#355 - Creflo Dollar | Grace

Okay. Sometimes there's just people in your life that have fed into you for so many years, you feel like they're just family. And I am so grateful, so grateful, because the person that I am bringing on today is pastor of one of the most powerful churches I believe, in this world. He's giving such a beautiful message of living in grace. But what is big for me today is he has just fed into me, unknowingly, of course, been following him, listening to him for years, and has helped me develop a powerful faith walk in my life. And so today we're going to talk about what that looks like for you. What would it look like to be able to live a life that is characterized by the grace of God? So I want to welcome Creflo Dollar here today. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today.

I'm glad to hang out with you today and talk about this grace living.

Oh, it's good, isn't it?

It is freedom. It's liberty. It's. It's. It's getting away with the stuff that you've been carrying all your life, trying to do things on your own and recognizing that you have a savior that's there to help you out.

That is so true. And, And I just believe that people are tuning in and listening today because I think God is calling people here today who maybe have tried in their flesh, they've tried to get things right, and they've lived under this idea that they have to please God and earn, you know, that. That righteousness, whatever that may look like for them. And it's something about knowing the love of God that just changes all of that. Could you share a little bit about what that looks? I know it's huge, but what that looks like, this life characterized by grace where we're not earning anything.

Yeah. You know, one of the things I had to do is I spent years just trying to tie all of. Of what grace means into a definition where we could see it. And, and here's what we've come up with. That grace is unmerited, abounding provision in the unrestricted operation of God's infinite love that we get through Jesus Christ for mankind, especially for those who depend on Him. I know that's big, so I'll break out. It's, It's. It's unmerited favor. We know that it's unmerited. The fact that we're not having to do something to earn it. We don't deserve it. We don't bring anything to the table. I mean, grace is what God does. And so faith is what we do to receive what God does. It is. It is this unmerited. But here's the thing that got me abounding provision. Grace is provision for our life. And it's provision that abounds and it grows. And it, no matter what you go through, it's going to be a grace upon grace because it abounds. And it. I don't want to get too excited too soon, but then it's a valid provision in the operation of the unrestricted, unrestrained love of God. And so what happens? This, this unrestricted love means you're crazy. Can't stop God's love. Your ridiculous. Can't even stop God's love. It's. It's unrestricted because Jesus paid the price for justice on the cross. And in doing that, it allowed God to love us with no restrictions. It's the unrestricted infinite love of God. It comes through Jesus. It's for mankind. And it is, especially for those watch this. Who depends on Him. So on him more than operating in self dependence. You know, I thank God that He knows how to burn off self dependence. And when we depend on God and we learn how to live a life in total dependence upon him and we learn how to declare a declaration of dependence upon God, his grace shows up. I mean, it's. He's there, his love with no restrictions. And a lot of times people say, well, you know, I've just, I've not been good enough. Well, God's not good because you're good. God's good. Cause God's good. That's God's nature.

Yeah.

We continue to try to do things to earn God's goodness, earn God's grace. And then when you take that definition and you sum it up the way he did in John chapter one. Jesus.

Yeah.

Of grace and truth. That's what this is all about. It's. It's living life depending on Jesus who is by himself more than enough. He doesn't need us to bring anything to the table. And we keep trying to bring stuff to the table to make us feel like we deserve. And that's the whole deal. We don't deserve anything if we think we deserve hell, we deserve all this stuff, but we don't. We don't get to bring anything to the table. He has prepared the table. The, the collard greens, the cornbread and the chitlins have been prepared. All you got to do is bring yourself down, sit down and start eating.

Right.

This life of grace is all about.

Oh, and, and you'd have to be a fool to not want that kind of life, that kind of life where it's not dependent upon you. And so many people I see are struggling under this burden of self righteousness. You know, I mean, it's, those are filthy rags. When you think about it, when we have available to us that unmerited, undeserved favor of God and the more we try to validate that love and try to earn that love, I think we get further away from the transformational power of that love. Even, you know, in John, he talks about if we could just have the power to grasp the height, the depth, the breadth, the width of God's love like that and think about what we have to grapple with here, what we have to work on here is not can I perform enough, Can I be good enough? But now just, just from, you know what, what John tells us, our focus becomes, can I conceive of that love? That becomes the goal. Can I really understand, I can't understand it because it's inexhaustible and it's, it's incomprehensible. But could I understand that love is available to me no matter what, because I believe that's the game changer.

When you understand the love, when, when you understand this. I don't know if I can come up with a vocabulary word to describe it.

There isn't one.

Yeah, when you come, when you can understand this love, then you'll be, you'll be a lot more patient with people. You'll make room for other people's faults. You won't be so quick to condemn somebody to hell in your own, your own self righteousness. You will be so open to realize that this is a journey that we're on. We get born again. We make Jesus the Lord of our life and we begin our journey and his love begins to, to work on our desires. He begins to take away the old want to's and he gives you some new want to's. And the Bible says that he will give you the desire and the power to do what pleases him. Now the thing that's so radical, and I mean people get mad at me for saying it, but it's like they're always, we're always coming up with a status of behavior that will qualify us for getting into heaven.

Right? Right.

The only thing you have to do to get to heaven is you gotta accept Jesus. You make Jesus the Lord of your life, and as a result of accepting Jesus and making him the Lord of your life, he begins to work on you. He does the work, he changes the desire, the very life he expects from us. He's accepted the responsibility of doing whatever needs to be done with you so you can present that life to him.

Right?

And so it's, it's. It's this love that, that I think people have just got to get ahold of that God. God can change people. God can make the difference. Yes, we're responsible for life. No, we're not talking about a grace that, you know, somebody says, well, under grace, I could just sin and that crazy. What are you reading? That is not at all the grace of God teaches us to live a righteous, a holy life. I mean, you're talking about character. This is what grace is all about. Grace will teach us. Us who believe us, who've made him the Lord of our life. And he begins to raise us up in this love. And I'm amazed that, you know, in my own life, when I look and see what God has done, I'm thinking, this is, this is. This is real. Yeah, he rearranged that furniture in me. I don't know what happened to, to. To. To that anger. I don't know what happened to that fear. I don't know what happened to the shame, the guilt, the condemnation. I yielded myself to this unrestricted love and trusted in, in this grace and had faith in this grace. And my life's changing and I, I'm. I'm not going to take credit for it. I'm not going to take credit for it. I used to be that stupid. How am I going to take. But God shows up and the grace. Life is a life that is totally dependent upon a God who. Whose love is so deep, so high and so wide, and it keeps me pursuing it. I don't want to get about a shout, but I'm about to shout myself.

I am too. I'm about to stand up and do a little run around the room right here. Because what you are speaking is such liberating truth and freedom. Because, because so many times we struggle through this heavy yoke of religiosity where we believe. If I don't put enough pain on myself, if I don't put enough guilt, shame, condemnation on myself, I might mess up and sin. So let me make it really, really hard for me and let me prove that I, I love God. You know, we focus so much on. Let me show I love God instead of let me understand and receive the love of God. That's the game changer. Because we love him because he first Loved us. If we could go back to the beginning and really understand the love of God. And then we know that he loves me in spite of my sin, like it does. My sin did not affect this love relationship. And the more we apply love to that equation, the more in light of his grace, like you said, it moves around the furniture. We no longer desire that anymore. And it's miraculous when love floods in, because all of that sin is based on fear. And when perfect love comes in, fear is driven out.

Absolutely. And what happened, what that has done, it's caused us to be achievers instead of receivers.

Oh, oh.

We're trying to achieve everything. And, and the thing we're trying to achieve, what Jesus has already achieved, right? He. He is the master achiever. He has achieved our healing. He's achieved our righteousness. He's achieved everything. He wants us to be receivers and stop trying to be achievers. And that's really gonna, that's gonna happen when we, when we come to recognize that we didn't bring anything to the table. I mean, recently I've been doing a series on approval addiction. And in approval addiction, it's kind of like, you know, people pleasing. But in, in approval addiction, what we don't recognize, we, you know, yes, it's okay to crave the approval of your, your parents. It's okay to crave the approval of God. But when you crave the approval, because that is what's going to give you value, you want somebody's approval because it's going to give you self worth. Well, if, if that's how you're dealing with this, then the scariest thing in your life is to be rejected. And somebody's approval controls your life. Somebody's validation controls your life. And, and that's a miserable existence. But when we can begin to, to accept and receive that God has accepted me in his beloved, that God approves of me, Jesus now becomes the measuring stick. Yeah, I might have to shout on that one.

Now you're gonna think, yes, he becomes.

The measuring stick for our righteousness, the measuring stick for our spiritual maturity, for our emotional maturity. He becomes the measuring stick. Not some dude on, on social media who I'm waiting for him to tell me that my hat looks good or, or my shirt looks nice. And if he doesn't, I crumble to pieces because I need his approval for me to be able to validate and have value in myself. And this is something that I had to really confront in my life. I, I realized that I was, I was really needing the approval of other ministers and people in the body of Christ. And in order to preach the gospel of grace, oh, they, oh, I need their validation. And you know what God said? He said, listen, you don't need anybody's approval for you to obey me. You don't need somebody's approval for you to preach the gospel of grace. I have approved of you. That's the wonderful thing about the grace of God and the gospel of grace is we have his approval. We have his validation. He made me righteous, I am holy, I am delivered the gabbits in shame. If you believe in Jesus, he'll remove the shame and the condemnation out of your life. And so, okay, there I go preaching again.

But, but it's, but it's good. It's so good. It's so good because we hold this ideology over our life that we are who we were. And then we become restricted by that mentality because the enemy always wants to remind us of our faults. He wants to remind us of our sin. He wants to call that into remembrance instead of God saying, call me into remembrance of my Word. And it's that transformational power of the word of God that now we become who we are in light of his grace. We're not who we were. That's what I tell people. When you're looking at your life circumstances, you're often looking into the past. And that's okay. It doesn't define. Define you. What defines you is learning who you are in the word of God. When Jesus says, I'm in the Father, the Father's in me. And guess what? You're in me too. That's that place of being just submerged in the grace where we're like, I'm free right now. That's who I was. It's not who I am. And even going into potential, you know, failings, potential problems, the grace of God is enough to withdraw, stand even in that His. Nothing has changed about his love.

It is the, the understanding that my identity versus my behavior and what we've done is we've allowed our behavior to determine who we are instead of allowing our identity, who we are, to govern our behavior. And so what people think is, well, I'm a bad man because I behave badly, right? No, no, no, no. You're the righteousness of God even when you behave badly. And the day you believe you're the righteousness of God, you will behave differently. Yes, but as long as you allow your bad behavior to determine for you your identity, no, no, how you behave is not who you are. And it's who you are. That's going to change how you behave. We'll do a cartwheel on that. You know?

That's right. That's right. Because we're working so hard in the behavior, we spend the majority of our time, our energy, our resources. How can I change my behavior? Instead of. I mean, here's the disciples coming to Jesus one day, all right, what must we do to do these works? Like, we see what you're doing, what must we do? And the crazy thing, Jesus replied to them with your work is to believe. Like, that's the work. If we spend more of our time, our energy, our resources, working on our belief, that inner man, that, that inner person, then everything that comes out of that changes. That's why this, this grace life. I'm so. I'm so excited about the conference you're holding. Because what we must do now, now that we know the love of Jesus and we have the grace of God and, and we step into that role, we step into, okay, I am serving Jesus. He is lord of my life. That's just the first step. We've got to then know, how do I make this belief so solid in me that it starts to change my behavior? Because what we believe will be revealed in our behavior. Stop trying to change the behavior which is so counterintuitive to the way most people think, right? Change the belief and then walk into that behavior.

I had a. A member I was ministering to, and he was very honest. He says, look, I am really addicted to this weed and I need some. Some advice. And I told him something that made him laugh. I wouldn't. I wouldn't be in facetious or anything. I told him, I said, now from this point on, I said, do you believe you're the righteousness of God? He said, yeah, I believe I'm the righteousness of God. I said, okay. Every time you have a thought about smoking, say out loud, I'm the righteousness of God. And I said, you may even go so far as to roll that joint up while you're rolling it, say, I'm the righteousness of God. At this point, you think this is Harris?

I said, yeah, yeah. Most people would. Yeah.

And then I said, you may even get to the point where you light it, say, I'm the righteousness of God. And I said, you may even inhale it, sound the righteousness of God. Do you know? He contacted me weeks later and he said, as you described and explained, he said, that very scenario took place in my life. He said, but when I Put it to my mouth. I said, wait a minute, I'm the righteousness of God. And he had, he said I hadn't touched his scent. He says, I don't have a desire for it. I don't even want it anymore. Well, what happened? The enemy, the, even, the, even the devil, the first thing he attacks in our life is our identity. He wants to show up and, and he wants to get you to question who you are. But the day we recognize that we have been made righteous, it is settled in the blood of Jesus, then our behavior will line up with who we are. And that desire to want to do certain things, it won't exist anymore. But for so long we have judged people by what they do. Just like you were saying.

Yeah.

When the rich young rule, what can, what shall I do to inherit the kingdom of God? Jesus is like, dude, you missed the whole point.

Right? You missed it.

I'm trying to show. And he says, okay, okay, fine. You want to find out what to do? Because you're not going to be successful doing anything by yourself. You're going to need Jesus with whatever you do. So, I mean, what you're saying, it is the truth. I am hungry. I want to spend the rest of my life preaching this gospel of grace because I am not the same. I won't be the same the people I minister to, and they're not the same. And it's amazing how you can get together with a group of grace, faith filled believers who declare I'm not the same. And I'm not quite sure I can explain the intricate details of what's happened to me, but the things I used to do, I don't want to do anymore. And it's because wonderful, supernatural, unrestricted love of Jesus Christ that gets in our lives and then it changes us. Man, I praise God.

It does. It does. And all it takes is one shift and things just multiply as a result of that. You know, as a, as a life coach, so much of the work that I do with my clients is changing the belief. Now here's, here's the thing. Everyone wants to come and say, what do I need to do to stop beating so much, to stop binging, stop watching porn, to stop yelling at, at my kids, to stop this bad habit, whatever it is, smoking weed, drinking, whatever it could be. We never worked on the behavior. Never. And I cannot tell you the miraculous and quick transformation that takes place when you just do what Jesus did and work on the belief and being face to face with that love that was made available to us through Jesus. That's the game changer. That's why we can't look into that love and remain the same. You know, you can't look into the mirror of God's word and not see what could be off in your life. And now you're empowered to change like before without that grace. You're not. You're trying to change in the flesh, and you're trying to change with the same brain that created the bad habit, that created the thing that you want to shake off your life can't do it. And the enemy will always draw you back as soon as persecution comes. But here's what this grace life empowers us to do is now I'm changing out of the power that Dunamis power, that power that's available in me because he abides in me. And it, I, I'm not going to go so far as to say it's easy.

It really is.

It is.

It really is. I mean, the hardest thing that people deal with is, you know, actually it's, it's, it's religious tradition. The fact that we spent so much time living under the law and we didn't understand the difference or what happened as a result of living under grace. The scripture is clear. We are no longer under the law of Moses, but we're under the grace of, of Jesus Christ. I mean, so what does that mean? I mean, we celebrate Easter and we celebrate Jesus's death and burial, resurrection from the cross, but what does that mean? What happened with all of that? And the Bible talks about this New Testament in his blood. We grab hold of certain things that are based on doing under the law. It's about what you do. Yeah, the grace of God. It's about what he has done, you know, under the law. It's, it's, I work for God. I work for God. I work for God. But here's the awesome thing. Under grace, it's about how God works for you and how God works for you and how God works for you. And that's hard to fathom with some people because they're like, well, wait a minute. Because all of my life I was told this. But that's why the scripture talks about us rightly dividing the word of truth. And we've got to, we've got to pay attention to the text in the middle of the context or we'll be left with, like, some say we'll be left with the con. I'm just, just trusting God, that we're learning how to rightly divide the word. We're learning the difference between God, who was judge under the law, but he's Father under the grace of God. And we're, we're looking at, you know, what happened under the law in this situation. It was the Sabbath, was a day under the law, but under the, the grace of God. It's Jesus, He's a person. And God doesn't want us to just live in shadows for the sake of living in the shadows. We don't have to live in shadows.

Why no.

The light has come. We can live in the light of Jesus Christ. And it's.

It'S good.

This is how you turn me on. This is how you get me right here talking this.

That's right. But this is the victorious life is to know that he is working on our. He doesn't even need us to be conscious. Like he will bless his beloved in sleep. Like he is not dependent. I love that idea like God. I, I am so grateful. I don't even need to be awake to receive this. Right.

It's so good fix this, you know, because he loves you and that's how he does. It's not hard. You're right. This is, it is easy with. I. I'm thinking about a scripture where I think it's in the amplified. He says are you tired? Are you burn out? And he talks about, come to me and I'll teach you the rhythms of his grace.

Yes.

Grace by grace by grace. And it's, it's, it's worth talking about. I, I am coming to the conclusion. I have been doing a series on grace. It's a two year series and I've got about six more topics to cover. But it's what it means to live by grace. It's, it's not the age of grace that's going to end when Jesus comes back. This grace is coming all the way into eternity. This is because we're talking about Jesus. We're talking about Jesus. This grace is not a subject matter only. It's not a curriculum. It is a person. Jesus Christ. And he is enough. He is enough. He's more than enough. And it's not Jesus plus how many days I can fast. It's. It's thank God for fasting, but it's not. And I, I got something I can say about fasting, you know, under the Testament, you know, but it's not Jesus plus, you know, I got to pray for five hours a day. It's, it's no, no, no, no. Jesus is enough all by himself. He has taken care of it all, I accept him, I receive him, I trust him, I need him. And he, his grace outdoes every crazy I have ever done. Is better than all my craze. And you're no grace does. His grace moves my crazy and it replaces it. It replaces it with something so much better and so much bigger than my crazy. So.

Oh, that's beautiful. We don't need anything to add to it. And, and the fasting, like what if, what if that is our attempt to be good enough and to. And to earn it again, it's not nothing against it, but if it's done, like I've got to, I've got to get this, I've got to achieve this. It still becomes a work of the flesh under the guise of a fruit of the spirit.

Well, now that you bought it up, you remember that story where the disciples tried to cast this demon out of this boy and he wouldn't come out? And Jesus came to him and like, dude, what's going on here? I mean, you guys have done this before. What's happening? And he said, we tried to cast them out, but we could not. And Jesus said, he said, he said, you didn't do it because of your unbelief. And Jesus within the subject of unbelief, he said, yeah, you couldn't cast them out because of your unbelief. He says, but this kind cometh not out except by prayer and fasting. Most people thought he was talking about this kind of demon except through prayer and fasting, but he's talking about this kind of unbelief come out without praying, fasting. So what he is saying is now if you're dealing with unbelief and you have a problem believing me and believing, and all of a sudden you're just back into your tradition, he said, I recommend you go on a fast and you pray and you fast. Get rid of this unbelief. Now, it doesn't take me, no, no six weeks to get rid of. I guarantee you, you, you take my breakfast away and I'm. I believe in Jesus. Amen. So even fasting and prayer as a work of the flesh, and then we do it because we're motivated by fear to do it. Listen, good work should be born out of love. Good works should not be born out of fear. Fear should never become the motivation. In fact, the works are not accepted unless they're born out of the love of God. You know, I think there's a perspective to understanding that the good works won't get you anywhere they're not going to do anything grace has already made happen.

But.

But when you are doing it out of love and appreciation and you're dependent on God, yes, they're acceptable. So we got to be careful about doing things for God, being motivated out of the wrong motivation and then wondering why it wasn't accepted. Because you're doing it for the wrong reasons. And you're doing it thinking that my works will. Will replace what Jesus has already done. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This grace is sufficient. It's sufficient. I came and, and I'm. Be quiet. I'm not. I came out of three years of a job experience. Three years ago I had Covid where I had blood clots around my, my lungs and I trusted God and I got delivered from that. Then after that, immediately after that, I had shingles to hit my body. That damaged nerves in my body that even after the shingles disappeared, the nerve damage and pain was still there. And then after that, I had cancer and discovered that there were three tumors in my body that was eating all of my nutrition that I would eat. And I gotta tell you, today I am cancer free, shingles free, blood clot free. The whole time, the only thing I remembered was this. His grace is sufficient for me. His grace is more than enough. And I needed to know that. I needed to know that this grace could be enough for some horrific times and attack. And I believe those three years helped me to understand that no matter what it is, his grace is sufficient for me. Now I know that when I'm weak, that's when I'm strong. And I kept preaching. I didn't take no time off except, you know, to, to keep folks from getting Covid when I first had it or, or to go to the doctor that nobody knew I had. I wouldn't tell them I had nothing.

They just.

I was losing weight and I'd wear my coats and they would swallow me up sometimes. I ain't telling nothing but Jesus through his grace. I'm telling you what I know. That's why I can never go back to living under the law. Jesus through his grace has allowed me to be alive today. And now that he's given me life, I'm gonna live it. Some people have. They don't have to live it. And I'm just grateful and thankful to God for his grace being sufficient for me.

Man, you are blessing me so much right now and you're blessing so many people. I can't let you leave without telling us about the grace Life Conference. Because you talk about living it. Here's how you do it. You've got to get this word in. You've got to know how to do it. Tell us about the conference.

July 13th through the 15th.

There you go.

Thursday, July 13th, through Saturday, July 15th. And it'll. It's a homecoming. I'm inviting all of our churches, all of our offices around the world, every person that's been transformed by the. By the gospel of grace to come to College, Georgia. And we are going to have an amazing time. We got some of the. In my opinion, some of the greatest preachers and teachers on grace come in. We've got J.J. harrison, who's an amazing praise and worship leader who understands this gospel of grace. Todd river, all these people have been impacted by the gospel of grace. We're going to have private sessions for women and men as they break out. And then I'm going to have a minister's session in the afternoon so we can talk about rightly dividing this word and see if we can get some more preachers to begin to preach this gospel of grace. That it's a whole lot more than what they thought. July 13th through the 15th. We call it the homecoming man. And you ain't no telling what you're gonna bump into. You might pull up bands playing on both sides of the street. We might have our stuff flying in there. It's just a celebration. And then we might have. Since you're coming to the south, ain't no telling. You probably smell some barbecue rib somewhere across the street.

It sounds like some homecomings I've been to.

You have a great time.

Well, that is wonderful. I can't wait. And thank you so much, so much for just sharing some time with us and inspiring us with this grace message. God bless you. Thank you so much.

God bless you. Thank you so much.