Joyce Meyer - Grace for Difficult Situations

Tonight I want to talk to you about "Grace for difficult situations." You know, sometimes we hear a message like about grace, how God wants to help us and all we need to do is receive it.

But if we're not careful, we can discount ourselves and think, "Well, you just don't understand my situation. This may work for everybody else, but it doesn't work for my situation. You don't know what all I've done" or "You don't know what all has happened to me."

Grace is God's undeserved favor. It's God doing something for people who don't deserve it at all. And if you were here last night, you know we started with a scripture out of Romans chapter 5, verse 6 that says that "While we were still yet in sin, God sent his Son to die for the ungodly."

If He did that for us while we were still sinners and didn't even care about him at all, how much more now that we have received Christ will we be daily delivered from sin's dominion.

So if Jesus did that for us before we even cared, what all is he willing to do for a bunch of people like you who obviously care enough to come out and spend a very important evening of the week sitting here hearing the Word of God and worshiping God?

If God would send his Son to die for you before you even cared about Him, what would He be willing to do for you now? But we do without a lot because we're not bold enough to press in and ask for the very best that God has for us.

You can never ask God for too much. I said, you can never ask God for too much. You don't have to be careful about asking for too much. Undeserved favor. We all love it when somebody does us a favor. It's beautiful, undeserved favor. But there's another part of the definition of grace that was quite life-changing for me. I had heard the part about undeserved favor. I knew that it was God doing something for me I didn't deserve.

I'd been a christian for a number of years, but I was a struggling christian. I was a frustrated christian, and I'm sure tonight that even though there are many of you here, you really love God. You care about Him. You have no intentions of ever walking away from God. You still are very frustrated. There's a lot of struggle in your life, a lot of confusion.

Perhaps you don't have the joy that you know that you should have. And truth be told, you don't even really enjoy a great deal of God's peace. And I have a lot of concern for believers who have no victory.

I believe that God has called me largely to build up the Body of Christ, to edify the Body of Christ that they might become whole, healthy, strong individuals and be a witness in a dark world.

I say this often now, and I really believe this. We can and all should preach and not necessarily have to ever open our mouths. Preach at all times and if necessary, use words.

Everybody thinks that they're--you know, "I can't witness. I can't talk to people about Christ." Well, there are people that are bolder verbally than others, and we should all be willing to open our mouth when God gives us a great opportunity.

But honestly, I believe that every person can preach and make people so hungry for what they have just by living the life that Jesus died for us to live. But we are not gonna impress the lost with a sad, sour face and a negative attitude and a sad story to tell all the time.

I don't care how many Jesus bumper stickers we have on our car or how many pieces of christian jewelry we hang on us, we are not gonna impress people if we don't have... We need the power of the Holy Ghost in our life. People need to see that we can be stable no matter what is taking place.

The world today is so volatile. I mean, it's just up and down, and people get mad just like that. I mean, we've got every kind of anger and rage out there that you can possibly have, but we do not have to be like that no matter what the conditions are in our life as long as we know how to stay plugged in to our power source. Now, if we're lights, we've all got enough sense to know that the lamp is not gonna have any light coming from it if it's not plugged in.

How many times do we try to get power out of something and then realize it's unplugged? Well, we need to stay plugged in. We need to lean into Jesus. We need more than a weekly trip to church and a little 10 or 15-minute sermonette that's not gonna get you through the difficult weeks that we have to deal with now.

We need to feed on the presence of God, and we need to feed on the Word of God. And instead of just singing, "Jesus, you're the center of it all," He needs to be the center of it all. Amen?

Being a believer in Jesus Christ is not about just claiming some certain brand of religion and going to church every week. I'm all for going to church every week, but we just have to get it through our head that there's more to it than "I go to church." Jesus is the center of our lives, and we need to stay plugged in. There's power available to us.

But I want you to understand that grace is undeserved favor, but if you study the word in the vine's Greek dictionary, it says that grace is undeserved favor and it is force, it's power.

So, God's undeserved favor, His grace, gives us salvation, gives us a relationship with God, but it also then gives us the power to live that life out and walk it out in such a way that not only can we enjoy our journey, and I mean have a wonderful life, but we can be a witness everywhere that we go.

Ow let me ask you, what would happen in our world if every person who claims to be a christian actually got out there and acted like one? It would be just pretty, really, amazing.

Well, you know, when I found out that this grace was power for me to live my daily life, my, my, my, it was a life-changing thing for me. Grace was extremely important to the apostles. Many of the letters to the churches begin with "Grace and peace be multiplied to you in Jesus' name".

And then I was noticing today that Paul closes many of his letters with "May the grace of God fill your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting" or "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all." So Paul didn't say hi and bye. Hey. We don't even bother saying hello anymore. It's just, eh, yo.

We've degenerated from where Paul was where he said, I mean, if he saw you he'd say, "Grace and peace be multiplied unto you in Jesus' Name," and that meant something to them. That was just like saying, "The power of God be unto you. God's undeserved favor be on you." And then to say, "Grace and peace be multiplied to you," you see, you can't have peace without grace.

There's no way we can have peace without grace. That's why he links the two together in so many of his letters. How can I have peace in my life if I don't have undeserved favor and power in my life? So honestly and truly, when we sing about amazing grace, we have to understand that it's not just a song. Grace is jaw-dropping amazing. I mean, it is absolutely astoundingly amazing.

God not only saves us, but He gives us everything that we need, everything. Let me tell ya something. God never calls you to do something and doesn't give you what you need to do it. God never puts you in a place without giving you what you need to be there. Amen?

"Well, I just can't do this." Well, yeah, if it's what you're supposed to be doing then you can do it, but it's gonna be very hard for you if you don't believe that you can do it.

Now grace is available to all. Every single person that has ever lived on the planet has the same opportunity to have a victorious life. Every single person has an opportunity to have their sins forgiven and have a great relationship with God and the promise of eternal life.

Every person, no matter what your situation is, there's grace available to you for your situation. And I felt very strongly that I was to press this point tonight that if you think you are a special case, God will give you a special grace. There is special grace for the special cases in the house tonight.

And you see, I thought for a long time I was a special case because I had been abused by my father, but I found out that God had enough grace to help me overcome my special case and to set my feet on a rock and lift my head up and make something beautiful out of what started out to be a bunch of ashes.

No matter how bad you've been treated, no matter how you got started in life, you can have a great finish by the grace of God. But it's not gonna happen for you if you don't believe it because grace is a free gift, now listen, that can only be received through faith. God's not gonna push it on you. He's not gonna make you receive it. You receive it by faith.