Prioritizing God's Kingdom: The Balance of Grace and Faith

"You know, there's a lot of verses in the Bible that I consider really dear to my heart, that I really like. But I would say this verse that says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, is the one that I would say I have seen, that I've sown in my heart, probably the deepest, one of the deepest place in my heart, and that I have seen. I can testify that it works, and it brings fruit. And I say that to you guys, young people especially, not because it doesn't work for older people. It does, but when you're young, when you're a teenager or you're a young adult, and there's so many questions where it's like, what job am I going to take? What career I'm going to get into? What profession? What college degree I should take on? And so on, and so on. But when you seek first the kingdom of God, when you put him first, when you make a decision in your heart at a very young age, I guarantee you, it will bring fruit. If you sow this verse into the deepness of your heart, and you seek his kingdom first, not your own understanding, this will bring fruit." [00:51:16] (81 seconds)



"And note that Jesus didn't say, seek first your self -righteousness, but seek first his righteousness, a state approved by God, which is only through him. So if you seek him and his righteousness, and through Jesus Christ, what he's saying, that you are approved, that you are good enough, and you're called, and you're qualified. Qualified. So seek that first in your life, and everything else will fall into place. Then the second word that he said, or the other word, is seek the kingdom." [00:58:55] (32 seconds)



"So when we talk about kingdom, seeking first God's kingdom, you know the word kingdom comes in the English, it's a word, the king's domain. It's the king's domain. And what does that mean? When there's a new kingdom introduced, it means there's... It means there's new laws. It means there's a new dominion. Therefore, there's new laws and rules how things operate. Right? So, seek first his kingdom. That means we got to seek his domain. How many of you know that Jesus came and said, while he prayed, my kingdom come? And when he prayed that, he didn't just pray that, you know, one day all of you guys go to heaven. We know. When Jesus died on the cross, you know, his kingdom came. We're living under his king... In this area, in this new covenant, we're living in his kingdom. So therefore, we ought to seek his dominion and his... And he's the laws of this kingdom." [00:59:56] (68 seconds)



"So when we're talking about God's kingdom, Jesus' kingdom that he brought to you, I would say his new, I would say, Doctrine 101 is his grace that he made available to you and I. His grace through faith. This verse that says, By grace you're saved through faith. When we think of faith, how many of you are kind of like from the Word of Faith background, which I am, and I love a lot of Word of Faith teachings, but I catch myself, when we think of faith, do you think, let me ask you this question, do you think faith is like the milk of the Word of God or the meat of the Word of God, or the milk of the... the teachings, or if I taught you a big faith sermon here, would that be like, oh, that was meat? Well, according to the Bible, faith is the milk. Faith is just, without faith, it's impossible to please God." [01:10:01] (70 seconds)



"But my whole point, and this is what I want to talk about to you today, is your faith is nothing without the grace of God. What is your faith in? It can only be in the grace of God. So what is the definition of grace? This is the best definition. One of my favorite. One of my favorite teachers, Bobby Endian, says, I heard this from him, he says, grace is all that God is free to do for us because of the work of the cross. Grace is all that God is free to do for us because of the work of the cross. You know, that's very, so let me give you, you know, some simple examples." [01:11:43] (51 seconds)



"But I just use that analogy that what, how I, how I see that verse that, you know, most of my Christian life is, is, is, is operates between these two boundary lines of grace and faith. By grace, you're saved through faith. It's, and it's none of your doing, but it's by grace through faith is what the word says. Amen. So going into one ditch on one side, it's not better than going into the other ditch. How many of you know that any truth taken to the extreme becomes heresy? So I can take the grace message and go way down into the ditch where it's a grace upon grace on everyone, hyper grace. I say, if nobody's going to hell, happy, happy, happy. And that's, that's, that's extreme. And that's, that's not true." [01:16:33] (51 seconds)



"But with the faith message, I can go into another message where, and I catch myself doing this in my own life, where I wake up, let's say with a sore throat and I'm like, well, I just get to confess. Now I just get to read more and more scripture over my life. I get to pray more. I, I, I, I, and you know how many I statements are in there and all the intentions may be right, but I'm already in a ditch of what is, what am I putting my faith in? Like it's works. Now all of a sudden I'm, I'm, I'm in this ditch where it's just works. But if you're able to keep the vehicle in the middle of the road in balance, that it's, I'm putting my faith into his grace, what he has done on the cross. That's how you keep it on the road. That's how, that's how as Christians, we are supposed to function in every area of life." [01:17:28] (52 seconds)



"You know, grace us as Christians, even as we operate in the kingdom and we want to grow the kingdom of God, I think we need a greater revelation on the grace of God for outreach as well. And how we act as a church towards the unbelievers. You know, as I look at church history, I see that in the church, many times we zone in on certain, we emphasize certain topics. We emphasize certain topics. We emphasize certain topics. We emphasize certain topics, right? Like the Pentecostal movement, the gifts of the spirit, then, you know, whatever the shepherding movement, mentoring, and then the faith movement, faith. And there were some awesome revelations that came out of the church embracing. But what I truly believe in this last era that we believe the church is going to have a revelation on grace, like we have never seen before." [01:33:47] (50 seconds)



"And I see this, you know, a real quick example. I see this in the life of the apostle Peter. And just consider this for one second. If I take a step back and I read the life of the apostle Peter, what do you see? I see a man who comes to Christ and says, depart from me, because he realizes, wow, this is the real deal. This is God. He's holy, and I'm not. And then Jesus says, depart from me, because he realizes, wow, this is Jesus says, no, extends grace to him. He says, come with me. I'm going to make you fisher of men, right? So then Peter is like, yeah, like a newborn Christian. I am zealous for the Lord. Let's go. Let's go grow the kingdom of God. And then what happens from that? Jesus, I do anything for you. I, again, the emphasis goes on the I do. I will do anything for you. I will die for you. I will go on the cross with you, right? Well, that only lasted so long, right? When you're in that ditch, it's like you're going to run out of ammo pretty quickly. And then we see a cowardish person running away, right?" [01:34:40] (57 seconds)