God resists the proud – who are the proud? The proud are not just the arrogant ones that think of themselves as superior to others. The proud are not just the ones who brag on what they can do or what they have. The proud are not just the unsaved. The Biblical definition of being proud would be anyone who relies on self to do what they can do in their own strength and understanding, by their own resources and abilities, and through their own connections and influence. Being proud is trying to find position with God based on disciplined behavior. Being proud is being self-sufficient. Being proud is being in control.

The opposite of being proud is being humble. The Biblical definition of being humble is choosing to yield to God and pursuing His ways. Being humble is surrendering to His lordship as the authority in a loving relationship. Being humble is relying on God – His strength, His resources, His influence.

The Bible says that God gives His grace to the humble, His grace being His more-than-enough sufficiency for anything that we need. God’s grace is His redemption, placing us in position with Him based on His sacrifice, not our works. His grace is His Presence in personal relationship with us. His grace is God abundantly resourcing what we need by His supply. His grace is His power and His ability to do more than what is required. His grace is more than enough, more than sufficient. His grace is His gift.

The Bible also says that God resists the proud. To resist means to oppose or to abstain from. God withhold Himself from a close relationship with the proud, even the believer who refuses to surrender. God will withhold His grace from the proud, His ability to help, even the Christian who refuses to yield. People that have to be in control, even Christians, are people that are found working against God. People that rely on their intellect are people that are found resisting God’s plans and God’s Spirit; however, people that lay aside their ideas and pursue what God wants and the way He wants it done, are people that God will grace.

You can attract God into your life. You can be like a magnet, drawing Him closer to you. His power is available to you. His resources, His direction, His wisdom, His peace – everything that He is, that He has and that He can do is for those who surrender to His love and authority.

Application: Check your surrender. Are you striving on your own in any area? If so, turn it over to God now and watch what He will do!

Receiving blessings from God can easily become an interest of the Christian. After all, who doesn’t like to receive a blessing? Who doesn’t like to see the Lord working on our behalf? It’s a great feeling to receive a gift. Receiving a gift is receiving from God’s grace. It’s over and above what we have worked for or attained in our own strength.

There is another aspect of grace that God wants to interest us in, and that is the grace to give. The concept is the same – God wants us to lean on Him to go over and above what we could do with our own ability and our own resources. He wants us to rely on His grace, His strength and His supply, to have something to give to someone else.

The heart of God is love, and His love is gracious; His love is generous. We are His children; we are like our Father when we desire to show generosity to someone else. Generosity expresses the compassionate love of God to another person that God loves.

A believer who desires to give is a believer that God will resource to give. A believer who desires to give is a person who trusts God to not only meet their need, but also to use them to meet the needs of someone else. Our interest in being a giver, when it is based on God’s grace, is focused on seeing another person blessed. Don’t wait until you are overflowing with blessing before you become a vessel of God’s grace to bless someone else.

We are like God when His love is ruling our hearts, compelling us to be a blessing to someone else instead of focusing on how we can be blessed ourselves. Our faith opens up our heart to become a wider pipeline to both give and receive God’s grace. Our faith causes us to be open-handed instead of closed-fist. The more open we are, the more liberal and free God’s grace flows through us. The person who matures in their faith is believing God to operate through them with His abundant, over-the-top grace. A person of faith isn’t relying on their own supply to give. They are relying on God’s grace for His supply to flow through them. It is better to give than it is to receive.

Application: According to II Corinthians 9:10, even the seed we have to give is from God. Ask God for seed to sow. God will provide a way for you to become a conduit of His generous love and grace.

We all faced circumstances when we woke up this morning. Some circumstances we created, some were created for us and other circumstances happened because of the world we live in. Some of our situations are favorable and smile on us, but some circumstances are unfavorable and need to be overcome. Unfavorable circumstances can seem to be small or they can feel monumental.

Here is the good news about God and His grace – God is bigger than any circumstance that we will ever face and His grace supplies more than what is needed to either bring change in a circumstance or to live abundantly through an unfavorable situation. His grace supplies what we lack. His grace gives strength in our weakness. His grace takes us over and above and beyond our ability. His grace is greater!

Are you facing loneliness, depression? God is bigger than that!

Are you facing hurts, offense? God is bigger than that!

Are you facing sickness, disability, death? God is bigger than that!

Are you facing fear, shame or guilt? God is bigger than that!

Are you facing lack, loss, grief? God is bigger than that!

Are you facing divorce or separation? God is bigger than that!

Are you facing temptation, addiction, failure? God is bigger than that!

Whatever you are facing, our God is bigger. Our God is greater. Our God is stronger. Our God is higher. There is nothing incurable, unforgiveable, untouchable, or impossible for God! There is nothing too bent that God cannot straighten. There is nothing too far gone that God cannot reach it. If we think of God in limits, then we are trying to put our God-size God inside a man-size box.

God did not purpose for us to do life on our own in our natural strength. We were meant to live in partnership with a spiritual Father, experiencing His supernatural ability gracing our lives. He is Almighty God and we are His children. He is here, as our Father, to do what we cannot do on our own. Allow God to be big in your life. Allow God to do what He can do because of who He is and because of the love that He has for us.

Application: Ask yourself, “Is there anything I am trying to do apart from God? If there is, I encourage you to invite God into your circumstance, accepting His willingness and ability to demonstrate His love and His power for you. Give Him every area of your life and enjoy knowing Him.

Romans 8:26 “… the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”

Prayer changes things. If it didn’t, then Jesus wouldn’t have asked us to pray and to believe for results. However, we don’t always know how we should pray. Romans 8:26 tells us that we are limited in what we know, so the Holy Spirit, who knows the mind of God, helps us to pray beyond our understanding (I Corinthians 2:11).

The Holy Spirit does this in a couple of different ways. There are times when He reveals to us what we are to pray. There are other times when we don’t need to know, so He can help us bypass our understanding. He does this by giving us the ability to pray out words in another language that we don’t know. It is referred to as “speaking in tongues” or “praying in the Spirit.” We read about this in the book of Acts and in other New Testament books.

I Corinthians 14:14 “For if a pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.”

I Corinthians 14:2 “For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands him; however, in the spirit he speaks mysteries.”

The purpose for praying beyond our understanding is to operate in a grace to go beyond what we know. Our prayers are effective because of the grace the Holy Spirit supplies to us to pray the purpose of God as we yield to Him. When we pray out God’s purpose, breakthroughs happen, situations change and lives are transformed!

There are also times in prayer when we might feel that we’ve run out of words to say to express how we feel. It seems as if our tongue is tied. When we yield to the Holy Spirit, we can pray or sing in worship to the Lord in an unknown language. He gives our heart expression and we experience a marvelous encounter with God!

Application: There are two ways to speak in tongues mentioned in I Corinthians 14. One is public and one is private. Not everyone experiences giving a message in tongues publicly, but the private and personal use of tongues is for every believer. If you have not had this experience, ask the Lord to give you the grace to pray beyond your understanding.

Ephesians 2:10 says that we are created for good works when God did a work in us. God took what was dead and made us alive. He took what was headed for judgment and liberated us into His freedom.  God took us from slavery to sin and placed us in a right standing position with Him. God took us in our mess and made us a masterpiece of His righteousness. We are the workmanship of God in Christ Jesus! God makes beautiful things.

God has chosen to work together with us. He loves us. He wants to do life together with us. He wants to use us as vessels that He can demonstrate His glory in and through. When the world looks at us, God wants them to see what His power has done in us and what His power can do through us.

Ephesians 2:8, 9 show us that His generous grace is available to the one who will receive it by faith. Our faith is our yielded heart to allow God to move through us. God will not force Himself on us or through us; He is looking for those who will surrender to His working. As His workmanship, we have been created for good works.

What are the good works that we are to do together with God? Jesus said in John 14:12 that we would do His works, and greater works, because He would send us the Holy Spirit to live within us. Jesus reached the lost, served the weak, healed the sick, delivered the bound, fed the hungry, gave rest to the weary, and met the needs of the poor. Jesus is our example. He told us that everything He did, He did because the Father instructed Him to do it. Jesus yielded His life in faith to the grace of God and the supply of the Holy Spirit. We are to do the same – to lay our life down so that God’s glory can be revealed through us.

We are containers of the glory of God and miracles are products of the supply of the Spirit – God’s grace. We have limits, but God’s grace is limitless. There is nothing that God cannot do through a heart that is surrendered to His power.

Application: If we promote ourselves, we restrict what God will do. If we withdraw ourselves, we hinder what God will do. God has chosen you to perform His will today by making yourself available to do His works.

We can’t compare our relationship with God to any human relationship that we’ve experienced. It’s like a marriage, but so much more. It’s like a parent/child relationship, but so much more. When we know God, we find ourselves whole, satisfied, and at rest in the binding, intertwining, and continual connection with His Person. God doesn’t want to be part of our life; God is our life.

When we experience God, we also experience God’s grace, not only for eternal life, but also for what we are to do or become or possess in this life. We were never meant to do life apart from God in our own strength. Grace describes the desire and the ability of God to share Himself with the world, including who He is, what He has, and what He can do. God knows that men and women need Him, and His love causes Him to want to meet the needs of those who will turn to Him.

Grace is only understood when a relationship with God is experienced. Only dependent, active faith experiences the supply, strength and glory of God’s grace. Living in grace is living in reliance upon God. In Judges 7 we read about the life of Gideon. Gideon did not have confidence in himself, but he did have confidence in God. Gideon would not move in his own strength, but he would go if he knew that God was the one calling and sending him. God was looking for a life He could shine through. When Gideon was to go to war against their enemy, they were already outnumbered 4 to 1. God whittled their army down so that they were 450 to 1. This is what God said: Judges 7:2 “… The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against Me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.” God wanted to be seen through Israel. God wants to be seen through you.

God’s grace will take us beyond what we can do, but what God wants to do, He wants to do together with us. The people God chooses are people who will put their faith in Him. They are people who know God’s love and love God. They are people who want God to be known for who He is.

Application: I Corinthians 1:27-28 tell us that God will choose the weak so that His strength can be seen. However strong we think we are, God is stronger. God wants to express His love and His power to us and through us so the world will know Him. Trust God to do something bigger than you.

Grace is the God-factor that not only completes who we are, but also takes us above and beyond what we could ever do on our own.

In Ephesians 3:20 there are two words that have been translated as exceedingly abundantly in one translation (NKJV). It has also been translated immeasurably more (NIV), infinitely more (NLT), as well as more plenteous, far more and much more. The Amplified version translates it like this, “superabundantly, far over and above.” All these words describe God’s grace, His ability and His willingness to take us above and over and beyond what we can do.

Both words in the original language come from a root word meaning “over, above and beyond.” The second word means superabundant, excessive, overflowing, surplus, superfluous, extremely more, over and above, profuse, extraordinary, above the ordinary, more than sufficient. This word is also found in John 10:10 where Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

When we put these two words together it is like saying that God is more than more than enough! We do not want to limit God. His grace is able to take us over, above and beyond anything that we could ever do. He is able to do more than what we could ask for. He is able to do more than we could ever think, dream, hope, pray, desire or imagine. More! God’s grace is about more. God’s grace is about going beyond us. God’s grace is going beyond our ability, beyond our resources, beyond our strength, beyond our knowledge, beyond our strategies, beyond our goodness with His goodness, His plans, His understanding, His power, His provision, and His ability. Do we know who our God is? Do we know that this amazing God wants to work on our behalf? Do we know that this infinite Creator wants to do more than meet our needs, to fulfill us, to satisfy us – God wants to pour His grace on us so that it overflows! Our God is more than more than enough!

God’s grace is literally beyond me. God is bigger than me, much, much bigger. All He wants is for me to trust Him enough to let Him be my God. All He wants is for me to stop living independently of Him, and to find life in reliance upon Him as my God, my Creator, my Father. His grace is His desire to love me with all that He is, all that He has, and all He can do.

Application: Let go and let God. Is there an area where you feel that you are lacking? Ask God to reveal His grace and to go beyond you.

One purpose Jesus had in His first coming was to establish a kingdom on earth. The kingdom that He started was not a visible kingdom, but an invisible one. Christ’s kingdom is in our hearts. Jesus Christ is the King, reigning as the Lord of our lives.

We know that Jesus is coming again. He will return to defeat the nations of the world and then reign on the earth for 1,000 years, a time known as the Millennium. Until then, Christ’s kingdom is growing and gaining strength all over the globe, the Kingdom that is in the hearts of believers.

God’s purpose for the time period in between the first coming and the second coming is to reach people from every nation. The Bible refers to this season as the “time of the Gentles.”

Luke 21:24 “And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”

God told Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. Because Abraham received God’s promise by faith, anyone who receives Christ by faith is a child of Abraham (Romans 4:16, 17). In this time period that we have been living in since 70 AD, the time of the Gentiles, the Gospel has spread around the world. The Kingdom of God has been growing in the hearts of people from nearly every nation.

Does God have a set time for this season to end? Yes, He does. Daniel 11:35 and other scriptures tell us that there is an appointed time, or set time for end-time events. Within this Gentile time period, the Gospel will be heard in every nation. Whatever we haven’t done, God will do so that His promise of the Gospel being heard in every nation will be fulfilled (Revelation 14:6).

In the appointed time, the last set of seven years that Daniel prophesied for the Jews will unfold. When Jesus returns, the time to share the Gospel will have run out. Now is the time to share the message of salvation. Now is the time to work together to go into unreached places! The time is short. Now is the time!

Application: When Jesus is the king of our heart, we live to serve Him. Pray and ask the King who you can share the Gospel with? Who can you pray for? What missionary can you help send? Now is the time!

With His first coming, Jesus started His kingdom; in His second coming, Jesus will come to rule His kingdom.

The second coming of Christ is not to be confused with the rapture. The rapture is the event when Jesus gathers believers together with Him in the air. The second coming is when Jesus returns to the earth for battle, bringing the nations under His dominion in the battle of Armageddon. The second coming occurs after the rapture.

The Bible refers to the second coming as the Day of the Lord. It isn’t a 24-hour day, but rather a time period that belongs to Jesus Christ to take His place of authority and to cleanse the earth. The wrath of God will be poured out, purifying the world and making it ready for Jesus to reign.

At His first coming, Jesus entered Jerusalem on a lowly donkey; at His second coming Jesus will ride in on a white horse, surrounded by an army of saints.

At His first coming, Jesus entered Jerusalem as the sacrificial Lamb; at His second coming Jesus will enter as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, in strength and power.

At His first coming, Jesus was mocked as a king, tortured and crucified. In His second coming Jesus will be glorified as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Him as Lord over all.

It will be a glorious day when Jesus rules the nations, but today He wants to rule our hearts. Today Jesus is building His kingdom in us. His temple is not in a building, but instead He dwells in our hearts as our King. His power, His glory – it is seen in us. We are to represent our Lord and do the works that He did. We are to preach, teach, heal, deliver, give, and go in His name by the anointing of the Spirit that He sent to us. He is King in the hearts of those who believe, both now and forever.

Application: God’s desire is for His kingdom to expand and strengthen until the day He sends His Son to take His dominion over the nations. Our part is to yield to His lordship and to go out with the power of the Holy Spirit to win more of the people that Jesus died for. Share the Gospel message with someone today.

There are seventy sevens prophesied for the Jews in Daniel 9:24-27. Those sevens have been translated as weeks, but they are actually sets of seven years. The seventieth seven is yet to be fulfilled. The sixty-nine sevens ended at a special event. In verse 25 it tells us that the sixty-nine sevens would continue until Messiah the Prince. The Hebrew word for Prince is nagiyd. The root of this word is nagad meaning, “to be made known, to announce, to declare, to acknowledge, to be conspicuous.” When did the Jews first publicly announce Jesus to be the Messiah?

The event took place in Jerusalem, a week before Passover. The Jews were gathered in the holy city for their upcoming feast. Jesus instructed his disciples to acquire a donkey to fulfill prophecy in Zechariah 9:9, “…Behold your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey…” As Jesus entered into the city on the colt, Jewish people laid down palm branches, a sign of victory, and shouted out, hosanna, which means “save us now.” They shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David, a term signifying Jesus as the promised king, a descendent of David’s throne. The triumphal entry also fulfilled the prophetic song in Psalm 118 foretelling the words declaration, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” The Jews were not celebrating Jesus for their spiritual salvation; they were declaring Jesus as their promised king that would free them from the oppression of the nations.

The Jewish priests and scribes to become indignant when they saw the attention that Jesus was receiving, not only from the adults, but from the children who were also shouting with their parents, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” fulfilling a prophetic song in Psalm 8:2. The Pharisees called to Jesus from the loud crowd, instructing Him to quiet His followers. Jesus answered, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.” Jesus said this because He knew that to fulfill scripture on that day, the end of the sixty-nine week of Daniel’s prophecy, there had to be the declaration of His kingship by the Jews.[1]

Application: The day of the Messiah’s pronouncement also included the cleansing of the temple, prophetic of the season of the Gentiles preceding the seventieth seven,[2] and supernatural healing for the blind and lame. Declare Jesus as your king today, allowing Him to rule over anything that would keep you from seeing or doing all He has for you.