When we need something that we don’t have, it is time for Grace.  Grace is our Fathers gift to us, to make up the difference between our weaknesses and Christ’s completeness.  We notice every day the difference between having Grace and not having Grace in our lives.  I know when people start getting on my nerves it’s time to go back to the throne of Grace. When I’m getting uptight and stressed I’ve known I’m running on my own resources. Samson went into a deep sleep and Delilah gave Samson the most expensive haircut in history.  When we are in the “presence of Delilah” more than in His presence, the strength will drain out and it will need to be renewed.  The Holy Spirit doesn’t leave us but His influence can drain from our life because we are not drawing from Him.  Paul knew from his own experience that the only way to overcome abounding sin is abounding Grace. “Moreover, the law entered that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more,” Rom 5:20  He also knows that the only way to overcome abounding troubles was also abounding grace.  “And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9  You don’t have to be a strong vessel so long as you have a strong treasure. Paul was seeking to convince the people in Corinth that he was a true apostle. He had a difficult life.  He was persecuted, stoned and shipwrecked; he was hated by both Jews and false Christians.  The Greeks at the time believed that if you went through difficult times God’s favour was not upon you, so Paul corrected their thinking by revelation rather than logic.  I am going through troubles in seeming weakness that in my weakness God’s power might be revealed. (Note: This doesn’t mean that our situations cannot be changed. Many times people sought Jesus and He delivered them or changed their situation. Your current situation is not an indication that God will not change it, however, while it is unchanged His Grace is sufficient for you)The Greek word sufficient was used to describe a man who had unlimited financial resources.  Imagine having a credit card with no limit which somebody else would pay off. That’s the idea of being sufficient so with Grace you can master the moment. You can’t exhaust Gods supply of strength to you; It’s just going to keep on coming.  Often we don’t come to the throne of Grace but we struggle on through the day by ourselves.  So whether we need to overcome sin or troubles, we are designed for Grace to empower us.   The Power of the Spirit of grace was so important to believers that Jesus said wait in Jerusalem till you get it.

Friend, don’t leave home without the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

God is righteous and heaven is for the righteousness; therefore everybody in heaven must be righteous. Under the law people had to be righteous to enter paradise. Under Grace, people still have to be righteous to enter heaven.  There is no change.  In fact Jesus said except your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees you could never enter the kingdom of heaven. The only thing that has changed is how we become righteous; how it is obtained.    We can now be righteous before God by faith.  It is not a lesser righteousness, but a different means to being right before God. Jesus is the righteousness of God and if you have Jesus you have righteousness.   God demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Rom 3:26   God is not indifferent to sin in fact He is holy and must condemn sin. This is the reason Jesus was punished for our unrighteousness. Now our faith in the Savior is accounted for righteousness.  Our faith justifies us – or declares us to be as if we had never sinned.

Friend, it doesn’t mean we are righteous in our self nor is it legal fiction where God says we are righteousness when we are not. But we are actually righteous in Christ or because Christ is within us, we truly are righteous.

Singer Lorde said that you’d never be Royal but she wrong! We were born royal.  A royal priesthood meaning a family of kings and priests under the King of Kings.  This is important because our identity determines how we live. A postman gets up every day pulls on his postie uniform and goes to the post office or gets on his bike every day because he knows he is a postman.  The policeman and the accountant live out their identity too. If you know you are a son you will act like one too. After the resurrection, Jesus said, "Mary don’t cling to me but go to my brethren...".     Brothers are family!   "Tell them I am ascending to your father my father My God your God. Jn20;17 .  Let them know we are in the same family. Through the resurrection, something absolutely astounding happened.  God Almighty increased the size of His family.  He had one Son, Jesus Christ but now his family is Jesus, Peter, Andrew, Mary, Bartholomew and you! We are brothers of Jesus - we are from the same Father.  The same way the Holy Spirit came over Mary and Christ was born in her, the Spirit of God came over us and Christ was “born” in our spirit. Christ is now in us and our hope of glory. Both Jesus and all other sons are born from above.  You are born again of incorruptible seed. (1 Peter 1.23 ) A father sheep has a baby sheep, a human father has a human baby, so if the Father is eternal and his seed is eternal then the new creation born, is eternal.  We are conceived from above and birthed from heaven. We also have the same Spirit that Jesus had.   “The son gave his spirit to all the sons” (Galatians 4.6)

Friend, we are truly children of God both literally and spiritually; so let's act out of our true identity  

Corinthians tells us that we are new creatures. A brand new species and this new creation potential is totally different from all your family before you.   It's not your haircut, clothes or address that changes but you. You will see differently at every level so all of life is new. Your perception of God, others and yourself is changed. How you see yourself is more important than how you see your future. You can be told of a great Promised Land and future but if you don’t see yourself as able to enter in, you won’t be able to enter it. We can’t take the Promised Land with the mindset of a slave. And people don’t get what could be theirs, they only get what they think they deserve or that they are capable of possessing.   The most important vision is not what you see ahead of you but what you see inside yourself. Israel had trouble in their thinking.  "To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.   Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us," Eph 3: 19-20 God is able to do exceeding above what we can think.   The problem is not with God, the problem is with us- where is the limit of what we can think.   Can we think about ourselves differently and what God can do in us?  We may leave a ministry or dream or idea to somebody else because we can’t think that we are capable. To see yourself rightly is more important that seeing your future rightly.  In fact if you see yourself rightly a new future will appear.   There is a small future for the small self that you see yourself as now and a bigger future for the you, you really are.

Friend, there is a "smaller" future for the small self that you might see yourself as now and a bigger future for the you, you really are. 

Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land.   Abraham his 60-year-old wife and travelled south to Egypt. The Faroe noticed her and took her into his house. Jewish legends say that in comparison to Sarai, all other women looked like monkeys. She was even more beautiful than Eve.  As people get older they are attracted to people of similar age, so maybe pharaoh was quite old.  Either way, Sarah was beautiful. However God had said go into the land I will show you he never said to leave even if there was a famine so when Abraham left the land of promise, he was in effect saying that he believed God could not keep  him in the land promise. The walk of faith is all about us learning to give the word of God authority in our lives; more authority than what we see or feel. His disobedience threatened his posterity; the nation that would come from him.  Sarah’s womb from whom the Messiah descendant would come could have been defiled by a gentile king. It was difficult to live in the land of God’s promise but we can be in the will of God and have troubles and testing. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.   And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Jas 1:2-4  The devils temptation is to not trust God to meet your need and to go back to Egypt and there will be consequences.  Abraham picked up Hagar in Egypt, God forgave him but there were still consequences. Abram was not wrong for being concerned about famine and feeding his family, but Abram was wrong in thinking God would not provide for his needs in the place where God called him to live. After all, God called Abram to Canaan, not to Egypt.  Abram, like most of us, found it hard to not let what he saw and heard on the TV and in the paper  affect his faith in God’s word. Yet, God sovereignty acted to save him. He did not even awaken Abram to repentance before he did so. He just moved in and said, "I will put the story right again." It ought to be encouraging to us to see that even this big failure was not too great for God to overcome. The Lord sent Abram back to the land he should never have left and continued the story.

Friends, God is committed to helping us live in his promises. Thank God is not three strike and you’re out.  He is our father he’s trying to help us learn to live by faith.  He knows it’s to our advantage for us to learn to live by faith and He is not put off by our weakness or failure.

So what does brokenness mean? It means we all have needs that are not being met. our needs may be met on the continuum from not at all to very adequately but it will never be perfectly met. New born babes are ultimate takers; they have unmet needs and they scream if they think they are unloved or alone. This is normal but if at 18 they are still screaming for attention something has happened and is important to know what can result. People who don’t have their needs met can be squeezed. They may seek to meet their needs through sex, drugs, money, work, position or performance. All people are needy and we all need water, love, shelter and interaction with people but some people are not having their needs met. Eg. starving people. There’s nothing wrong with being needy; it is normal but God has given us needs that only he can meet.

There are three needs that we all have:1. We need to be loved and accepted without string attached. (Unconditional love) Not love based on our performance as there is no such thing as earned love. If you have a love that you’ve earned it is not love. If your acceptance is based on performance you will just get more tired but if it is based on real love it will bring rest.2. We all have a need for worth. We all need to feel worth something but we can learn to get our value from things rather than God. This is what makes us think about “what will our neighbors think?’ We can only obtain a true sense of worth from God. Sometimes our childhood mirrors were damaged and the people who should have helped us feel valuable didn’t. Don’t look into cracked mirrors to determine your value.

Friend, we are not worthy but we are worth a lot to God. The worth of an object like a painting is determined by the purchaser not it’s intrinsic value. We are worth a lot to God so we were shown grace. Grace is getting what we don’t deserve and mercy is not getting what we do deserve. There are no deserved gifts.

“What becomes of the broken hearted?” Well, we know what become of some of them. They become abusive, and or workaholics. Others are afraid to speak in front of people, become angry men and depressed women. But why are our hearts broken? Start with the assumption that this world is broken and that means that everything in it is damaged.

Everything needs fixing. Every relationship, people’s emotional health, the weather, the earth, (earthquakes and storms) and the economy. Life is broken; even the things that are most precious to us, our marriage partners, are broken people too. Families are broken. Even love has been damaged. When sin entered the heart of man, it fractured the vessel, breaking it forever in this life.

This a fallen world where sin, Satan, corruption and negative forces conspire to make like hard and unfair. Bad things happen to good people and good things to happen to bad people. And even the good people aren’t all good; they are broken too.
The effects are easy to spot. Masses of people tired of life, living a jaded existence, trying to prop up their meaning-less life with meaningless activities. Tired of trying to get along with people, with themselves, with their past and with their secret shame.

Friend, our brokenness goes back to the choice the first Adam made in the garden and our hope of changing and entering a new life, goes back to the choices the last Adam made in the garden as he was about to reconcile us back to Father through the cross. Now recovery from broken heartedness, is receiving a new spirit through faith in Christ and learning to live consistent with who we are in Christ.

The old farmer walked home as the sun slowly set behind him. He was happy the seeds had been sown and with rain about there was nothing more to do but wait.  God too wants us to grow from babies into fully mature sons of God but he knows that we can’t make ourselves grow up.  If a parent said to his child to increase in height it would be impossible. Jesus said “consider the lilies of the field. They don’t toil or spin yet they are beautiful” He also said. “Which of you can by worry can add an inch to your height?’ In other words, you cannot make yourself grow up.  God only can make you grow because a seed, flower or lily of the felid does nothing except receive to grow.  It just stays connected to the ground or to the vine. Similarly, the little baby does not try to grow; it just grows the DNA says grow. And as long as it receives, it will grow.

Friend, Receive the Word and the grace of God and the water of the Spirit and you will grow.

Jesus said to the man with a withered hand “Arise.”  He never said “Arise and I will heal you,” or “Arise and good things will happen to, but “Arise and step into the midst”. The man had to act before he received his healing from Jesus.  He might have thought “I don’t know whether I want to do that; I don’t want to be embarrassed and I’m not even sure that anything might happen. But he first had to repent; to obey the word in spite of his desires and lack of promise from Jesus. Sure, the words of Jesus quickened his faith to believe and act but repentance is where everything starts.  He had to align his thoughts with Jesus thoughts and his miracle started.  His life changed forever. I believe God wants us to align our thinking with the thoughts of God. To align our thinking about, honoring parents; about moral purity and wanting revival in our lives and churches but it must begin with repentance.  If we confess our sin and forsake it, we will prosper!   Forsaking our sin simply means we stop doing it. In other words we prosper because we repented.

Friend, God will prosper everyone who truly repents and heaven explodes in joy.  There are blessings sometimes kept back in heaven that God wants you to have, but they are held back from us because you or I have not repented in a biblical way.