Jesus is infinitely interested in your total well being. He is interested in your family, career, fulfillment in life, marriage, ministry, and boy, does the list go on! When it comes to your desires, hopes and dreams, there is no detail that is too minuscule, minute or insignificant for Jesus. Trust me, if it matters to you, it matters to Him! Even if you went to Him in prayer to remove that small pimple on your nose, He is not going to look at you and reply mockingly, “Hey buddy, don’t you know that I’ve got a whole universe to
run? Come to Me when you have a bigger prayer request.” No way! A thousand times no!

Jesus will never ridicule or deride your concerns as petty. He is never dismissive or condescending. He is not like some of your so-called “friends,” who may delight in poking fun at your shortcomings. If it bothers you, it bothers Him. Jesus is someone whom you can be completely real with. You can hang out with Him and be yourself, with no pretense and no play-acting. Jesus is ever-loving toward you and you can talk to Him about anything. He enjoys conversing with you about your dreams, aspirations and hopes.

He wants to heal you of things in your past that you may be struggling with. He is interested in your present challenges. He wants to weep with you when you are down and rejoice with you in all
your victories.

Thattallgirl:
Jesus is infinitely interested in your total well being. He is interested in your family, career, fulfillment in life, marriage, ministry, and boy, does the list go on! When it comes to your desires, hopes and dreams, there is no detail that is too minuscule, minute or insignificant for Jesus. Trust me, if it matters to you, it matters to Him! Even if you went to Him in prayer to remove that small pimple on your nose, He is not going to look at you and reply mockingly, “Hey buddy, don’t you know that I’ve got a whole universe to
run? Come to Me when you have a bigger prayer request.” No way! A thousand times no!

Jesus will never ridicule or deride your concerns as petty. He is never dismissive or condescending. He is not like some of your so-called “friends,” who may delight in poking fun at your shortcomings. If it bothers you, it bothers Him. Jesus is someone whom you can be completely real with. You can hang out with Him and be yourself, with no pretense and no play-acting. Jesus is ever-loving toward you and you can talk to Him about anything. He enjoys conversing with you about your dreams, aspirations and hopes.

He wants to heal you of things in your past that you may be struggling with. He is interested in your present challenges. He wants to weep with you when you are down and rejoice with you in all
your victories.

Please can you assist with the title of the book. I'll like to read this particular one.

Let’s turn away from ourselves and look at Jesus. He could sternly force a pack of scheming Pharisees to back off in one instance, challenging them by saying, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” John 8:7

In the very next moment, this same Jesus could look straight into the eyes of a broken woman caught in adultery, and with compassion resonating deeply in His voice, ask her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you? Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” John 8:11

The church has it backward. The church says go and sin no more, then we won't condemn you. But Jesus gave her the gift of no condemnation, which empowered her to sin no more!
This is our God!

oluplus:


Please can you assist with the title of the book. I'll like to read this particular one.

Unmerited Favor by Joseph Prince

Jesus is 100 percent Man and at the same time 100 percent God. As Man, He understands and identifies with all that you have gone through, are going through and will ever go through in this life. He knows, for example, what it means to be fatigued after a long day.

But as a loving God, all His power, authority and resources are on your side. Do you know that you are important to Jesus? Know with full assurance in your heart that Jesus knows you perfectly, and yet accepts and loves you perfectly.

When you begin to understand that, you will realize that it is truly that unmerited favor, that favor from Jesus that you know you do not deserve, did not merit and cannot earn for yourself, that will perfect every imperfection and weakness in your life. If you are facing challenges, such as lack in any area, addictions, fears, sicknesses or broken relationships, Jesus’ unmerited favor will protect, deliver, prosper, bring restoration to and provide for you.

His unmerited favor will transform you into wholeness, and it is the goodness of God, not your striving and self-efforts, that will lead you to live victoriously for His glory.

Now, you have a choice to make—to live your life based entirely on your own efforts, or based entirely on the unmerited favor of Jesus. There are only two ways—either you are depending on “deserved favor” through your self-efforts, or you are blessed by grace, which is unmerited favor, through the cross and the obedience of Jesus Christ! The first is the world’s way. The second is God’s way.

Thattallgirl:
Unmerited Favor by Joseph Prince

Thank you

“Now Pastor Prince, shouldn’t there be a part for man to perform and another part for God to fulfill? Shouldn’t man do his best and let God do the rest?”

I am so glad that you asked this question!

You see, when people say that man has a part to play, what they end up doing is to come up with a list of requirements that man needs to fulfill to qualify for God’s blessings. They say things like, “In order for God to answer your prayers, you have to do this and do that, and not do this and not do that.” And all the while, this list of do’s and don’ts to qualify one for God’s blessings keeps growing.

That’s how the law of Moses works. Under the old covenant, God’s blessings were contingent on man’s fulfillment of a list of requirements. But we are no longer under the old covenant of the law.

God Himself said, “For if that first covenant [the covenant of law] had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second [the covenant of grace].” Hebrews 8:7

The Christian life today is not based on what you are doing or not doing. The reality is that the Christian life is not a religion at all. It is about having a relationship based completely on receiving WHAT GOD HIMSELF HAS DONE ON THE CROSS! When you receive completely what Jesus has done for you, your “doing” will flow effortlessly.

Hear what the great apostle of grace, Paul, had to say about this: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace [unmerited favor] of God which was with me.” 1 Corinthians 15:10

So my friend, in answer to your question, I would say don’t worry about what “man’s part” is. Focus, like Paul, entirely on Jesus’ part—His grace and His unmerited favor upon your life and you will end up being energized by the Lord to pray more, read the Bible more and serve both God and your community more, simply because the unmerited favor of God is not in vain in your life. You will also realize that even the outworking of all that you do is not of yourself, but it is by His grace overflowing in you.

Some people think that grace will compromise God’s holiness. Absolutely not! The standards that grace sets are much higher than the standards of the law of Moses. When you are under grace, you will effortlessly fulfill and even
superexceed the expectations of the law of Moses!

May grace (God’s favor) and peace (which is perfect well-being, all necessary good, all spiritual prosperity, and freedom from fears and
agitating passions and moral conflicts) be
multiplied to you in [the full, personal, precise,
and correct] knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. —2 Peter 1:2, Amp

It really is that simple. The unmerited favor of God will flow like a mighty torrential river into every parched area of your life, be it your physical body, marriage, career or finances, when you see Jesus! The more you increase in the knowledge of our loving Savior Jesus Christ and His finished work at the cross, the more God’s unmerited favor will be multiplied in your life.

And it is His unmerited favor that will cause you to enjoy success beyond your natural intelligence, qualifications and ability!

Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. And Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him down there. The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. —Genesis 39:1–2

From Genesis 39:2, it is clear that success is not what you have, but rather who you have! Joseph literally had nothing materially, but at the same time, he had everything because the Lord was with him. The material things that you have accumulated or are feverishly trying to amass do not make you a success. It is the presence of the Lord in your life that makes you a success!

We need to learn to stop pursuing things and to start pursuing Him. God sees your relationship with Him as the only thing that you need for every success in your life. I can’t imagine starting in a worse place than Joseph. He was completely naked. He had nothing! No bank accounts, no educational qualifications, no natural connections with people of influence, nothing.

Thank God the Bible records a picture of Joseph who began with nothing, so that you and I can have hope today. If you think that like Joseph, you have nothing, well, you can start believing in the power of the presence of the Lord in your life. Start looking to Jesus and claim that promise in that scripture for yourself!

Let me show you how you can personalize this promise in your life. Insert your name here into God’s promise for you: “The Lord is with _______________, and I am a successful person.”

Now, read this aloud to yourself. Read it out loud a hundred times if you have to, and begin to see this as your reality. Stick this promise on your mirror, and every morning when you brush your teeth, remind yourself that today, as you go to work, as you go to school, as you start the day caring for your children at home (or do whatever it is that you need to do), the Lord is with you. And because He is with you, YOU ARE ALREADY A SUCCESS! When you have Jesus in your life, you are no longer trying to be a success; you ARE a success!

You know, all our struggling, willpower, discipline and self-effort cannot do what the presence of the Lord can do in an instant. And who is to say that as we are talking about Jesus now, His presence will not take away something that is destructive in your life? You see, you are transformed not by struggling. You are transformed by beholding Jesus and believing that He loves you and wants to save you.

The Jewish mind understands that when the Lord is with you, you become successful in every endeavor in your life. Don’t just take my word for it. Look through the chronicles of Jewish history. The Bible records that whenever the Lord was with them in battle, the children of Israel were never defeated, and every military campaign ended in overwhelming success.

In fact, in the battle for Jericho, the city was theirs with just a shout! (Joshua 6:20) Why? The Lord was with them. Even in battles when they were outnumbered, they triumphed because the Lord was with them.

It is no different in the modern context. When the Bible says that Jesus is with you, He is with you to help you, assist you, turn things around for you and make good things happen for you. He is not with you, as some wrongly believe, to condemn, judge or find fault! When Almighty God is with you, good things will happen in you, around you and through you. I have seen that time and time again!

I learned the truth of what it means to have the Lord with me early on in my teens. One of the first truths that the Holy Spirit taught me was Genesis 39:2—“The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man...” So you know what? I began to claim that verse every day and I would say out loud, “Jesus is with me, so everything I do will succeed.” I was practicing the presence of Jesus. It is one thing to give mental assent that Jesus is with you, but it is another thing to start being conscious of Jesus’ presence. You can start practicing His presence by speaking it out.

Do you know that the best time to thank Jesus for His presence is when you don’t “feel” His presence? When it comes to the presence of Jesus, don’t go by your feelings. Feelings can be deceptive. Go by His promise that He is Immanuel.

You see, my friend, you can’t go by your feelings. You go by the truth and the truth is this: God promised, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5 So the best time to practice His presence is precisely when you feel like Jesus is 100,000 miles away. Remember that feelings aren’t based on truth. God’s Word is truth!

You see, it is not us; it is Him. If Jesus is with us, He will give us success in all that we do and cause us to have good results in every area of our lives to the glory of God. If God can do it for Joseph, a young man sold into slavery, He can do it for you! Let this be your reality: “The Lord is with _______________, and I am a successful person.”

As you become conscious of how Jesus is with you, you’ll see Him leading you to success in all that you need to do!

By now, I hope you can see that God’s definition of success is contrary to the world’s. The world looks at what you have, while God sees who you have. The world’s system is based on what you have done, while God looks at what Jesus has done on the cross for you. It sounds simple, but don’t dismiss it just because it’s simple. The gospel is simple, and it takes theologians to complicate it!

You can make a choice to live your life depending on yourself to merit, earn, accomplish, fight for and accumulate wealth and success according to the world’s definition, or you can make a decision today to live your life depending wholly and completely on Jesus, His merit and His accomplishment on the cross for your every success.

It essentially comes down to the question of dependence. Who are you depending on today--yourself or Jesus? Do you want to fight for yourself, or do you want Almighty God, the Creator of the heavens and earth, to fight for you?

You see, when you depend on yourself, you carry all the stress, burdens and anxieties that your circumstances may present you. But if your dependence is on Jesus for every success in your life, the Bible records a beautiful promise for you: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7

When Jesus is your source of success, there is no stress and God’s peace will garrison your heart and mind. The word “peace” in Hebrew is shalom. Its meaning includes peace, prosperity, health, completeness, soundness and safety. What a powerful fortress we have in Jesus!

“How can the Lord make a young slave with not a single cent or possession to his name succeed?”

Well, let’s continue with Joseph’s story. Genesis 39:3 tells us, “And his master [Potiphar] saw that the Lord was with him [Joseph] and that the Lord made all he did to prosper in his hand.” This is a powerful statement and it offers a promise that you can believe Jesus for, in every area of your life.

Can you imagine every project, assignment and even errand that you undertake becoming prosperous? Your hands become hands of blessing. You touch your family members and they are blessed. Your company may be struggling to manage a difficult project, but once it is placed in your hands, the project becomes blessed. You become a blessing waiting to happen to someone, waiting to happen to something, everywhere you go!

Now, how will this happen? The Lord Jesus will make it happen when you depend on Him in the same way that Joseph depended on Him. Joseph had nothing. He could not trust in his skills or experience (he had never been a slave), nor could he trust in his natural connections (his father was out of the picture because he believed that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal). All Joseph had was the Lord’s presence, and he depended on the Lord to manifest His presence, His power and His glory through him!

That’s what you and I need— manifestation of His presence in everything that we do! You see, it is one thing to have His presence (all Christians have His presence because they have accepted Him as their personal Lord and Savior), but when His presence is made manifest in your life, that’s when His glory shines forth through you!

Don’t forget that Joseph’s master, Potiphar, was not a believer in God. He was an Egyptian who worshipped idols. Yet, when the manifested presence of the Lord shone gloriously through the work of Joseph’s hands, even this unbelieving heathen could see the tangible results of the Lord’s special anointing, power and blessing upon Joseph’s life. Potiphar marveled and could not but acknowledge that the Lord was with Joseph, and that “the Lord made all he did to prosper in his hand.”

This could not have been “spiritual discernment” on Potiphar’s part—he was not a believer and had no spiritual discernment when it came to the things of God. So this tells me that Potiphar must have witnessed tangible results that were really out of this world. He must have seen results that were so spectacular that he knew they were beyond that of an ordinary human being!

Perhaps Potiphar ordered Joseph to dig new wells for his household and every well that Joseph dug yielded water even in the midst of a drought. Perhaps the field that Joseph tended yielded crops that were shockingly bigger than the crops in the surrounding fields. Perhaps Potiphar saw how Joseph called upon his God when the children in the house were suffering from some epidemic in the land, and they were all healed.

Beloved, stop looking at your outward circumstances or the position you are in. Whether your employer is a believer or not, Jesus can make ALL that you do prosper when you depend on His unmerited favor in your career! And believe me, when that begins to happen, your employer will sit up and notice that there is something special about you. You will stand out in a crowd!

Remember that the same Lord who was with Joseph is with you today. His name is Jesus and because Jesus is with you, you can expect good success in everything that you do!

My friend, that’s the unmerited favor of God in action. In the natural, you may be unqualified and inexperienced, but remember that all your disqualifications exist in the realm of the natural. You, beloved, live and operate in the supernatural realm! The Lord Jesus is with you 100 percent. You are a successful person in the Lord’s eyes and as you depend on Him, He will cause everything that your hands touch to prosper.

I trust that by now, you have no doubt in your heart that Jesus is infinitely interested in your success. However, you may be wondering, “If that’s the case, why isn’t every Christian I know experiencing the Jesus-kind of success in their lives?”

In more than two decades of ministry, I have learned this from the Lord: Without Him, we cannot. Without us, He will not. What this simply means is that we need to recognize the fact that if we do not depend on Jesus, there can be no real, long-lasting and abiding success—without Him, we cannot. The Bible tells us that unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain. Psalms 127:1 Believers who want to experience His success need to recognize this truth and begin to depend on Jesus and Jesus alone.

There are some believers who may not articulate it, but in their hearts, they believe that without Jesus, they can still succeed. By believing and acting on this, they fall from the high place of God’s grace (His unmerited favor) back into the law, back into trying to merit and deserve success by their own efforts. God’s Word tells us, “For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace [unmerited favor].” Galatians 5:4 NLT

These are strong words of warning. Once you start depending on your own merits and efforts to deserve God’s favor, you are back under the system of the law. You are cut off from Christ and have fallen from the place of having His unmerited favor work in your life. Don’t misunderstand me, Jesus is still with you (He will never leave you nor forsake you) Hebrews 13:5 but by depending on your self-efforts, you effectively cut off His unmerited favor in your life.