Grace Orientation in Testing
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 615 aired on June 11, 2017
Good morning and welcome to the FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes, please stay with me. Our show is always about motivation, inspiration, education,
always done with no manipulation. No games, no gimmicks, no appeals for money, no soliciting
membership, we’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re just offering accurate information that
my prayer is will help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life and if you can do this,
well then you have the freedom and the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you,
it’s your life. You control your own destiny. You control your own decisions. I learned a long
time ago and you know this too, we can’t change anyone but ourselves and so when we get to a
point in our lives where we’re willing to make a change, then we’ll do something about it. As far
as God goes, there’s always a time when you need to orient and adjust to His plan. You cannot
continue to walk down the My Way Highway doing things your way if you are a believer in
Jesus Christ because it is a dead end street, it is a cul-de-sac. You will go on a frantic search for
happiness and you’ll never find it.
So one of the ways that God guides us, one of the ways that
God leads us, one of the ways that God teaches us is through undeserved suffering,
suffering that believers often go through designed to orient us to grace.
Paul put it this way
in 1 Corinthians 10:13. He said,
“There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to
man, but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able, but
will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it.”
Now this is
not the word temptation as we know temptation. This is not God tempting you to sin. The word
is
peirasmos
in the Greek New Testament and it means a test. If we translated it correctly, it
would say in the original languages,
“There has no testing overtaken you but such is common to
man.”
God tests us. God puts us through the fire designed to refine us, designed to bring us in
line with His will. When Paul wrote to Timothy the young pastor he said,
“You my son, be strong
in the grace that is in Jesus Christ.”
In this verse,
“Be strong in the grace that is in Jesus
Christ,”
is a present active imperative verb and I tell you this because in the Greek New
Testament these things are very important. The present tense is a durative which means there
never is a time when he’s not to be strong in the grace of God and the active voice tells us the
subject produces the action of the verb so he’s not the recipient of it, he’s the producer of it. And
the imperative mood is what we call the verbal command. This is a command of God. When it
says,
“Be strong,”
it is the word
endunamoo,
and the word for power is
dunamis.
We get an
English word from this dynamite and so this verse simply says,
“We can receive power by means
of the grace of God.”
“We can be enabled by means of the grace of God”
(1 Corinthians
10:13).
So the strength that you and I need to face any testing, any adversity whether it’s fair or
unfair, the strength that we need is us orienting to God’s enabling grace assets. God has given us
grace assets and these assets are available to us 24/7. As a reminder, the supreme court of heaven
is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So any complaints, any problems, any difficulties, you can
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always go straight to the Father because you are a believer priest and you have that privilege to
do this. So if we’re talking about the strength we need to face adversity and unfair testing, these
tests are always designed to strengthen us and this is found in orienting to God’s enabling grace. I
want to read to you what Paul said about this in 2 Corinthians 12. Here is something that’s very
insightful, it’s encouraging, listen,
“And lest I should be exalted above measure through the
abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to
buffet me lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I sought the Lord three times that
it might depart from me and He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee because My strength
is made perfect in your weakness.’ Most gladly therefore I would rather glory in my infirmities,
so that the power of Christ may rest on me. Therefore I take pleasure in my infirmities, in my
reproaches, in necessities, in persecution, in distress, for Christ’s sake. For when I’m weak, then
I’m strong.”
Now when he said,
“The measure that was given to him,”
when he said,
“This thing
happened to him because of the measure that was given to him,”
God allowed a severe test to be
administered to Paul so that he wouldn’t get arrogant about his experiences. Here’s what it says
beginning in 2 Corinthians 12:7,
“And lest I should be exalted above measure through the
abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh.”
Paul talked about how
he had died and gone to heaven, how he had seen the Father, and how the Lord had told him not
to tell anybody what he saw and then had given him this [thorn in his flesh] to keep him humble
in his life so that he wouldn’t get arrogant about it. 2 Corinthians 12:1-6, you can read this for
yourself. Paul wanted the thorn to be removed. He wanted the suffering to go away. Was he
suffering for sin? No. Was he suffering for anything he did wrong? No. Why was he suffering?
To keep him oriented to grace so that he would keep his eyes on grace. Did God answer his
prayer the first time he prayed and asked Him to take it away? No. Did God answer his prayer
the second time he prayed and asked Him to take away this thorn in his flesh? No. What about
the third time? Well God said what I read to you.
“He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee’
My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
That’s almost an enigma, the weaker we are, the
stronger we are. Let me give you some principles. For the maturing believer and hopefully that’s
you, hopefully it’s me, that’s the believer that understands the mechanics to the Spirit filled life
by the use of rebound, that’s problem-solving device number one in the FLOT line of his soul.
That’s the believer who understands that he is to
“Grow in the grace and the knowledge of his
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,”
he’s the maturing believer, he takes in the Word of God on a daily
basis. He’s not a member of the nod to God crowd. He’s not your traditional Christian that just
shows up one day a week, puts on the suit, goes to church, puts some money in the offering
plate, goes home, and promptly forgets everything that he heard. That’s ritual without reality. If
you are going to church and it’s ritual without reality, it is meaningless. It means nothing to you.
It must not be ritual. Your Christian life is based on a relationship founded through faith alone in
Christ alone and it’s not a religious ritual that you go through to impress God. So if you are a
maturing believer, then you are actually at your strongest point when you are the weakest in life.
Did you hear this? When you are weak, you’re really strong. Listen, this is what Paul said,
“Most
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gladly would I rather glory in my testing
[in my infirmities]
so that the power of Christ may rest
on me and God said, ‘My grace is sufficient for you because my strength is made perfect in your
weakness.’”
At this point of weakness because of testing you will either turn to God for
support or you will turn away from God in anger or bitterness.
Whenever unfair
circumstances happen in your life like were happening to Paul, this thorn in the flesh from Satan
whatever it was, there are a lot of different people that guess what it could have been but it was
something 24/7. It was something that nagged at him constantly, it would never go away. It was
some sort of suffering that he had. If you had that would you gripe? Would you complain? Would
you be bitter at God? Would you be angry at God because He didn’t answer your prayer and He
didn’t take that away from you? If He doesn’t take it away, there’s always a reason.
Remember,
suffering is designed to either get you to rebound from your unconfessed sin or it’s designed
to bless you, to help you to grow, to refine you, to purge out parts of you that don’t need to
be there. So at your weakest point, you can be your strongest when you use your grace
assets.
Even though Paul asked God three times to remove the test, every time he would ask Him
God would say, “No, no, no,” and God said,
“My grace is sufficient for you.”
Paul’s reply is,
“My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly I accept these sufferings so that the
power of Christ may rest on me.”
Now here’s the question, what is the power of Christ? Did you
hear, what is the power of Christ? That’s what Paul is saying, “I accept this so that the power of
Christ may rest on me,” wow. Well, what do you think the power of Christ is? Let me give you
the answer. It begins with a mandate to grow in grace.
“Keep on growing in the sphere of
grace,”
2 Peter 3:18 says.
“Keep on growing in the sphere of grace and in the sphere of
knowledge about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Glory to Him both now and glory to Him in
the day of eternity. Amen.”
The strength of Jesus Christ was the grace of God.
The strength of
Jesus Christ was the grace of God. When you utilize the same grace assets He utilized, this
is grace orientation,
a problem-solving device. Problem-solving device number four on the
FLOT line of your soul, grace orientation.
In 1 Peter 4:12, again,
“Beloved think it not strange
concerning the fiery trials which try you as though something strange happened to you, but
rejoice inasmuch as you are partakers of the suffering of Jesus Christ so that when His glory
will be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy.”
If you are going through unfair
testing you can do one or two things. You can react to the unfair test by getting bitter and by
getting angry and that’s a failure to have any humility in your life. That’s your own arrogance,
it’s called self-pity, it’s having a little pity party. It is you looking at your own problems, at your
own self and demanding to know why God won’t take it away. If you get into self-pity, that’s
nothing more than an arrogant reaction to what you deem is unfair. First of all, we must go
through unfair testing so that we can mature. Even as a child, were you not disciplined for
something that you did not do? Were you not called on the carpet for something that your brother
did or your sister did? Were you not disciplined in school for something someone else did and
how did you handle this? Did you get angry? Did you stomp off and slam the door and say, “I
didn’t do that,” and “This is not fair?” See, this is the arrogant attitude that a lot of believers get
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when they go through this testing. This is not the attitude you’re suppose to have. The attitude
you’re suppose to have is the attitude of humility because the Bible says,
“God makes war
against the arrogant, but in fact He gives grace to the humble.”
The attitude of humility is how
you handle unfair testing and so that’s why Peter says,
“Don’t think it strange these trials that try
you, as though some strange thing happened to you.”
Listen, it’s happening to all believers. All
believers are going through these things and yet if you center on yourself, if you think you’re the
only one that’s having this, then you’re dead wrong. I’ve been through it, you’ve been through it,
we can compare notes. We could talk about the times we suffered and see who suffered the most
and we will suffer more in the future. There’s no doubt about it, but suffering for Christ’s sake
relates to us taking a stand for Jesus Christ, for living in the devil’s world, and being persecuted
because we are believers and there’s a lot of this going on in America today.
So the only way
that you and I can pass any sort of suffering test is to use the power of Jesus Christ, the
same power He did, which is grace orientation.
Was it fair that Christ went to the cross? No.
Did He do anything wrong? No. Was He guilty of a crime? No. Did He ever sin? No, but He
went to the cross. He was scourged, beaten, mocked, crucified, died, buried, and resurrected and
yet He never complained. He simply said,
“Father forgive them. They do not know what they’re
doing.”
You didn’t find any bitterness in Jesus Christ in His unfair testing. You didn’t find Him
reacting and getting angry about the Father’s desire for Him to go to the cross for the sins of the
world. You could just see the Lord Jesus Christ say, “Are You telling Me I’ve got to die for the
sins of Rick Hughes? That jerk, that louse, that idiot, I’m not going to die for him,” and yet He
did. He died for me, the jerk, the louse, the idiot. He died for you too. He took our place. He paid
our penalty and He did it willingly. So grace, the grace assets that Christ utilized, what He
thought was grace. Grace is the means of conveying the power of God to the life of the ordinary
believer like you and me. We’re told in 1 Peter 5:5,
“Clothe ourselves with humility toward one
another because God makes war against arrogant believers, but He
[listen now, here it is]
He
gives grace to the humble.”
Grace is a system of support. Grace is a system of sustaining you.
Grace is a power option in your life when you learn it, use it, when you understand it. The grace
of God is amazing and so the Bible goes on to say,
“Humble yourself under the mighty hand of
God, so He could promote you at the proper time.”
What’s the proper time? After you’re tested,
after you’ve gone through this.
In 1 Corinthians 15:10,
“But by the grace of God
[Paul wrote]
I
am what I am and His grace toward me did not prove to be in vain but I labored even more than
all of them, and yet not I, but the grace of God was with me.”
And then in Ephesians 1:6,
“To the
praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the beloved One.”
Grace, the
Greek word is C.H.A.R.I.S.,
charis,
grace, unmerited favor, freedom.
Grace is unmerited favor.
It’s a divine provision for all of mankind before salvation, during your time on this earth,
and even after your time on this earth.
There are three categories of grace that we can identify
from the Bible. The first one, and I remember my pastor teaching me these things years ago, was
pre-salvation grace, and this included all that God is free to do for the spiritually dead person.
This is called common grace. Common grace is all God has done for every member of the human
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race, not just a few. All, because the Bible says,
“God is not willing that any should perish but
all should come to the knowledge of Christ.”
So the common grace that God gives to us is the
divine call and then there’s efficacious grace. That’s another type of grace, efficacious grace is
saving grace. Common grace is God gives you the opportunity to hear the gospel, to hear the
truth. Efficacious grace is God takes the truth you heard and responded to and He saves you, He
puts you into His royal family. Salvation grace which includes all that God accomplished to save
a spiritually dead person like you or me, that’s the saving work of Christ on the cross. That’s the
judgment of God on the Son. That’s the revelation of the message by God the Holy Spirit and
actually there are many, many, many things God does for us at salvation. We have a list of about
40 things that my pastor compiled many years ago that God provides at the moment of salvation
and we can provide that for you if you’d like to know it, write to us, we’ll send you the book. So
pre-salvation grace, this is all God is free to do for you before you ever get saved.
Then we have
post-salvation grace and this includes the divine provisions of God so you can fulfill His
plan and His will.
You can live out His purpose for your life and it includes, this is the amazing
thing about it, it includes everything you need. Every asset you need, everything that you need
apart from any human merit, on the part of any Christian, God provides it all. He provides the
strength by means of the Holy Spirit. He provides direction by means of His Word and by a good
well-qualified pastor who teaches it to you. He provides protection,
“Greater is He that is in you
than he that is in the world.”
He provides promotion, He promotes us in due time the Bible says,
in due time and so it’s amazing. You don’t have to rely on your own ability. You don’t have to rely
on your own assets. You don’t have to guess what God wants you to do or doesn’t want you to do
and you don’t have to worry about being able to handle the difficulties. Everything you need is
already provided for you. It’s all there. It’s all common and efficacious grace turned into post-
salvation grace which is living grace. It’s the grace that Paul utilized when he suffered in 2
Corinthians 12.
When God said,
“My grace is sufficient,”
this grace was the power of Jesus
Christ, grace orientation.
When Jesus Christ said to the Father,
“Not My will but Thy will be
done,”
that’s grace orientation. You know Jesus Christ is God and as God He’s also man. He’s
undiminished deity and true humanity in one body forever, the God-man. We call this in
theological terms, hypostatic union, the God-man. While He was here as a man, He never
utilized His deity to sustain His humanity. That’s called in theological terms, the doctrine of
kenosis. Never once did He utilize His own deity to sustain His humanity. You might remember
the song, “He could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set Him free, but He died
alone for you and me.” As God He fed 5,000, as God He raised the dead, as God He healed the
crippled and the blind and the lame. He did many, many things as God, but never as a man did
He rely on His deity. Do you know what He relied on? God’s grace, He utilized the same grace
assets you have. He had the enduement or the filling of the Holy Spirit, you have this. He had
His Father’s Word as promises and provisions in the power and you have this. Everything that He
needed to live His life as a man was the predecessor to the Christian life for us. We are
Christians, we are Christ-like, we are living using the same assets He used while He was on this
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earth as a man. What He used, we use. These assets are ours and that’s grace orientation. He used
the grace of God and it’s an amazing thing. Grace is what God does for the believer totally apart
from any merit on the part of any Christian, it’s amazing. In our post-salvation grace He keeps on
giving greater grace and the Bible tells us,
“He makes war against the arrogant,”
as I told you,
but greater grace means greater than the pre-salvation grace. Pre-salvation grace or common
grace was one thing, but this is greater. It’s the greatest grace of all. Post-salvation grace includes
more grace than anything else in life.
In John 1:16 we read,
“From His fullness we have all
received even grace in exchange for grace.”
In other words, we’ve exchanged salvation grace
for post-salvation grace.
If we are saved by grace, then we should live by grace.
“The law was
given through Moses and grace and truth came through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So in 1 Peter
4:12,
“Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trials which try you is something
strange that happened to you, but rejoice in as much as you are partakers of Christ’s suffering so
that when His glory will be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy.”
So don’t think
it’s strange that you’re suffering. Don’t think it’s strange that you’re enduring adversity. Don’t
think it’s strange that you’re going through some sort of unfair testing. Utilize your grace assets,
the supreme court of heaven is open 24 hours a day. Paul told you this is for your growth. We
saw that in the beginning of this passage. We saw in the beginning of this passage where we
studied this and how grace causes you to grow in Christ. Psalm 119:71,
“It is good that I’ve been
afflicted in order that I may learn Your statutes,”
t
hat’s what it’s about. And so post-salvation
grace, under the policy of grace, all believers are mandated to live the grace oriented life. 1 Peter
5:12,
“I’ve written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God.
Stand fast in it.”
We are to stand fast in the grace orientation of God. We are not to be confused
by legalism, we are not to be impressed by our own works.
We are to stand fast in grace,
“Not
come short of the grace of God,”
as Hebrews 12:15 says.
“Not to receive the grace of God in
vain,”
as 2 Corinthians 6:1 says,
“Not to nullify the grace of God,”
such as Galatians 2:21. You
live in a unique time, a unique dispensation called the Church Age and you have the greatest
grace assets the world has ever known. You are unique, don’t forget this. Nothing can bog you
down. Nothing can harm you. Nothing can slow you down.
Use grace orientation and thank
God for the testing.
I’m your host Rick Hughes, I hope you come back next week, same time,
same place