Joseph Prince - God's Way to Multiplying Grace in Life (01/26/2026)
God's favor (grace) is already on your life as unmerited, undeserved blessing, but it can be increased or frustrated. Favor multiplies through deeper experiential knowledge of Jesus, not more performance or works. Rest in Christ, avoid anxiety-driven doing, and seek favor first in family relationships—spouse, children, home—where true eternal impact flows from grace, not striving.
Defining God's Favor – Grace as Undeserved Favor
I'm here to tell you, church, that God has favor in your life, but that favor can be increased. It can be enhanced. God can… In fact, there are things that we do that frustrate the favor of God.
So first and foremost, let's define the favor of God. Are you ready? Alright. Now, I use the word favor of God because grace… The word grace has been so so religionised that sometimes it's good for us just to step back, alright, and look at the word favor because they are both the same.
Grace is undeserved favor. Amen? In fact, if you read the Amplified Bible, it says unmerited favor in many places. So grace is favor. They are the same word. Grace is God's favor. Amen?
The Power and Protection of God's Favor
When God put favor in your life, your enemies cannot overcome it. Your critics cannot overturn it. Amen? Your competitors cannot push you out of the game. Amen?
When God puts favor on you, people are drawn to you, people respond to you. People want to do business with you. Even they feel like your product or whatever is not as, you know, as economical or more expensive than somebody else. They want to do business with you.
They feel like you are honest. There's an integrity. But honesty, again, doesn't bring favor. Alright? Honesty does help you open doors because when people know you're honest, they don't do business with you.
But again, the favor element is something that there are honest people who don't have favor. But they are honest people. So what you want is the favor of God increased in your life.
And the Bible says that we can increase favor in our life. Whether you're a businessman or you're a homemaker and homemakers have some of the greatest, shall we say, assignments that God has given them of anyone, of any career,
don't think for one moment homemaker means they do nothing. In fact, what they do is sometimes more significant and more eternal in its consequence than what we do as business people or as a, you know, as an agent or whatever.
Let me just tell you this, okay? Mothers deal with lives, precious lives, molding them not just for time but for eternity. At a time when they really need the mother. Amen.
Now this is not to make mothers who work feel guilty. Alright? But it is to tell you that the first area of favor that we need, more than any other area, is in our families.
Prioritizing Favor in Family Relationships
We need favor with our spouse. Have you ever asked God for favor with your spouse? Or is always favor with a client? favor with your company colleagues, with your fellow students, with your friends or whatever?
How about favor with your family? favor with your. favor with your teenagers. Have you asked God for that? Have you asked God for an increased favor in those areas? Amen?
Sometimes I see families, for no rhyme or reason, you know, you find that there's like a wedge being driven between the teenage daughter and her mum. And it seems like whatever she says, the daughter is just frustrated, doesn't like it at all.
And they are trying to find the reason why, maybe it's communication style, maybe it's this, maybe that. I can tell you this, what that relationship needs is favor. Increased favor.
But what is very remarkable is that people don't realise sometimes that they are frustrating the favor of God in their lives. Paul says, I do not frustrate the grace of God.
If you ask an average Christian, what frustrates, what voids, what nullifies the favor of God in your life, they will say sin. Alright? It's a very natural answer in the church world.
But actually, that's not the answer. We are all against sin. In fact, the Bible says, where sin increase, favor super abounds. Grace super abounds. So that cannot be the answer, right?
Can I submit to you, sometimes it's because we are trying to do too much. When you are performing and you are performing with anxiety especially, our children resist that. They can sense that you are worried over them and they don't like it.
But all this is not on the surface. They do not know why they are angry or they are frustrated and you don't know what you are doing that's wrong, that's frustrating them.
But actually, it's a favor situation. favor is being frustrated. And we need to get back to that place of favor. Can I have a good amen, people? How favor can be increased. Amen? Praise the Lord.
How Grace and Favor Are Multiplied
I want to tell you something else. How grace can be increased. The number one way. Number one way. 2 Peter 1, verse 2. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Now, grace is undeserved, unmerited favor. It is multiplied not by doing more.
A lot of people think, if I do more for God, you know, when people get saved and all that, and they say, I want to do more for God, I want to do more for God. No.
First of all, sit. God wants you to sit. God wants you to rest. It's natural tendency to want to do more. The way you increase grace. In fact, when you do more, you frustrate the grace of God. You have the opposite result.
Learn to rest more. It's not according to nature. It's according to heaven. It's according to God. We got to learn God's ways. Amen?
So, grace, unmerited favor can be multiplied in your life. And peace can be multiplied. How? In the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
Now, in the Greek grammatical structure, Kenneth Wuss, who wrote the expanded translation of the New Testament, he's a Greek scholar, and he says that this word here, grace and peace be multiplied in the knowledge.
So, in other words, the more revelation we have of Jesus, the more grace and the more peace will be multiplied in our lives. Right?
Now, Kenneth Wuss says that this word here, the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, is actually one word referring to Jesus. He's our God and our Lord.
In his own translation, this is how he puts it, of this verse. By the, grace and peace is multiplied by the experiential knowledge which the believer has of God, comma, even Jesus our Lord.
It is not the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord, like God the Father and God the Son. Actually, the more you know God the Son, the more you know Jesus, you will know God the Father.
For he that has seen me, Jesus said, has seen the Father. So, it's actually Jesus increasing in the knowledge of Jesus.
The Road to Emmaus: Revelation That Lifts Depression
Do you remember when Jesus Rose from the dead? The same day he Rose from the dead, there were two disciples walking home to Emmaus, the city called, a village called Emmaus.
It is a seven-mile journey from Jerusalem. And they were depressed. They were downcast. They were sad. Right? As they walked.
And then Jesus approached them. And the Bible says Jesus asked them, why are you sad? And why are you looking sad and discussing with one another? What is this?
And they said, are you a stranger? You don't know what's happening? What's been happening these past few days and all that? And they started telling him what happened and all that.
And the Bible says that Jesus restrained their eyes from seeing who He was. For many years that bothered me. And I am bothered by things that other people are not bothered. I asked questions of God about the Bible that no one asked.
Then later on I found out that the answers that God gave me become sermons that bless many people. Okay? So one of the questions I asked, why do you restrain their eyes?
Isn't it wonderful for them to see you in your resurrected form? But then, you know what Jesus did? He opened up the Scriptures in the first five books of Moses to them. Things in them concerning Himself.
He must have brought them to the tree of life in Genesis. The tree of life is me. It touched on the Passover lamb. That's me. Amen? So He didn't say me. He said, it's the Messiah. It's the Messiah.
They didn't know it was Him. That's how He brought them out of depression. And that's how you can be brought out of discouragement, despair, and depression. By occupation with Christ.
Not occupation with self. Or telling one another, you know, all the bad news. Jesus. Another problem they had was this. Jesus was a side issue, a means to an end.
Some of us, we use Jesus for salvation and then we forget Him. Or we use Jesus to prosper our career, or whatever. Or we use Jesus for our family relationship.
No, He's not the main issue. Our family is. Our career is. Our ministry is. But how do I know that they have Jesus on the side, and they were concerned about the nation of Israel.
They were jealous for the nation of Israel. They were very patriotic. They said that, we thought, they told Jesus without knowing it was Him. We thought that it was He who should redeem Israel.
So Israel is the center piece of their hearts. And Jesus, by expounding from the five books of Moses, the things concerning Himself, brought them back to perspective Himself.
And whenever you hear preaching or teaching that brings you back to the person of Jesus, everything in your life will be blessed. Everything in your life will start to prosper.
Because grace and peace is increased. Not by doing more, but seeing more. Have you ever had the time when your heart was like, you were excited about seeing more and more of Jesus?
You went to church wanting to see more of Jesus. You got hold of Pastor Prince's earth. I mentioned myself, okay? As a conflict of interest, I understand. But I know what I'm preaching, so I recommend myself.
I don't mind recommending myself. It's okay, okay? Because I know what I preach. All right? So you look forward to listen, to see more of Jesus. Not Pastor Prince, Jesus.
But where are those days? Where are those... Where is that longing? You find yourself getting cold? Remember this. Something else has become centerpiece.
Maybe your child. Maybe your spouse. Maybe your career. Maybe something else. Maybe some challenge that's come into your life. And Jesus is still there, but He's a side issue. He's a means to an end.
And you wonder, life becomes hard when there's no grace.
The Amplified Promise: Grace and Perfect Well-Being
And I love the Amplified Translation because at least the Amplified Translators are not afraid of. Evangelicals who will say, well, you're the prosperity bunch, you know?
Number one, there's no such thing as a prosperity gospel. There's only gospel of grace. But it produces prosperity. You don't like the word prosperity? Okay, it produces abundance.
Wherever the gospel has gone, it brought abundance. It brought a new level of life. It brought civilization, if you want to call it that way. Those are the results, not the gospel, but the results of the gospel. Not the gospel itself. Okay?
I love the Amplified. Amplified, this verse says, may grace God's favor, you see? And peace, which is perfect well-being. Does that include your body? Peace!
How many think that you can have more perfect well-being? How many want more well-being in your life? Okay, God, Mark the hands long.
How many want well-being in your life? You don't want, He won't give it to you, you know? Oh, Father Supreme, we've got such thing one. God will give it to us anyway.
No, no. Remember the guy who was 38 years old, who was lame and his feet impertinent at the pool of Bethesda? Jesus had to ask him, do you want to be well?
Are you sure you want to be well? Because there are people who don't want to be well. They want people to come and pet them. They want people to, to like, you know, focus on them.
Some of them, when they are sick, they get welfare in some nations of the world, right? They don't want to be well.
So Jesus asked him, do you want to be well? I want to ask you, do you want more well-being in your life?
Well, it tells you how. May grace, God's favor and peace, which is Shalom in Hebrew, Irene in Greek. If your name is Irene, it means peace in Greek, which is perfect well-being, all necessary good, all spiritual prosperity, freedom from fears, agitating passions and moral conflicts be multiplied to you in the full, personal, precise, correct, which is revelatory knowledge of Jesus, who is our God and Lord. Amen? Amen?
So it should be our passion to see more of Jesus. And I'll tell you, friends, you will never fathom the depths of the wonderful Jesus.
Let me just say this. It doesn't mean when you focus on Jesus, your marriage suffers, your career suffers, that kind of thing. You know, friend, this is not the truth.
The truth is that when you're occupied with Jesus, your marriage prospers, your career starts to flourish by accident, if I can say it that way. It's a byproduct.
When you focus on it, it doesn't prosper. There's no grace, there's no oil, there's no smoothness. But when you focus on Jesus, it flows.
Mary did that. And Jesus says that one thing is necessary. Do we really believe that?
God's Constant Presence vs. Sense of Presence
I want to close with this, okay? Let me just say this as much as I, as clearly as I can. God will never leave you. Okay? He paid the price for you to have His constant presence.
He was forsaken for us that we might never be forsaken. We have God's constant presence. Even when we fail, God doesn't leave us, okay?
But in the dynamics of relationship, there are times God never leaves us, but He withholds the sense of His presence. He withholds the sense.
How many of you felt like, sometimes, you know, I used to sense His presence. I used to sense that He's close. He loves me. But I find that it's been quite cold.
I know He never leaves me, but I miss those times. You ever had that? That's how God draws you.
And the way He loves us is the way we love our wives. That's how our wives respond to us. And there's a story in, there's a beautiful account of this in the Song of Songs.
God taught so much about one particular song. He calls it the Song of Songs. And He put it right smack dab in the middle of the Bible, the heart of the Bible.
It's called the Song of Songs because it deals with the greatest theme of all. Not about eschatology, not about other doctrines, but the love of Christ for the church.
It's about the love of Jesus for us. And in it, there's a story in chapter 5 where the woman actually was asleep in bed.
And in the Middle Eastern culture, all right, this bridal love, the man would come and there's a door, an opening in the door that he would invite her to open the door.
His hand comes through and he says, open to me, my beloved. Open to me, my beloved, okay? My perfect one. My head is covered with dew. My Lord, it drops in the night, all right?
But she's all cleansed. She's washed. Her feet are all washed already. She feels very fresh. She put on her cosmetic and all that. Everything is in place.
She's going to dirty her feet, all right? In the Middle Eastern culture, like a lot of dust around. She said, I'm not going to get up.
Look at her response. Her response, I've taken off my robe. How can I put it on again? I've washed my feet. How can I defile them?
So she didn't respond to His love, okay? Then He put His hand by the latch of the door, okay? When He put His hand through the door, her heart yearned.
Now sometime, of course, took place. He put His hand in. This is a picture of where probably she saw the nail pierced hand.
The way He rekindles our love is to remind us of what happened at the cross, how He loves us so. Right? Now her heart is rekindled. The love is rekindled.
She opened the door, all right? Next verse. She arose to open the door. My hands dripped with more and all that. She opened, but my beloved had turned away and was gone.
My heart leaped up when He spoke. I sought Him.
Rekindling Love by Speaking of Jesus' Beauty
Now, I'm going to, because of time, I'm going to just tell you the story. Look up here. There are times He withholds His, the sense of His presence.
He never withholds His presence. He's with us all the time. But sometimes He leaves us, like He leaves us a sense of it, you know, take away the sense so that we long for Him.
Have you heard that? I'm telling you that. if you have Jesus as your focus, do it for Him, not for your husband. Do it for Him. Dress well. Look good.
Make the guy think, all right, that you have someone, but don't ever have someone. Don't respond like this. I'm angry. I'll cut off everything. That's bitterness. And they'll make you ugly. Amen?
So learn from the Song of Songs how that woman started looking for Him in the street. He disappeared. He started, she started longing for Him. All right?
And then she found some women, and the women asked, who are you looking for? I'm looking for my beloved. Why is your beloved more special than anybody else?
You'll come out at night like this. And then she says that, she started talking about, my beloved is like this. Okay, drop down.
My beloved is white and ruddy, chief among 10,000. He said like the finest gold. I've preached on this before in a midweek service. The beauty of our Lord Jesus.
He is radiant, glorious, right? His eyes like eyes of doves. Now, she started describing Him to the women.
When she described Him, He appeared. Isn't it beautiful? When you've lost that sense of love, start sharing about His beauty with somebody else.
And guess what? That sense of His presence will return. She didn't speak directly to Him. She spoke about Him to somebody, He appeared.
In the Song of Songs, when the Lord talks about the beauty of the bride, all of us, He talks to us directly. But when the bride talks about the beauty of the groom, it's indirectly.
When she talks about Him, He appears. When we talk about the Lord, we sing about the Lord, we sense His presence again. Amen?
We have to love our wives as we love our husbands. Children is the same. Sometimes, your teenagers, and I'll close with the part of teenagers, teenagers especially, they don't like. their parents to do too much for them.
And do you realize that when they were smaller, they enjoy you doing things for them? They ask you to do things for them. As they grow older, they sense a frustration, like, I call it frustrating in the favor of God when you do too much.
You almost have to wait to be invited to advise them, even counsel them. If you advise. too, you know, you advise them too readily, they might not like it.
So, it takes everything against us, against nature, to learn to rest and say, Lord, you got this handled. I trust you, Lord.
Now, when it opens the door, when they ask you, when you share this favor. Because sometimes, you are doing too much, not because you care for them.
Say, I care for them, I care for them. That is superficial. When you go deeper, it's because you worry. It's because we are anxious.
It's because we are not at rest, and they can sense it. And when you're not at rest, that means what? You are performing. And guess what? You are frustrating the favor of God with your children.
So, sometimes you got to step back to let the favor flow in your relationship with your children. I know I am speaking very generally and all that. I wish I can break it down to give you the, how it all works.
Because this needs a series by itself. But I am here to tell you, the favor of God. Ask God for favor. Increase favor with your spouse and with your children.
Even your small children. Amen? They are not too small to sense favor on you. In fact, the younger they are, it seems like they can sense favor very readily.
So friends, don't ask for increased favor because like Joseph with Potiphar, Joseph with Pharaoh, or Esther in front of the king and all that, you know, don't just ask favor for promotion, but ask favor with your family members.
That's where it starts. Amen?