Just a few days ago I began Part 1 of this series on Activating God's Promises For Protection: Keeping You and Your Family Safe in Increasingly Dark Times. If you have not already done so, I strongly encourage you to go back and read this first post as it lays a foundation for what I want to share with you today.
As I was thinking about this most recent mass shooting in Orlando, my mind began rewinding back to April 20, 1999 when the whole country sat in front of their TV screens, utterly stunned and shocked by the events unfolding in Columbine, Colorado. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two high school students, murdered 13 people and injured dozens more before turning their guns on themselves. Looking back over the past 25 years, there is a clear upward trend of these instances of violence. They are continually escalating in number, frequency and brazenness. For decades, terrorism was something we were only remotely familiar with; something that only happened someplace else. We were far removed from their direct impact; we felt distant, safe and secure in the USA. After all, aren't we a world super power with a mighty army?
It's evident that the Unites States of the 90's is not the same Untied States we live in today. Today we live in a world where violent attacks can seemingly happen anywhere (elementary schools, high schools, malls, movie theaters, nightclubs, churches) and at any moment. While many of our aggressors are foreign terrorists, it is now becoming apparent that this intense level of hate can be manifested through those you might least suspect. While we would hope for our government to be a united front, combating the enemy and leading our nation to victory over our oppressors, we have never been more divided. Yes, our nation has seen its share of turmoil, even a Civil War, but no longer is there just a division of North and South, Republican and Democrat. These long-standing political parties are imploding from within as "We the People" no longer agree on the very basic premises of right and wrong. We are a divided country and as we have long heard, "United we stand, but divided we fall."
I'm not taking time to articulate this grim picture in an effort to bring fear, but rather for us to take heed and realize, we can NO LONGER depend on our government, our armed forces or our society for safety and security. We are living in a day and age where we must depend WHOLLY on Jesus for everything. This is not a call to alarm, but a moment in which we as the Body of Christ can begin to look on the days ahead with confidence and expectancy. Why confidence and expectancy? Because Romans 5:20 tells us, "But where sin increased, God's remarkable, gracious, gift of grace has surpassed it and increased it all the more."
God has brought us to a secure place and He is calling us to step out in assurance, boldness and confidence in Him, in His goodness and in His ability. And the only way we can have this level of blessed assurance in Him, is to know Him. I'm not just talking about believing with your heart and confessing with your mouth that He is Lord, salvation is certainly the first step, but there's so much more. I'm talking about a real, living and breathing relationship with Him. One in which you begin to know the character and nature of who God really is.
If I moved to a new neighborhood and briefly met the family next door, I can see them and know and confess, "Hey, that's my neighbor." It's just a simple fact that our homes happen to be in close proximity to one another. Now, if this family comes over and says, "I know we just met, but we're going to take your little daughter Holiday over to our house for a few hours, we'll send her home later." Do you think for one moment I'm going to allow her to go with this neighbor who I just met and know nothing of? Of course not! For all intents and purposes, they are essentially strangers to me and to her. It's not that I automatically assume that these are bad people who intend to harm my child, in fact that may have seemed completely normal and lovely in the very brief, few minutes I did speak with them. However, the fact remains, I only spoke with them for a short time and I have no substantial personal experience with them. In order for me to feel confident sending my young child to their home, unaccompanied, I would have to have known them over a period of time with first-hand personal experience that gives me full confidence they are good, capable and trust-worthy people.
Friends, I appeal to you that the same is true of the Father. You can't possibly know the Lord aside from spending time with Him, through first-hand, personal experience. It's only when we truly know Him, understand His true nature and begin to grasp the depths of His boundless love for us, that we can begin to have the confidence to take Him at His Word.
For centuries, religion (even religion disguised as Christianity) has taught wrongly of the character and nature of the Father. For many people, when they think of God, they think of a judgmental perfectionist whose standards they could never attain to. Their idea of who God is, is largely distorted by stories and images of the Old Testament without an in-depth understanding of how Jesus fully met the demands of God's justice and holiness for us, paying the price to ransom and redeem all of humanity.
Let's look again at this verse from Romans 5 that I just quoted above, "But where sin increased, God's remarkable, gracious, gift of grace has surpassed it and increased it all the more." This verse is saying that, where we see a lot of sin, that there's even MORE grace! Some translations say, "But where sin increased, grace super abounded!"
The original Greek word being used for "abounded" is huperperisseuó. Huper = Beyond. It is where we derive our English word, "Hyper." Perisseuo = Abundantly exceeding; beyond what already exceeds; ultra; (super) abounds.
So according to the Word of God, even though we are living in a dark world where sin is ever increasing, we can have full expectancy that grace is overflowing and increasing even more abundantly and excessively than sin.
So what is grace exactly? The Greek word used here in this verse is, "Charis." Charis can be defined as undeserved, unearned, unmerited favor. The language here paints a picture of God freely extending, leaning towards His people, to give Himself away, to bless them.
What does this have to do with our promises of protection in the Bible? Well...everything. Every blessing, every promise we see in the Word belongs to the Believer, not because of our own good works, but SOLELY because of Jesus' good works. For grace to be grace, it has to be undeserved, unearned and unmerited. Jesus led a perfect, holy, sinless life here on the earth. He carried out the Father's plan for redemption to the uttermost—freely laying down His life in the most horrific way. As He hung on the cross, He endured separation from the Father as all sin, for all time, for all humanity, was laid upon Him. That sin was all judged at Calvary, in the body of Jesus- that judgement brought forth every type of sickness and disease (the effects of sin) to the point where Jesus was no longer recognizable as a human being (Isaiah 52:14). Through the power that only God's Son could exert, He hung onto His own life and didn't give it up until He had fully completed His earthly mission. He cried, "FINISHED," and breathed His last breath when He was ready. Then, He rose again, victorious over sin and the grave.
But that's not all He did. At the cross, He made a divine exchange. He took His perfect record, His flawless report card, His very own righteousness (right-standing before the Father) and made it freely available to anyone who will call upon His Name and receive His payment for sin as their own. He requires no good deeds from you, there's nothing you can do to earn His salvation. In fact Ephesians 2 tells us that while we were still dead in our sins, Christ died for us. He loved you with an everlasting love while you were still a sinner. Before you had an opportunity to do any good thing, 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that, "God made Him who knew no sin to be made sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus." (If you're looking for more understanding of what Christ accomplished for us, I cover this topic in much more detail with this post, The One Man.)
Throughout most of the Old Testament, up until the time of the crucifixion, the world was living under old covenants or agreements with God. Those covenants were based on agreements between God and mankind. If mankind obeyed God's commands, they were blessed, if not, they were cursed. The beauty of the Gospel is that when Jesus laid down His life for us, He took our place in a new covenant and made that covenant between God and Himself, no longer dependent on mankind. Our only part is to believe that Jesus made the payment for our sin, and to receive that payment as our own. When we do this, we are now seen as being IN Christ (Ephesians 2:6)—we are part of His body. Every bad and corrupt thing that exists on the earth today is a result of the sin that first entered the earth when Adam first sinned in the Garden of Eden. Jesus took every curse upon Himself at the cross so the curse might be reversed over God's people here on the earth. When we lay hold of the promises and blessings in Scripture, we are bringing God delight, reminding Him of the perfect sacrifice of His Beloved Son. As we partake of these unearned, undeserved, unmerited blessings, we are declaring that the curse of sin has been completely reversed for the people of God. We esteem Jesus the most, bring Him the most glory, when our lives reflect the victory He sacrificed so dearly for.
My prayer for each of you is that these promises of protection in the Bible will come alive to you, that your eyes will be enlightened to see everything Jesus secured for you at the cross. I pray each of you will begin to comprehend why these promises belong to you and why it honors Jesus' sacrifice when you lay hold of those promises. Today I talked a lot about the role of God the Father and His Beloved Son, Jesus. In the third and final part of this blog series, we'll take a look at the role of the Holy Spirit and the tremendous gift we've been given for protection on earth through Him. If today's post left you wanting to understand more of the true nature of God, one of my favorite ministers, Andrew Wommack, has tons of free teachings and resources available on his website as well as a book, True Nature of God. I also cannot recommend enough my Pastor, Joseph Prince's book, Destined to Reign.