!
Today’s Thought
No matter what I face, God’s love for me never fails!
Today’s Prayer
Father, I bless Your great name and praise You, my healer and provider. What a loving and compassionate Father You are! As I meditate on Your Word of grace, let it bring healing, life, and liberty from every wrong belief and bondage in my life. I open my heart to receive Your deep and intimate love for me. You know everything about me, and You care about the smallest thing that bothers me. I reach out by faith right now and receive Your provision, healing, and wholeness for every area of my life. Amen
.
“The L
ORD
your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”
Z
EPHANIAH
3:17
“Then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the L
ORD
shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the L
ORD
will answer; you shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’”
I
SAIAH
58:8–9
Today’s Scripture
…David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the L
ORD
shall not impute sin.”
R
OMANS
4:6–8
Y
ou may have read Connie’s story in yesterday’s reading and may be wondering, “How do I fully rest in God’s love when I read about how God punished His people in the Old Testament? For example, didn’t God punish King David for committing adultery with Bathsheba and plotting the death of her husband, Uriah, and didn’t David lose his first child with Bathsheba?”
Yes, that tragic death is recorded in 2 Samuel 12, but don’t forget that David, like Elijah,
lived before the cross of Jesus
. Sin was imputed to David, and although the punishment was tempered with God’s mercy (God spared David’s life), David was punished nonetheless with the death of his child because he was under the covenant of law and not the covenant of grace. You will never find an example of God punishing a believer for his sins in the new covenant.
Do you know who David was describing when he said, “Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord
shall not impute sin” (Rom. 4:8)? Since it’s clear that sin was imputed to David, he could not have been describing himself as some scholars claim. No, he was looking prophetically into the covenant of grace. He was describing you and me—a new generation of people who are under the covenant of grace!
My friend, when David described the blessed man as one to whom the Lord will not impute sin, he meant that even when this man sins, God will not count his sin against him nor punish him for his iniquity. Too good to be true? That is why David defined this man as a blessed man. And this blessed man is you and me!
Today, you are blessed because the Lord no longer counts your sins against you. Because of the cross of Jesus, you will never be punished for your sins by God. Your sins were imputed to Jesus so that they would never be imputed to you. Under the new covenant of grace that was sealed with the blood of Jesus, God has already judged your sins completely on the body of Jesus Christ. This means that even when you fall short of God’s holy standards, the punishment for sin will not fall on you. The wages of sin is death, but Jesus has already died on your behalf. Your sins have already been imputed to His account!
Consider what John said: “…if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). He did not say, “If anyone sins, he will be punished for his sins!” No, under the new covenant of grace, Jesus is today your Advocate. He represents you before God, and as Jesus is, so are you (1 John 4:17)!
Is Jesus righteous before God? Yes! Then so are you. Is He accepted before God? Yes! Then so are you. Is He well pleasing before God? Yes! Then so are you.
The good news is, even when you fail, God does not judge you for your failure. All your sins have been judged at the cross. Hallelujah! Knowing that Jesus has borne the punishment for your sins will cause you to fall in love with Him. It will give you the strength to break free from sin! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
Today’s Thought
I am blessed because my sins were imputed to Jesus at the cross. Today, He is my Advocate with the Father
.
Today’s Prayer
Father, thank You that because my sins were imputed to Jesus and punished in His body, I am forgiven and blessed, and nothing can reverse this. Thank You that Jesus is my Advocate and represents me before Your throne. Your Word says that my acceptance with You is based on Jesus and that I can live life with boldness and freedom from the fear of punishment from You. Thank You for showing me Your grace today and putting strength in my heart to break free from sin. I am free in Jesus’ name. I praise You, Father, and give You glory! Amen
.
…if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous
.
1 J
OHN
2:1
Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world
.
1 J
OHN
4:17
For You, O L
ORD
, will bless the righteous; with favor You will surround him as with a shield
.
P
SALM
5:12
Today’s Scripture
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life… If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”
J
OHN
14:6–7
W
hen I was growing up as a young Christian, I was told that the more I knew about God, the more God would hold me accountable, and my punishment for falling short of His expectations would be more severe than someone who knew less. My response was to stay away from the Bible, since the more I knew, the more I would be punished by God. Come on, my mama didn’t raise no fool!
I was also taught that the closer I drew to God, the more trials and tribulations I would experience. From that point on, I didn’t want to draw close to God. If you have been taught these or similar lies about God, you would very likely also have been robbed of any desire to build a more intimate relationship with Him.
As I grew in the Lord, He opened my eyes to see that the teachings I had received were not true. Contrary to what I had been taught, I found that the closer I drew to God, the closer I was to the answer to all of my problems. I was drawing close to the miracle worker. I was drawing close to the healer. I was drawing close to the provider, my Jehovah Jireh!
My friend, the more of God’s truth you know, the more the truth will set you free from erroneous beliefs that are not based on His Word. It is the devil who would love for you to fear God (in an unhealthy way), so that you would stay away from your best source of help. The devil would love for you to stay away from the Bible because it is the book of your inheritance and it tells you what belongs to you through the blood of Jesus Christ. The devil would love for you not to find out the truth so that he can keep you in bondage, sickness, and poverty.

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