GRACE & PROSPERITY

  Yesterday (11/06/2021), I had the great honor and privilege to share the word of God with his people and this word really blessed me as well. This is why I am deciding to share it on here, so that, by God’s grace someone might be blessed by it.

My home church has this monthly theme we work with and the word for the month is ‘covenant month of prosperity’. The word that was laid in my heart was as touching the prosperity that emanates from God.

First of all, I will attempt to define Prosperity.  According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, it is the condition of being successful or thriving, especially economically. I define it as a condition or state of increasing or moving forward in one or more areas of life. Gene.26:13 paints of picture of prosperity.

‘The man began to prosper, and continued prospering until he became very prosperous;' (nkjv)

It is true that prosperity largely has been seen to be in the area of finances, but I believe so much that it is beyond money.

One definition of grace I have seen is God in your RACE i.e G+RACE. But I define grace to be God’s ability as your ability. That is, working with an ability that is beyond yours so that you end up having a result that could not have been your kind of usual result.

I went ahead to divide a man’s life into the pre-Grace period, the grace period and the post- GRACE period! This is not to say that an individual might not have been living by a certain kind of grace but in this case, a higher dimension of grace as the case may be.

There are two main bible characters that we drew lessons from and they are Joseph and Paul the Apostle.

 

1)      Joseph- Gene.39:1-23

Vs3- ‘And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand.’

It was evident that the presence of the LORD with Joseph made him prosperous.

 

Vs4- ‘And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand.’

 

This verse makes it obvious that there are people who have things because they worked for it and other who have it because it was bestowed on them. These two sets of people are not the same. This is what grace is. 

Vs5 ^{: ‘}And it came to pass from the time that he had made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had in the house, and in the field.’

 Helps us see that the presence of a person in a place can be the factor that changes the outcome of the people in that area. Just like Jonah as well in Jonah.1:6-17 whose presence brought a negative outcome for the people around him.

 In Gene41:38-45, we see the awesome outcome of the presence of God with Joseph as he did not just become the prime minister, he also had a change of status from single to married. The young man didn’t have to stress himself to do a proposal..lol.

 But I put it to you that this outcomes didn’t just come because of the grace of God on Joseph’s life or the gift of interpretation of dreams and administration, but he must have worked hard at developing these gifts to a point where he was sure of his response when interpreting dreams and he was confident of his administrative prowess.

 2Tim.1:6-7 :‘For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a Spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

2. Paul the Apostle- he gives a better picture of the importance of hard-work and diligence in 1cor.15:10- But by the grace of God I am what I am and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I but the grace of God which was with me.

 He had persecuted the church of God for the first half of his life. Now he was to begin the second half on a new fresh page and this is where grace intersected with him. He went on to write 13 of the 27 books of the new testament and although only 7 of these books were said to be authentically written by him, the rest  6 were written by his followers who had access to his writings. He became extraordinarily productive with the 2^nd half of his life to the point that generations unborn will keep referring to and gleaning from his works.

 This is shows us what the grace of God can do in the life of a man. And he mentioned that whatever he was able to achieve, he achieved it because of God’s grace and although he labored more than all the other apostles that had been apostles while he was persecuting the church, it was not his ability he used to labor but it was God’s grace. This looks to me like the grace of God made him empowered to go through the labor. It did not now appear as labored but one he was energized to do.

This tells us that hard-work +grace makes the work not to be hard i.e. one would enjoy doing the work. In the end, you will enjoy going through the labor and although there will be challenges, you will have the strength to go through until the end. And that’s what grace does, it empowers a man to go through the labor for the desired result.

It appears right here that the grace of God is important, for every endeavor in Christ whose outcome will be as a wonder to many.

We must cry to God for this grace so we do not wear ourselves out when we have a help that can strengthen us in our journey.

God bless us all!!!