Grace Love Rest Blog

TRUE SUCCESS CAN’T BE SEIZED – IT’S RECEIVED AS A GIFT BECAUSE OF GOD’S GRACE.

Everybody dreams of being successful, and living out their dreams of success.

For some, it’s owning their own business and building a thriving company. For others, it’s having a beautiful loving family that enjoys spending time together:

However we may define success, the truth is that we all want to live the best life we possibly can. We want to be fulfilled and have all of our dreams come true. But how do you get there – what does it take to be successful, and how can you experience divine success?

One way to become successful is to do whatever it takes to realize your dreams – grabbing every opportunity to cut corners, stretch the truth and manipulate others. There are people in your community, in your office and in your neighborhood who are choosing this path – depending on their self-efforts to achieve success.

Perhaps, you may have even tried this approach.

But the problem with grabbing success by any means necessary is that once you have it, you can’t truly enjoy it. There’s no peace. You’re constantly worried that someone or something is going to take it all away from you.

We see this in the life of Jacob in Genesis 25.

Jacob’s name means “deceiver”, and he was a grabber all his life. He was born a grabber; grabbling hold of his brother’s heel when he was born. He did whatever he could to get ahead.

When he tricked his father into giving him the firstborn blessing meant for his brother, Esau, he had to flee for his life because Esau wanted to kill him.

As a result, he spent years on the run, never able to truly rest and enjoy the blessing – he was always concerned about who was after him, and what new challenge or difficulty was waiting for him down the road.

The real tragedy of this story is that God’s plan had always been to bless Jacob. Before he was even born, God had already decided to give him the blessing of the firstborn, but as long as Jacob struggled and fought to grab for himself, he couldn’t receive what God had for him.

My friend, it’s the same for you and me. God’s heart is to bless us with success. As long as we try to grab it through our own efforts, we’ll always feel we have to maintain it with our own efforts. As such, we’ll never be able to truly enjoy the success we strive hard to achieve, even it we’re able to get it.

You don’t have to depend on your self-efforts and be a “grabber”… God has a better way for you!

True success that satisfies the deepest longings of our hearts can’t be found through our own strength, talent or manipulation.

It only comes through receiving the grace of God.

Many of us find it easier to grab, fight, and do whatever it takes, because it helps us to feel like we have control of the process. We don’t realize that God wants us to trust him with our biggest hopes and dreams. He wants us to believe He will protect us, provide for us and fulfill those hopes and dreams. As our loving heavenly Father, God wants us to receive blessings in our lives as a gift from Him – all because of His grace.

When we don’t trust Him to bless us but go chasing after the blessings with our own understanding and self-effort, we often end up pursuing things that hurt us in the end, and we become crushed when what we’ve strived hard to achieve falls apart.

I’ve seen this happen so many times. People give up on their marriages and chase someone else because they don’t trust God to restore the relationship. When their businesses falls apart, they are devastated and blame themselves because they believe all the success they’d achieved was due to their own talent and hard work.

Beloved, when we trust in our self-efforts, we don’t realize how good God is and how much He loves us. Many of us still struggle to accept the truth that we don’t have to earn or work for God’s blessings and favor and that His ultimate plan for our lives is to give us every good blessings we need to reign in life.

Even if you have been struggling to trust Him and His goodness, God will never give up on you. He loves you in your worst moments, and patiently waits to freely give you the kind of success that will satisfy the deepest longings of your soul. Not because you’re perfect – but because His love for you is.

Most people would’ve given up on Jacob, the deceiving grabber – but not God. One night Jacob tried to wrestle with and manipulate3 God. He tried all the tricks he’d used all his life but wound up helpless before the Lord.

But God changed Jacob that night. He showed Jacob how His grace worked when Jacob’s grabbing and wrestling stopped. God gave him a new name, a new purpose and a level of blessing Jacob never could have achieved by his own strength.

From that moment on, Jacob knew God loved him and wanted to bless him. He didn’t have to grab anymore.

If you’re struggling in your life, if you’re tired of grabbing, I have a good news for you. You don’t have to struggle anymore!

As a child of God, you don’t have to live as if it’s up to you to make good things happen for yourself. You don’t have to be fearful of lack consuming you and your loved ones. And you don’t have to strive and struggle for success because of that fear.

Because you’re God’s beloved child, you only need to receive His perfect love and blessings of success His perfect love has for you. You only need to come to your Daddy God with an attitude of dependence and expectation like that of a little child. The more you understand and believe how Christ has done it all at Calvary so that you can simply receive all that you need from the Father’s heart of perfect love and unfailing supply for you, the more you’ll experience true and divine success in every area of your life!

Resource taken from Joseph Prince Ministries.