Unmerited Favor - Part 3: A Safe Success

Dear friends,

I believe you had a wonderful summer. We had break from the series in August, and I am excited to start restart the series in the fall. We will pick up where we left off, which is a discussion about the presence of God as the source of our success. We started looking into the life of Joseph and the secrets of his success. We would like to get deeper and I pray that all who read and understand these articles will receive the revelation that will bring transformation. If you are blessed by the articles, you may want to share them with others.

God bless you all.

Dedo Suwanda
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Unmerited Favor - Part 3: A Safe Success



As much as we are interested in the Jesus-kind of results in our lives, it is of equal importance that we desire the Jesus-kind of success. God does not want us to have success that will crush us. I am sure you have heard many stories of people who receive a sudden windfall when they come into a large inheritance or strike the first prize in a lottery. However, for some of these people, the sudden wealth did not give them a better life. Instead, in many instances, we know that the wealth corrupted and destroyed their lives.



Often, these people were not able to handle their so-called success, and ended up leaving their wives and allowing their families to break down before their eyes. Perhaps they bought all sorts of things and lived in huge houses. Yet, they still felt a chronic sense of loneliness, emptiness and dissatisfaction. The sad reality is that many of them who chanced upon such sudden wealth squandered it all away, and some even became bankrupt. Such results are clearly not the Jesus-kind of results, nor they are the Jesus-kind of success. I would like to make it clear: God has no problem with you having money, but He does not want money to have you!



You may ask, “How can you say that God has no problem with us having money? Doesn’t the Bible say that money is the root of all evil?” Hold on a minute, that’s not in the Bible. Let’s be scripturally accurate. This is what the Bible says, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil …. (1 Timothy 6: 10).” Can you see the difference? Having money does not make you evil. It is the obsession with money and intense love of money that lead to all kinds of evil. Just because a person has no money in his pocket does not mean that he is holy. He may well be thinking, dreaming and lusting after money all day long. You don’t need to have a lot of money to have the love of money. If a person is always purchasing lottery tickets, going to casinos and gambling in the stock market, this person clearly has a love of money. He is obsessed with getting more money.



When God called Abraham, He said to him, “ …. I will bless you.. and you shall be a blessing. (Genesis 12: 2)” You and I, who are new covenant believers in Christ, are called the seed of Abraham (Galatians 3: 29), and like Abraham, we are called to be a blessing. Now, how can we be a blessing if we are not blessed in the first place? How can we be a blessing to others when we are always flat on our backs with sickness, living from hand to mouth, never having enough for our own family and always having to borrow from others? No way! God wants you healthy and strong, and He wants you to have more than enough financial resources so that you can be generous with your relatives, friends, community or anyone who needs help. How can you be in a position to help others if you need all the help you can get yourself? It’s definitely not God’s best for you if you barely have enough for yourself. He wants to bless you so that you can be a blessing!



The Gospel Of Jesus Christ Brings Supernatural Healing And Provision



Are we here talking about the health, wealth and prosperity gospel? There is no such thing as a “prosperity gospel”. There is only one gospel and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Sicknesses and diseases are not from God. On the cross, Jesus bore not just our sins, but also our sicknesses, diseases and infirmities, thus “by His stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53: 5)” That’s not all. On the cross, Jesus bore the curse of poverty! This is what the Word of God declares: “For you know the grace (unmerited favor) of our Lord Jesus Christ, though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8: 9)” Read the whole chapter of 2 Corinthians 8 yourself. The entire chapter is about money and being a blessing financially to those who are in need. So don’t let anyone tell you that the verse is referring to “spiritual” riches. Read the verses carefully and within the right context. Let me ask you again: “How can you be a blessing to anyone when you are always sick and always borrowing from one person to repay another?”



Religion is blinding. Religion will tell you that God wants you sick to teach you character and patience. Religion will tell you that God wants you poor, so that you will learn humility. It sounds so noble, doesn’t it? But these are lies from the pit of hell. It is the devil who wants you sick and poor, but the God I know has paid a heavy price to redeem you from the curse of sickness and poverty.



Let’s forget about religion and let us focus on relationship. As a parent, how would you teach your child character and patience? With sicknesses and diseases? Of course not! There are institutions where you put such parents! Again, as a parent, how would you teach humility? By cursing your child with poverty for the rest of his life? No way! Now, isn’t is amazing how everything becomes crystal clear when we start thinking from the point of view of a parent, and put our own child in the picture?



When you start to think along the lines of relationship, everything will converge and you will begin to see things from God’s perspective. Our heavenly Father operates based on relationship, not religion, and through His unmerited favor in our lives, we learn character, patience and humility as we rest from our self-efforts and depend on Him. The more we “know” our Father, the more we become like Him. The word “know” is the same word that used in Genesis “Adam knew Eve”, which implies intimacy and experience. This is how God causes us to grow from glory to glory in every area of our lives. It is simply by beholding Him! (2 Corinthians 3: 18)



You know that as parents, we always seek the best things for our children. How much more would our Father in heaven want the best thing for us, His precious children? In the same way that you want your children to be healthy, God wants you to enjoy His divine health. And in the same way that you want your children to always have more than enough, God wants you to enjoy His supernatural provision.



Even the world has more common sense than some Christians. Look at what people like Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett and Bono are doing. They are using their fame, resources and time to fight against sickness and poverty. And here, we have believers who are completely blinded by religion, telling us that sickness and poverty are from God. My friend, get this right: God abhors sickness and He loathes poverty. He gave everything He had to annihilate sickness and poverty when He have us His only Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for us. He placed all humanity’s sin, as well as the curse of sickness and poverty on the body of Jesus. Right now, humanity only has to respond to Jesus’ finished work, and their sins will be forgiven, their physical body will be healed and their poverty will indeed be history!



God wants you to be blessed in spirit, soul and body. He is not against you having money and material things, but He is against money and things having you. I would like you to think this way: “Use money and love people. Don’t love money and use people.” God wants you and your family completely blessed and having more than enough to be a blessing. But at the same time, He wants to be sure that success will not destroy you and cause your family to disintegrate. To be safe for success, keep your heart ablaze with passion for Jesus and His presence, rather than on empty materialistic things.



Safe For Success – Keep Your Eyes On Jesus



The Word of God says, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. (Matthew 6: 33)” Now, what is the kingdom of God? The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 14: 17 that the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” When you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus and pursue the kingdom of God (which is Jesus’ righteousness, His peace and His joy), God’s Word promises that “all these things” will be added to you. “These things” refer to what you will eat, drink and wear. Jesus tells us that you do not have to be consumed by these concerns. When you keep your eyes on Jesus and His finished work on the cross, not only He will add the things you need in this life to you, He will also cause you to become “safe for success.”



Jeremiah 9: 23-24 says, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, and let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boast boast of this, the he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises loving-kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things, “ declares the Lord. Let us be people who will not depend on our own wisdom, might and riches (thus, our own merits), but rather, let our boasting (dependence) be in understanding and knowing Jesus. Know that He is gracious and full of unmerited favor towards us. Know that He Himself is righteousness and He clothes us with robes of righteousness. The more you focus on beholding Jesus in all His loveliness and the less you struggle to earn things by your own merits, the more you become “safe” for greater success in your life.

Let us continue our study on the life of Joseph. I want you to see what it means when a man is safe for success. In the previous chapter, we saw how the Lord’s manifested presence in his life made all that Joseph did to prosper. The results that Joseph produced were so spectacular that even Potiphar, who was an unbeliever with no spiritual discernment, could visibly see that the Lord was with Joseph. Potiphar was an intelligent man. When he saw that whatever Joseph touched flourished in his hand, Joseph “found favor in his sight” and Potiphar quickly promoted Joseph to become the overseer of his household, putting “all that he had” under Joseph’s authority. Then, the Bible records that the Lord blessed Potiphar’s house “for Joseph’s sake”, and the blessing of the Lord was on all that Potiphar had in the house and in the field. (Genesis 39: 4-5)



My friend, the unmerited favor that you have with the Lord will overflow and lead to favor with the people around you. In your career, when Jesus causes everything that your hand touches to prosper, you will receive favor from your boss, and that will lead to accelerated increase and promotion. Believe that because you, a child of God, are in that organization, it will thrive and be blessed. The Lord will bless the organization for your sake.



The Difference Between God’s Unmerited Favor and (Human’s) Favoritism



We have seen that Joseph was a successful man because the lord was with him, and because he depended on unmerited favor from God. It is also important for you to recognize that there is a significant difference between God’s unmerited favor and (human’s) favoritism. God’s unmerited favor is based entirely on Jesus’ merit, and we received it by faith through His finished work at the cross. We did nothing to deserve His favor, because it is completely unmerited. Favoritism, however, is based on self-effort. Individuals who rely on favoritism for promotion have to resort to apple-polishing, office politics, manipulative tactics, back-stabbing, and all kinds of compromises just to get what they want. They use all their efforts to open doors for themselves, and in the process, they lose themselves.



God has a higher and better way for you. It hurts Him to see His own precious children groveling like sycophants just to get ahead in life. If a door closes, so be it! Believe with full confidence that God has a better way for you. You do not have to depend on favoritism to keep opportunities open for yourself when you have God’s unmerited favor on your side! That’s how Joseph operated. He depended on the Lord for his success, and not on favoritism, which would have required him to compromise his beliefs. I believe that Joseph faced a real temptation. As the wife of a high ranking officer with position, influence and wealth, she was probably one of the most beautiful women in Egypt. There is no doubt that she was a real temptation to Joseph, and that’s why Joseph had to run! Joseph knew the source of His success, favor and blessings. He did not see giving in to the temptation of Potiphar’s wife as a great wickedness and sin against Potiphar alone, but against God too. He knew every blessing that he had experienced was a result of the Lord’s favor on him. He knew that it was not potiphar who promoted him from a lowly slave to become the overseer of Potiphar’s entire estate. It was the Lord!



Amen!