Creflo Dollar - The Attractiveness of God's Grace - Part 2
Sometimes it's knowin' the joy that's ahead of you that can help you go through certain things in life. Sometimes it's the pain that you experience here, and you think about the things that are above. You think about the things that are before you, the things that you're coming to. Jesus says for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross. There's a joy that's set before you. There's a joy that's set before me, to help us to have endurance and patience. It, it's just what Taffi was talkin' about. Don't allow the lack of manifestations in your life to cause you to give up, cave in, quit, get, get worried, get depressed, you know, turn nuts in what you're doin'. Don't do that. Make your mind up, for the joy that's set before me.
Just think about heaven. There are times that, that this, this wonderful woman and I have gone through that you will never know about, but it was the joy that was set before us that kept us movin'. Stop that hurt. I remember we went through a pain that hurt so bad, we, we stayed in the house for three or four days. It was so painful, but for the joy that was set before us. It is not our job to get up here and complain about what we goin' through, 'cause everybody go, everybody goin' through somethin'. You ain't the only one goin' through it nothin', and you ain't never gon' be the only one goin' through. But how you go through it, for the joy that's set before you. Boy, that really encouraged me.
And then Titus chapter 2 and verse, all right, lemme read verse 11 through 13, because in Titus chapter 2, he's talking about how the grace of God teaches us, but then he tells us what to do while we're being taught. He says, "For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people," makin' salvation available to everybody on the planet. Everybody on the planet, not just folks who go to church, but every unsaved no good for nothin' person, Jesus died for that person so that salvation can be made available to them. And all they got to do is say, "Yes, Lord, I receive it". Verse 12 says, "And we are instructed to turn from godly, godless living and sinful pleasures. We should live in this evil world with wisdom, live in it with righteousness, live in this world with devotion to God, while we look forward with hope to the wonderful day when the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be revealed".
Look it there. So while grace is teachin' you how to live, and while you're goin' through this thing tryin' to live right, dependin' on God, trusting God, keep looking for the glorious return. If you had a bad day, look up for your redemption draweth near. Glory be to God. He says live a life where you're, where you're always in expectation of his return, a life where you're expecting his return. I can't hardly glance by the news and look at somethin' and say, "Jesus is comin'". Lord, I expect your return. Lord, I expect, it is no longer walkin' around with a fear of whether or not I'm gonna go to heaven or hell. I already know where I am. I am there now. I am born again. You are born again. You are there right now, praise God. And contrary to popular opinion, it is not your behavior that determines you goin' to heaven or hell.
It is your decision that you've made Jesus the Lord of your life; and if you've made Jesus the Lord of your life, you are, you're already heaven bound, praise God. Your name's already written. That's your reservation. They have your name. You know when you show up at a hotel and you've already registered, they say "Name" and they check it off. "All right, welcome". That's the same way it's gon' be when you go to heaven. You gon' walk up in there, you might be a little cautious a little bit 'cause you know you haven't been perfect, and you gon' find out ain't nobody been perfect, but you're gettin' ready to check in to a place where the perfection that you were lacking is gonna be there available for you. You are heaven bound because you have Jesus. I'll go so far as to say this: If anybody in here goes to hell for your behavior, everybody goin' to hell. Because you're on a journey. You're on a journey and on that journey, you may not behave properly and then realize it and get it fixed, and on this, you continue the journey, and other stuff happen.
You continue the journey, and you have a flat tire. You continue the journey, and the radiator runs hot. You continue the journey, and you took a wrong turn. You continue the journey. It's a journey. My God, it's a journey. And you continue walkin' this journey. You continue walkin' this journey, and you don't let the flat tire mess up your whole journey. And you don't talk about the flat tire all the way from Atlanta to California, and you still talkin' about the flat tire; and the reason why you don't do that, because the tire's not flat no mo'. You got another tire that's taken place, hallelujah. You're on a journey. You're on a journey. And you're seeking what's above. I get it, God, I get it.
He says okay, if you wanna compare emotional stuff, all right, let's do that. He says, really? If you wanna get emotional and concerned, that ought to take place when somebody's born into this evil world. You wanna rejoice and be happy? That takes place when somebody who made Jesus the Lord of their life, when they pass it oughta be a celebration. But families that don't see that, they don't see that. It oughta be a celebration. They're with heaven. They know more about things than you and I know until we get there. I tell ya, there's a greater place, there's a greater expectation in my heart than what you can expect here. I, I don't, I don't, I can't give you Scripture, I can't, but here's what I, I, here's what I believe. I believe that there's something about this journey that is to prepare us for the, the one we're headed to. This is the dressing up room. This is the fixing up room. This is the training room.
There's something about this journey. You, you've never been to... see, I, I, I will not, I will not permit myself to think that I, I, I know so much about a place I've never been. I've never been to this place. I'm on my way. I've never been to this place. That's why I can't come up arrogantly and tell you, well, no, this ain't gon' happen, that's gon' happen. All I know is what he let me know. And what he let me know is if you make Jesus, my God, the Lord of your life, that's what he let me know. He let me know some things about what I can expect when I get to heaven, and the attractiveness of it is so amazing. When I did have the opportunity to cross over, I mean, I was ready. That was weirdest day of my life. Saw stuff that I just was sayin' what is this, what is that? It was like I was in a daze all that day. I was soul-tired. Maybe it's time for somebody else to come on in. I'm tired, Lord. Let's, I, I been lookin' forward to this anyway.
But what I wasn't lookin' forward to was hearing "My good, faithless servant, Creflo Dollar, job incomplete". I don't wanna hear about my job bein' incomplete. What, incomplete? Here's what I wanna hear аbout: "My good and faithful servant, job well done. Now enter into the glory that has been prepared for you from the foundations of this world". Where are we today? We're living in a society people don't believe hardly nothin' about the things of God. They just don't. But they will. Somebody said how you know? 'Cause God's workin' now. He's workin' on that unsaved uncle that you thought you never would see saved. God is doin' some stuff on the inside of people that you don't know about, and there is about to be an amazing move of God to hit this planet. Folks you didn't even witness to gon' come to you and say, "Show me how to get saved". That's right. Amen.
Somebody today is waitin' on somethin' deep. This is deep as I'm gonna get today right here. Today is about Jesus and where you goin'. And it is much more attractive than where you are. Here's the second method that the Lord uses to draw the hearts of men away from this present world. Go look back at Jesus when he was on earth. Look at what he was talkin' about to draw people. Here's the second thing: By faithfully declaring the soon passing outta sight of things, the quickly fading or disappearing and the shakable nature of things that are on the earth, the evanescence of the things that we know and are familiar with on this planet. 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 18 in the King James and then the NLT. Are you prepared for what is about to happen? Are you ready to go through this thing lookin' up at everything that's gettin' ready to take place? He says, "While we look not at the things which are seen, but we look at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal," temporary, subject to change, "but the things which are not seen are eternal," everlasting, set.
Now look at this in the NLT. He says, "So we don't look at the troubles we can see now..." How many of you can see some troubles? Don't raise your hands, I don't need to know, ain't none of my business. How many of you are looking at and, and experiencing some trouble of some things you can see now, some things that are not quite workin' the way you wanna work? He says, "rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen". If you sit there and continue to stare at the trouble, it's gonna affect your emotions, and then those negative emotions are gonna try to dive deep into your spirit and cause you to be hopeless, hopeless about certain things happening, hopeless about the prophecies you found in God's Word.
And I'm tellin' ya, it's not over. We got the Word for today. Everything gettin' ready to come together, baby. But you can't, you can't keep lookin' at the trouble. You can't keep listenin' at the, at the word that says it ain't gon' never happen to you. No, that's what the devil will whisper in your ear, "This will never happen to you". Everything gettin' ready to come together. "I don't care what you been through, I don't care how much money you got, I don't care what people said wasn't gon' happen, it's gettin' ready to come together, because we gon' stop looking at the trouble we can see, and we gon' fix our gaze on the things that cannot be seen, for the things we see now will soon be gone..." Let me say it like this: There's an expiration on the trouble that you're looking at. It will soon be gone, "but the things we cannot see will last forever".
I'm tryin' to get a few people in here to make your mind up that I'm puttin' my sight on where I'm goin'. It's gonna happen, guys. The rapture's a reality. It's gon' happen. If everything he said that is happening now, and he said it before it happened, not that he said there will be earthquakes, not that he said that the great winds on water, not that he said there would be, you know, wars and rumors, not that he said that. The thing that he said that is so awesome is that he said all of those things are gonna happen, and they're gonna happen with intensity and frequency. He said it's gonna get more intense and more frequent, more intense and more frequent. In other words, what used to happen once a year is happening once a month, once a week, every day, every day, chaos upon chaos upon chaos.
You know, New Year's Eve, the Lord gave us a warning New Year's Eve. He said there's gon' be chaos upon chaos, and he said start making your livin' by your givin'. Don't trust in governmental systems. Don't trust in government assistance. Trust in the Lord. Make your livin' by your givin'. Keep seed in the ground, and you'll always have somethin' on every wave, and you will be taken care of. You gotta look and see what's goin' on in the world. You gotta look and see at the things that they're saying, you gotta check all that stuff out. That stuff is a direct attack against the people in the body of Christ. They don't know that there is a direct attack. The devil did everything he could during the time of pandemic to shut the church down, but you cannot. You can't, you can cancel everything else, but you can't cancel God. He'll keep comin' back better and better. He'll keep comin' back stronger and stronger. And you gotta see yourself like that.
When I fall, I shall arise, praise God. You can't stop me because of whose I am. You can't stop me because of who I'm lookin' at. You can't stop me because of the God that lives on the inside of me. When I fall, I shall arise. When I mess up, I shall get it right. When I go left, I'll get the right direction. I shall not be defeated, because greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. I will not quit. Sometimes it's the simple stuff. I gotta look to him. I might be weepin'. I gotta look to him. Oh. I might be cryin', I gotta look to him. Oh, God, when is this gon' stop? I gotta look to him. I know what I'm preachin'. When you have pain in your body for three years, and it's still not gone, I gotta look to him. You don't know what people goin' through.
Some of 'em come here smilin' and raisin' their hands up because of who they lookin' at. But it don't mean that everything perfect in they life. It don't mean they don't have no pain. It don't mean that they... Jesus says that he was touched with the feelings of our infirmities. I didn't know what that meant, and now I can say I've been touched with some of y'all's feelings of infirmity. I still don't know all of it, but I know what it means like to be in pain. I know what it means like to stare death in the face. I know what it means like to wonder, you know, do you put your trust in this man, or do you put your trust in God Almighty? I know what that means.
I know what that means. Every now and then you gon' have to, there will be somethin' in your life one day that you ain't got no choice but to trust God. There'll be somethin' in your life one day when you'll say some men trust in horses, some men trust in chariots, but I trust in the Almighty God. There'll be somethin' in your life that day. I'm tryin' to cry loud like a trumpet this mornin'. I'm, I'm tryin' to walk in the shoes of John the Baptist this morning. It's time to give a shout. It's time to give a warning out to the people of God that this is not play church time. This is not this time where, I mean we, that we intellectually have these acrobatic intellectual things in our mind where we really think we got this thing figured out, and we walk around in an arrogance of "I've been saved a long time. I know how to do it".
It's time to humble ourselves. It's time to humble and submit ourselves unto the mighty hand of God and say, "God help me. Let your will be done in my life. Take away what I've been tryin' to get you to for me and show me what I need to do for somebody else. Help me, God. Show me how to yield to you. Show me how to walk with you". That's what time it is. And yet, no matter how loud I scream today, no matter how many Scriptures I show today, at the end of this day, this will still ring true: People do what they wanna do. I can only pray that as I'm screamin', that the Holy Spirit is whispering somethin' in your heart that I might not be sayin'. It's time. It's coming. And for some, it's already here.
What are you gonna do? Systems will fall, and they will fall to technology that is present today. There's technology that is present today that completely eliminates a human being. There's technology that is at hand today that makes you wonder about four years of college, because there's technology that's gon' take all of that training. It makes you wonder, maybe I need to go to a technical school and do somethin' with my hands that AI can't do. It's not gonna go away. It's not gonna be squashed. It's happening right now. And I'm tryin' to get you outta this dark, this dark church system. It's happening right now.
So what happens if your job falls to technology? Who do you trust to take care of you? I trust in the Lord. I remember when they were talkin' about the Internet and what was gonna happen. And I remember the Lord speakin'. He said, "Satan will use this and draw many away from God and even a desire to ever even wanna know him, but my Spirit will still rise strong in them". You can't stop the anointing. You can't stop the Holy Ghost. There is, AI ain't filled with the Spirit, glory to God! You can't stop the... You can't stop the anointing!