Infinite Fellowship Ministries

Accessing God’s Providential Grace Through Faith: Sermon By Minister Lelli Mandela

Therefore, since we are justified ([a]acquitted, declared righteous, and given a right standing with God) through faith, let us [grasp the fact that we] have [the peace of reconciliation to hold and to [b]enjoy] peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One). Through Him also we have [our] access (entrance, introduction) by faith into this grace (state of God’s favor) in which we [firmly and safely] stand. And let us rejoice and exult in our hope of experiencing and enjoying the glory of God. 

Romans 5:1-2 (AMPC) 

We miss out on a lot because we look at events instead of everything as a journey in and with God.

In eternity, there is no beginning or end. When we go through process, let us see it as a journey of knowing God.

In 2018, we need to learn how to understand the cycles of God and how to journey with Him.

Jesus came to fulfill the law and expound on the spirit of the law freeing us from works thereby righteousness is accessed by accepting what God has already offered (salvation).

At the Cross, everything has been done. Ours is to access what has been done.

But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.

 Isaiah 53:5 (AMPC) 

For you are becoming progressively acquainted with and recognizing more strongly and clearly the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ (His kindness, His gracious generosity, His undeserved favor and spiritual blessing), [in] that though He was [so very] rich, yet for your sakes He became [so very] poor, in order that by His poverty you might become enriched (abundantly supplied). 

2 Corinthians 8:9 (AMPC)

Today, we can access what God did on the Cross.

God doesn’t need to do anything again. It has already been done and finished on the Cross.

May blessing (praise, laudation, and eulogy) be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah) Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual (given by the Holy Spirit) blessing in the heavenly realm! 

Ephesians 1:3 (AMPC)

And my God will liberally supply (fill to the full) your every need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

 Philippians 4:19 (AMPC)

What does every spiritual blessing mean?

And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it [using all its vast resources in the service of God and man]; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth. 

Genesis 1:28 (AMPC)

A blessing is an empowerment to create peace in every area of your life.

The first thing God spoke to man was a blessing. Through this, He gave man a capacity to become.

God blesses us by giving us the capacity to become.

Now [in Haran] the Lord said to Abram, Go for yourself [for your own advantage] away from your country, from your relatives and your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you [with abundant increase of favors] and make your name famous and distinguished, and you will be a blessing [dispensing good to others]. And I will bless those who bless you [who confer prosperity or happiness upon you] and curse him who curses or uses insolent language toward you; in you will all the families and kindred of the earth be blessed [and by you they will bless themselves]. 

Genesis 12:1-3 (AMPC) 

When God blesses you and gives you an instruction, yours is to act on the instruction.

A blessing is spiritual before it is made manifest. God owns everything and He is Spirit. It follows that ownership and bequeathing of the same is first spiritual. All spiritual blessings have been guaranteed. That is why it depends on faith.

Jesus was never sick or poor. He gave all that up to empower us while at the Cross.

Does God consider what you want good? How much is too much?

Therefore, [inheriting] the promise is the outcome of faith and depends [entirely] on faith, in order that it might be given as an act of grace (unmerited favor), to make it stable and valid and guaranteed to all his descendants—not only to the devotees and adherents of the Law, but also to those who share the faith of Abraham, who is [thus] the father of us all. 

Romans 4:16 (AMPC)

Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].

Hebrews 11:1 (AMPC) 

Faith divinely guarantees us that which we hope for.

When God starts with a blessing, it is spoken then revealed. Faith helps us see before our physical senses can perceive.

Salvation gives you the ability to surpass your 5 senses.

Faith doesn’t have a limited outcome. It gives you the ability to defy your physical senses.

If you’re trusting God for an abnormal thing, do abnormal things.

Grace was made available when Christ died on the Cross. 

Inheriting the promise entirely depends on faith. This is opposite to the law of Moses where one had to do something for God to do something.

In the dispensation of grace, all we have to do is accept and access freely by faith. We don’t have to do a thing.

So also faith, if it does not have works (deeds and actions of obedience to back it up), by itself is destitute of power (inoperative, dead). But someone will say [to you then], You [say you] have faith, and I have [good] works. Now you show me your [alleged] faith apart from any [good] works [if you can], and I by [good] works [of obedience] will show you my faith. 

James 2:17-18 (AMP)

Our works come in faith but not to arm twist God. Works are an evidence of our faith.

When you exercise faith, you access grace. Works are a token of faith that agree with the grace that God has already released.

Tithing

We rob God by not tithing. 

Will a man rob or defraud God? Yet you rob and defraud Me. But you say, In what way do we rob or defraud You? [You have withheld your] tithes and offerings. You are cursed with the curse, for you are robbing Me, even this whole nation.

Bring all the tithes (the whole tenth of your income) into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and prove Me now by it, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

Malachi 3:8-10 (AMPC) 

Tithing in the Old Testament was out of fear. People tithed so as to not experience a curse or calamity. It was preventative.

We need to tithe under the mentality of the grace. It enables you not to live off your riches but those of God.

In the dispensation of grace (our time since Christ), the Gospel (which is the good news) contains a blessing. In the New Testament, tithing helps you to access grace and sowing to the grace of God.

Tend (nurture, guard, guide, and fold) the flock of God that is [your responsibility], not by coercion or constraint, but willingly; not dishonorably motivated by the advantages and profits [belonging to the office], but eagerly and cheerfully. 

1 Peter 5:2 (AMPC) 

Jesus came to give us life and life in abundance. The Good News is so that we access life and life in abundance. 

The Gospel of God gives us focus. Under the law of grace, there is no curse. One cannot curse what is blessed.

To access the provision of God resident in grace, we must believe, confess and act on the strength of what God has said.

Out of the same mouth come forth blessing and cursing. These things, my brethren, ought not to be so. Does a fountain send forth [simultaneously] from the same opening fresh water and bitter? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine figs? Neither can a salt spring furnish fresh water. 

James 3:10-12 (AMP)

Faith is first of all a function of the heart where our mouths speak and our hearts follow. There is a level of blessing that comes from speaking blessing to ourselves.

A man’s [moral] self shall be filled with the fruit of his mouth; and with the consequence of his words he must be satisfied [whether good or evil].

Proverbs 18:20 (AMPC) 

A good man eats good from the fruit of his mouth, but the desire of the treacherous is for violence. 

Proverbs 13:2 (AMPC)

Jabez spoke his blessing:

Jabez was honorable above his brothers; but his mother named him Jabez [sorrow maker], saying, Because I bore him in pain. Jabez cried to the God of Israel, saying, Oh, that You would bless me and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and You would keep me from evil so it might not hurt me! And God granted his request. 

1 Chronicles 4:9-10 (AMPC) 

We need to provoke blessings in our lives since Christ lives in us. We need to speak to ourselves the blessings of God over our lives by faith.

Jabez did this before Christ, how much more you? There is an authority in you to access by faith the blessings God has locked up in you into manifestation.

We must come to God with an expectation. This is how we access grace.

The woman with the issue of blood caused virtue to leave Jesus because of her faith that she’d get healed. How much more for us who are in Christ and He in us?

[For Abraham, human reason for] hope being gone, hoped in faith that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been promised, So [numberless] shall your descendants be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered the [utter] impotence of his own body, which was as good as dead because he was about a hundred years old, or [when he considered] the barrenness of Sarah’s [deadened] womb. 

Romans 4:18-19 (AMPC)

The grace of God has changed the way we preach the Gospel. It is all about the grace of God through the vicarious work of Christ on the Cross.

Faith comes by hearing the word of God through revelation which births understanding in the mind and heart of a person that causes them to walk in faith and be in step with the Spirit.