Creflo Dollar - Living Life On A Divine Plane - Part 3
If you have your bibles, go with me to the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 13 and 3. We've been talking about living life on a divine plane. And we've been talking about the difference between a person that may not be born again, may not have Jesus as Lord of his life, but he believes in living a good moral life versus a person who's born again and being trained by grace and disciplined by grace. And so, there's a whole another level of living that grace will bring you to. It's a divine level that grace brings you to versus any great attempts for you to achieve morality in your life. And so, I'm not against morality, of course, I mean the grace of God is not throwing morality out, but there's something about having the right attitude along with the right morals that can only come by the grace of God.
And what we're gonna show you today, is that there are things that we're trying to achieve in life and I'm talking about as Christians, that can't be achieved without depending on God. It just, you just gotta come to a point in your life to recognize there're some certain things in life you don't have the ability to do by yourself. And that's why we have God and that's why it's so important to develop a relationship with God as a believer and to begin to walk with him. And so I wanna just kinda lay a foundation here before we get to 1 Corinthians 13. The purpose of grace is to produce in the believer a life on a divine plane. The purpose of grace is to produce in the believer's life, a purpose of grace is to produce in the believer a life on a divine plane. And that's where God's taken you. He's taken you to a divine plane.
If you look at your life, and you know, since you've been in this relationship with God, and especially more and more you understand about the grace of God, and more and more you understand about Jesus because you can't separate the grace of God from Jesus, Jesus's full of grace. And so at the end of the day, Jesus a person, grace is a person, not a curriculum, not just a bunch of principles. Grace is a person and his name is Jesus, Jesus full of grace and truth. And so every now and then when you're studying grace, remind yourself, "I'm talking about the person of Jesus Christ". And what happens is that the grace of God is producing in the believer, the spirit of grace is producing in the believer a life on the divine plane.
And so he's changing your desires and he's changing your want to's and things you used to want to do and man, Taffi and I were talking about this fact this past weekend. We're learning how to, you know, we gotta trust God to change people. We gotta trust God to change us. And it really helps when you trust God to change you and you can use yourself as an illustration of, wow, look at what the Holy Spirit has done in me. And you don't even quite know how to go through all of the details of what happened, it's just not there anymore. You don't desire it anymore and that's... remember the Holy Spirit's working on our desires. You don't have the want to anymore. You don't wanna be mean anymore, you know. You don't wanna be obnoxious to your husband or your wife anymore, something's happened since you have engaged in this real, authentic relationship with the spirit of grace, and he's been working on you because you desire for certain things to change in your life.
You may not have had the desire for things to change. Maybe that's the first base of the Holy Spirit, giving you desire to change. A lot of times somebody says, "Well, I hadn't changed yet". Well, you hadn't desired to change. I mean, how you gonna change you don't want to. So the first thing he's working on first base is I gotta give you a desire and a want to, to want to change. How many you know, you can't help nobody who don't want help? I mean, you can go down, you know, homeless alleys and see people out there. I mean, we tried it before. If you've ever not, some people want help, but then there are some people you say, "Oh, I see, why are you here"? You have no desire at all to want to change. And so the Holy Spirit's doing that and the grace of God is producing in a believer a life it's headed toward a divine plane. You only get to all point where all you know is, "Yes, I read this in the Scripture, yes, I desire this, but I need you to help me to accomplish this".
And ladies and gentlemen, that is good, that is spiritual maturity when you can have that relationship with God and have a desire to wanna see these things take place. Now, let's go to 1 Corinthians 13 and 3. Here's what Paul said. And he said, "And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing". That's pretty powerful. Look at this in the NLT, "And though I bestow my body to be burned," not burned up in fire, that's more like burnout, okay. He says, "If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sanctified my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing". So he's talking about the person who does all of the good moral things, okay? He's doing, he's giving to the poor, he's helping the needy, he's doing it out of a sense of morality. But he says, "If you do those things but you don't have love, you have gained nothing".
You see, I don't want to be just a good moral person that's doing good things to people, but I don't have the right motivation. I'm not doing it out of the love that God poured on the inside of me, I'm doing it so I can get recognition, I'm doing it so that somebody can give me an award. No, no, no, no, everything is all about what moves you to do this. What is the mortar, the mortar that moves you to do that. Now, that's what everything and I think as Christian people, especially us who have a authentic relationship with God and learning about the grace of God, we need to constantly examine our mortar, our motive. What's moving me to do this thing? 'Cause if you're not careful, you'll catch the wrong motives from the world and you'll end up doing things by that motivation and you're not... and at the end of it, there is no real profit. You gain nothing for doing things from wrong motivation, you gain nothing.
Even the lady in the Bible who had the motive one of her two sons and wanted a favor there with Jesus, and Jesus is like, "Only the Father can do this". I mean, you know, you got wrong motive. You walked in here like you were worshiping me, but you were not worshiping me at all, you had other things in mind. And what would happen? She gained nothing. And so I believe right motivation will move you to gain things. The life produced by the teachings of grace has the outward manifestations plus the right attitude towards God. And that's what we want. The outward manifestations of doing things and right morals and so forth, but we also wanna have a right attitude towards God.
People do things in the world now and God gets no credit for it at all. They pat themselves on the back and they're gone and proceed to tell you how great they are. But I tell you what, when the world catches us doing stuff as believers, I wanna tell 'em why I'm doing it. I'm a lover of Jesus, hallelujah. And I'm doing it being motivated by the love that Jesus poured into my heart the day I got born again and that's what this is about, ladies and gentlemen. And so, while the outward expression of godly living as taught by grace cannot always be distinguished from the moral human life, there are standards of godly living that are beyond the conception of the natural mind. And I mean that when I'm gonna show you Scriptures when... they're godly living beyond the natural mind. These are on a divine place or divine plane. And therefore they are far higher and far higher order than some of your moral teachings or some of the best moral teachings and standards that they come up with.
And here's another thing I saw here and we'll see it today that they are even higher than the high standards of God's law that was given to Moses, even higher than the Mosaic Law. This high plane of living that the spirit of grace wants to take us to, higher than morality of people who just wanna be more with the wrong attitude and higher than the Mosaic Law. Now, let's get into these Scriptures so we can just really look at each one of 'em in detail to show you that you're not gonna be able to do this on your own, you have to depend on God. Let's look at Ephesians 5 and 20th verse. Ephesians 5 and 20 that you have to depend on God in order to accomplish this now.
Alright, now, watch this, "Giving thanks always," stop right there. I don't do that. I give thanks but not always. And you don't either or there are lots of people in church. In other words, they'd got up this morning and said, "Father, it's raining, I thank you for the rain". And that's important to us. "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;" Look at that in the NLT right quick, giving, thanks. He says, "And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ". I've been living and I don't... I need God to help me to... I don't even know what that looks like. Religious people will claim they know what it looks like. They give thanks for what they wanna give thanks for. But there's a divine plane where you gotta have the Holy Spirit in the middle of a crazy situation and you're over there giving thanks to God.
Now, of course, you're not thanking God for the crazy stuff that's happening, but you're giving thanks in the middle of every situation. I am telling you, I pause in some of those things. In some of those things I find myself in, I pause and I sweat and struggle to try to find how to give thanks. And he's not asking you to give thanks for whatever you're going through, he's asking you that even when you don't feel good, and even when it's horrible, and even when it's scary, give thanks to God. I need the spirit of grace on this one. Especially when he says, "Always". Nobody's there yet. Nobody on the planet is there yet. Jesus got there but there's a place, there's one of the places where grace wants to take me.
Grace wants to take me to that place where every... no matter what I'm going through and challenged with, grace wants to take me to that place where I am over there giving thanks to God. And the whole world looks at you like, "Boy, they gotta be out there rockers". They're over there thanking God. Yeah, I'm thanking God for being God. I'm thanking God for allowing me to be thankful where I wasn't thankful in this thing. That's big. The Bible says the whole will for our life is to give thanksgiving and we can't ignore that there's something about that level where you're living life in thanksgiving. But you know what, when I read something like that, you know what it causes me to do?
I can't look for you to help me. Mama and them can't help me, pookie and 'em can't help me, I can only go to God and say, "Help me". He's gonna train me to be thankful. And when I am, when I find myself, when I find myself thanking God in the middle of just weird stuff, then you can look up again and say, "Wow, look at what you're doing to me. I would've never even thought". The whole thing is to get your focus off the stuff and get your focus on him, "I think God knows what he's doing here," but grace is gonna escort us. That is a high plane because that cannot be accomplished in the flesh, it cannot.
Look at Philippians 4 and 6, Philippians 4 and 6. You know, often time, you know, I look around at the body of Christ and I see us thinking that we're just like cool the way we are. And I'm looking at my life saying, "I still got a lot of growing to do. Still got a lot of growing to do". I mean, if I'm alive and I'm here, I'm not gonna stop growing that's my biggest thing. "Lord, I don't want to stop, I wanna always be growing, I wanna always be learning, I wanna always know more about you. You're deep and you're wide and you're high". And so, you know, the Bible even says, "To know the love of God that you can't know," you'll never know all of it. Well, I'm alive, so I'm gonna get to work, I wanna know some of it, I wanna have something but it's gonna be the Holy Ghost to take me there.
Watch this, verse 6, "Don't worry about anything". Wow! I need, I need the Holy Ghost. I need a... you do too, you can walk around here and get up here and testify and come out, "Well, I just don't worry about nothing," you are a lying a link in your breath. I mean, I don't do that, but I look at that and I'm like, oh, wow. It may depend on the situation. Children, the finances, a situation that just happened. Fear's always knocking on the door to try to get you to put your focus on whatever you focus on the most. That's, what fills, fear's trying to get you to focus on in. I need the Holy Spirit, I need the spirit of grace to get me to that place, "Don't worry about anything". I believe long life is in, "Don't worry about anything". I really do. These are these small things that we just kinda read over and say, "Oh, then we're good Christians, yep. Praise the Lord, I don't worry". Sometimes, sometimes you don't. But he says, "Don't worry about anything". "I still got some stuff that provokes temptation to worry".
And I think it's cool for me to say that. I'm not gonna be a very... listen, I don't get into being a pastor lying on Sunday in the church from the pulpit. "Don't worry about anything". "I worry, okay, so what do I do"? He tells us, "Instead of worrying about anything, pray about everything". Oh, hold on right now, hold on, I don't do that either. I pray about some things but he said, pray about everything. Don't you assume that what we're reading right now, you can do by yourself. That's why I'm showing you, that's why I'm trying to get you to have a reality check. You're not praying about everything. Somebody say, "Yes I am". No you're not. "Yes, I am". Now you deceive 'cause you should've prayed about this conversation that you and I were gonna have. "Pray about everything".
So the spirit of grace is gonna take us there. That's what we're graduating to. We're graduating to the place where we're gonna... there's coming a time where we're not gonna be worrying as much as we used to worry. You know, there's coming a time where we're gonna start praying about more things than what we're praying about right now. I want you to see how you need God. If I get a pen and lie to you and say, "Yes, you pray about everything and yes, you don't worry about anything," you know where that leaves you? "Well, I don't need God then. I'm doing all this on my own". And I'm telling you, you need God 'cause you not even doing half of this. And especially if you're doing it on your own. If you're doing any of this on your own, that's what religion does. Religion wants to take credit for you doing it all on your own without God. And the whole human race was created to depend on God. Everything God created depends on him, everything.
The earth rotating on its axis depends on God, the birds depend on God, nature depends on God, the seasons of everything depends on God except man who rebelled one day and became the biggest rebel in the universe, and now he think he don't need to depend on God 'cause he think he'd got away with something and you were created by God too and guess what? You depend on him too, whether you depend on him or not, but you were created to depend on him like everything else that God created. I need him. I need him. I know you think this is funny but getting dressed for church, I just, like I said this morning, I just wanna put some clothes off. It is, sometimes it becomes such a irritating challenge. 'Cause if it was left up to me, I would've the same thing every Sunday. Sometimes my wife said, "You ordered already". Yeah, that was a month ago. And I find myself praying in tongues. Lord, help me.
Now when Taffi and in the closet, I'm cool. "Hey, pick me out something to wear". But when I'm by myself, oh Lord... You think I happen to go into a serious exorcism. "Don't worry about anything". "Okay Lord, help me with that". "Instead, pray about everything". "Okay Lord, help me with that". "Tell God what you need". You know, I don't always know what I need. I know what I want. I know what I want, which is why now my prayer has changed to, "Let your will be done". Because I may want something that I don't need, but I really, I really want what I need. It's even changing my desire. I want what I need, but I don't know what I need, so tell God what you need. "Lord, help me to know what I need". This whole Scripture is defining dependence upon God, "And thank him for all he has".
Don't always do that. God's got every provision you need and you walking around worrying. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. "Thank him for all that he has". He has everything. You can take this one Scripture and this Scripture is clearly saying, "You gonna need God on this line, you gonna need God on that line, you gonna definitely need God on that line, you gonna need God on this whole Scripture". And I reevaluated, I used to read that Scripture like it was a checkoff Scripture, "Yeah, I got that". Do that, do that, do that, do that. But in reality, do that sometimes, do that every now and then, they hadn't done that in a minute trying to do that. Why? Why would he put it like that? Because it's a guarantee that he will always have a place in your life. Like he does everything else he created.
Look at this, 1 Thessalonians chapter 5:16. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5:15. Dude, if you get this today, everything starts changing. Everything starts changing when you can come away from self and get away from self-dependence and start getting into God dependence. To me that's what the gospel is about teaching people to walk away from self-dependence. I am tired of depending on me. And then God, every now and then will let something happen where dependence on you ain't no good. And then you go to the, all you know, "Well, I'm gonna go to the doctor. I can't depend on", they don't know everything. They might misdiagnose you or they might be trying to buy a house to use you to get it. They don't know everything. They may give you the wrong dosage on the medicine. They don't know everything. You better depend on God, you better not ever let no doctor touch you in a operation situation, you better know that God is there. You know, all kinds of stuff can happen. You better depend on God. I don't know what it is that makes us think we don't need to depend on God and so we can depend on that person, that person. People will let you down if you don't already know.