Creflo Dollar - Godly Living Obtained By The Power of God - Part 1
If you have your Bibles, go to Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 8. I'm gonna read out of the NLT. And then John chapter 6 verse 28 and 29. Now, this is very interesting. I'm gonna talk about "Godly Living Obtained by the Power of God". Godly living. It's something that we all strive for. It's somethin' that we all want. It's somethin' that, you know, we want to achieve godly living. You know, I wanna do right. I wanna live right. I mean, I love God. But I keep bumping into this kinda rollercoaster ride where, you know, sometimes it's workin' like it's supposed to work, and then sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes I'm up and then sometimes I'm down, maybe it's somethin' else we need to look at, especially with this phrase, "by the power of God".
What does that look like? What does that look like when I decide that I'm going to by the power of God live right? By the power of God, do right. By the power of God operate in the fruit of the Spirit. By the power of God, and I think the key is right there in our face. It's "by the power of God," but I'm not sure if Christian people really understand that phrase, "by the power of God". Now, I'm gonna drop some nuggets out. And just handle 'em bit by bit. I probably won't finish this sermon today. It's okay, but I want your thinking to kinda get on the same page with what I'm gonna teach here today, and I think you'll see this.
It is difficult for many people to grasp fully and understand the truth that salvation from the penalty of sin is the work of God and of him alone. Your salvation is a work of God. You being saved is all because of God all by itself, and that seems to be kind of a weird thing because you're like, "Well, I got saved, I thought it was me who, you know, made the decision. I thought", and in essence, you're like, "I thought I got myself saved by the decisions I made". Now, you had to believe absolutely. Look at this in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 8. Many people can't grasp this fully, that the truth that salvation from the penalty of sin is a work of God and of him alone.
Verse 8 says, "God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can't take credit for it, because it was a gift from God". God saved you buy his grace when you believed, all right? His part was, by his grace he did the work and saved you. Your part, our part, is we believed. Now, that's a huge part. But we keep adding onto our part. Our part is believe. His part is everything else. Our part is none of his part. Look at John chapter 6 verse 28 through 29 in NLT. I thought it was necessary to just show you this as we got started today. There was a group of guys that saw Jesus feeding some folks by multiplying bread and fish, and they wanted to do the works of God, and verse 28 said, "And they replied, 'We want to perform God's works".
And I think that's how the church is... they wanna perform Gods work. We want to accept responsibility and do what God is actually responsible for, okay? We want to perform God's works too. What should we do? And here's what Jesus said: "Jesus told them, 'This is the only work God wants from you", here's the only work, "believe in the one he has sent". So the only work that we have under this New Testament is to believe. That's the work. And somehow that's so hard for Christians to kinda accept. It's like, all right, I believed, and look at me now. I'm doin' better. But it's not because of you that you're doing better. You believed and God worked all of that stuff that you seein'. Does everybody follow me so far?
Now, all that God does in reconciling everything that God does in redeeming us, everything that God does in justifying us and giving us a new eternal life, all of that is of God alone. God by himself is responsible for reconciling. God by his self is responsible for redeeming. He's responsible for justifying us and makin' us righteous. He's responsible for us to have a new eternal life. God alone and God by himself is responsible for that. Man can contribute nothing to reconciliation, redemption, justification, and new eternal life. God by his self.
Now, as difficult as this is for man to see, it seems even more difficult for saved people to realize that the life which God expects for us to live is not of us, but by his own power. God expects for us to live this life as Christians, and we think that we're the one that's gonna produce this life that he expects. All my life, I thought it was my responsibility to produce this life that God expects for me as a Christian to have. And now I'm tellin' you today that it is not me that should be responsible, nor can I produce what's necessary to live this Christian life. This Christian life, the life that God expects for me to live, the life that God expects for you to live, this Christian life is by his own power, so he's expecting for me to live a certain way, and it's gonna be by his power that that comes to pass. Are y'all with me? You still on the bus?
Okay, so this really blew my mind. God's expecting for me to live this way. He's expecting for me to live righteous, to live holy, to live, he's expecting for me to live this way, but he's not expecting for me to produce that way of living. He by his own power is going to produce the expected life that he expects for us to live. God dog, maybe it didn't do you like it did me, but it was like a pause moment right there. I said I got to hold up here, because maybe I'm a little bit too high-strung, but I thought that was my responsibility.
Now, hold onto this. I'm just gonna just kinda drop this bit by bit and then it'll all come together now. So because of this lack of understanding, many believers, listen to this word I'm about to use, strive, striving, self-effort, many believers strive in their own strength for this high moral conduct of living instead of yielding. Strive to try to get it to happen rather than yielding themselves to the power of God which will enable them to live according to that high standard of living that's under the grace of God.
And so, basically what we've been doing if we've been workin' hard and striving hard to produce this way of living that'll be pleasing to God, and he says no, I don't want you striving. I want you yielding. I want you yielding to the power of God and through the power of God, that way of living will be produced. By him, not you. Your job is to believe. His job is to do the work. You'll get it. I promise you'll get it. I'm on, I go three pages of me emphasizing and over-emphasizing the same thing. Say this out loud with me: Striving versus yielding. Now, you know when you yield in a car, you pause and let the car go ahead of you, and then you follow. Same thing with God. Rather than you striving goin' ahead of God tryin' to produce this expected way of living, he says yield to the power of God. Yield to the power of God. Don't yield to the power of self. Yield to the power of God.
See, if you could yield to the power of self, then you didn't necessarily have to get saved. You're saying to yourself, I can produce this way of living. Well, why'd you get saved? Because all hell broke loose and you couldn't figure out nothin'. You didn't know how to... every time you tried it, it didn't work, it got worse, and then you finally said, well... somebody said you need to save me. Then you got saved and he came and he saved you really thought that you had a lot to do with getting' saved, but he had that thing worked out the whole time. He knew what it was gon' take to bring you to that spot when you said, I need a savior.
Then he said, I'ma go 'head and save you. He said, now, if I can go 'head and save you, I'ma go 'head and produce the life I expect for you to live. I ain't askin' you to do nothin' but to believe. In the Old Testament you worked for me, but in the New Testament, I work for you. Are you followin' me now? Are you followin' me? So, when this high standard of living under grace, when it seemed to be on this divine when you look at this way of... this expectation of livin', this high standard of livin' that's under the grace of God, and then you compare it to like, I'm livin' in a crazy world, I got temptation in my face all day, I got, and I thought about this this mornin' when I was prayin': Our minds are so busy and occupied and fluttered, and it's like it just keeps coming. You wake up, somethin' goin' on. You turn the television on, somethin's goin' on. You go to the store, somethin's goin' on.
Then somethin's goin' on with your family, and it's like Satan is workin' overtime to just keep you distracted. And you're not even recognizing that to live this life that he's talkin' about, it's gonna be somethin' more than human resources that's needed to live this life. After you've lived a little while and then you recognize I have done this over and over and over again and still it's not working, you know, I'm tryin' to do right. I'm tryin' to live right. I'm tryin' to make the right decisions. I'm tryin' to stay away from those habits that you had that you just couldn't seem to break. You prayed and you prayed, but it kept seem like it was just too late, and so you turned it over to Jesus, and then you stopped worryin' about it, you gave it over to the Lord and he worked it out.
That's a song, but you wasn't payin' no attention to it because you were so occupied. The answers, they tried to sing the answer to you and everything, but when we were so occupied, and somehow religion told you you're responsible for all of this, and if you really look at what God's asking for, it is impossible for you to be a Christian in your own human resources. What you're askin' me to do, I can't do that in my own resources. I'll never forget when there was a relative of ours who was found murdered, and... oh, well just go 'head and forgive them. Do not tell me that! I am not ready to forgive somebody that killed somebody that had my blood. I'm not ready for that. You never will be on your own! I don't have the human resources to dish out that type of forgiveness. Well, the Bible says we gotta love, I know what the Bible says, but I don't have the human resources to love like you tellin' me the Bible say I oughta love.
But we pretend like we do. We act like we do, only to fail in private enough where we don't wanna come in public where the church people believe all of this stuff, but we really don't. That's our big secret. Our big secret is we really don't believe God the way you heard us say that we believe God, and when it gets worse, I just stay away from you people who say you believe God like that because I ain't figured it out yet. What I have discovered is that I don't have human resources to live the way the Bible tellin' me to live. Oh, y'all lookin' me like I done lost my mind. Sometimes I feel like, oh my God, they don't know what I'm talkin' about. I mighta went too deep, I done got off... no, no, no, no. You know what I'm talkin' about.
You get up here and act like you're the greatest parents in the whole world, and you preach that stuff like you actually have the human resources to parent like God tells you to parent, and then all the rest of us done thought, well what the world wrong with us? I don't have human resources to parent the way the Bible says. I don't have the human resources to be a husband like the Bible tells me to. I don't have the human resources to be the pastor like the Bible tells me to. But he didn't ask me to have the resources. That's why he by his power... Divine power alone can produce this divine order of living that he's expecting. He's able. But are we yielded or are we striving? Under grace, we gotta yield to the power. Under religion, we think we got the power. And your human resources without God's divine power will not produce this divine life.
And all we do is just, we go keep a list of, "Well, he did that wrong I did that right self-righteousness. He did that wrong, I did that right. Oh, they been divorced twice, I'm still with my wife", and you brag about that. I ain't never messed up since I been married for 30 years. First of all you lie. So let's see what she got to say about your... okay? You don't have the... I thought I had the power to heal myself. I thought my intellect and my knowledge and my studies was enough, and I discovered I needed his divine power to produce the promise of healing. His divine power to give me peace that passes all understanding. His divine power to pay the rent when all my money's spent, and a little bit to buy some food, and the baby need a pair of shoes, that's another song. You won't listen to that one.
Look, you got a light bill due, you even got a gas bill too, telephone disconnect, wait till your next paycheck. Paycheck bounce on you. What are you gonna do? Cheat and scam somebody to get the money to do that? That's in your human resources, but there is a power of God that can get you through all that, 'cause that's a part of living. And so, we keep tryin' to teach principles without no Holy Ghost. Because you think you have the equipping and the resources to do it. But honey, just in case you don't know it now, you gon' need the power of God. You can't do it without him. Now, the fact that the true life under grace, the fact of the true life, somebody says I live my life under the grace of God. So what you're saying is, I live my life in complete dependence upon God. 'Cause that's what it is to live your life under the grace of God. There's still people who think that under the grace of God, that allows for loose living. It doesn't.
The grace of God is responsible for the highest level of character. It teaches you how to live a high level life. But what religion did is took the grace of God and says it allows you loopholes. It allows you to just, you know, to live a loose life. No, if you're really living under the grace of God, you're living a life of complete dependence upon God, and the more you depend upon God, the more you're going to see his unrestrained operation of love in your life. So really, all of our lives, here is the main subject, and you've heard me teach this subject for like, what, at least two years, depend on God.
Depend on God. Depend on God. Learn how to depend on God. Declare your dependence upon God. Depend on God. Learn how to depend on God. What it looks like to depend on God. That's it. Complete dependence upon God is evidence that that life must be lived by the power of God. Our lives must be lived by the power of God. That's why we got to depend on him. I depend on him because my life has gotta be lived by the power of God. If I don't live my life by the power of God, I won't ever achieve. If that life could be lived in the power of the believer, it would become a life of dependence upon self and not a life of dependence upon God.
If I could successfully live this expected life that God has for me to live, and it doesn't change; it's not like God... the attitude of well, God's lowered his standards because your s are low. No! His standards are high and they will always be high. And he's not lowering them because society changed. "Well you know, times change, so God's lowered his standard", no he hasn't! He hasn't lowered his standards! It's never lowered. It's never been adjusted to society. Or to you or what you think it is now. No, it just requires what it's always required: dependence on him. It's always required dependence on him. Well you know, God loves you. Yeah, God, but see... God loved you while you was a sinner. Don't be talkin' about God love to justify sin. God loves and has always loved, can't do nothin' but love because his nature is love.