Most of you would quickly say grace of course, and I would agree with you completely.

Let me ask you this – let's say you have a friend who is a Christian, and that person committed adultery, and in fact, was still practicing adultery.  Now let's say that person prays and asks God for something according to God’s Word - will God answer his prayer?

How about this - let’s say you drink coffee every morning and you depend on your coffee to wake up.  I say to you, "That is an addiction to coffee and you need to be set free – you are dependent on coffee and not walking in faith."  Now let's say you pray and ask God for something according to His Word – will God answer your prayer?

If you answered "Sure He would. God loves me and coffee is not a big deal,"  yet you answered that God would not hear the prayer of someone in adultery, I ask you why is adultery any worse than a coffee habit?  Both the person practicing adultery and the person with a coffee habit are in sin.  You may say to yourself, “Come on John, coffee is sinful?” Yes it is if it is an addiction. An addiction to anything other than Jesus is sin.  The Bible says in Romans 14:23 “…for whatever is not from faith is sin.”  By you not trusting God to wake you up in the morning instead of coffee then you are in sin.

So why should God answer your prayers, when you are in sin just like the adulterer?  You may not communicate it quite this way but your reaction to those two scenarios can be telling.  If you think God won’t answer the adulterer's prayer but will answer yours you are saying that the sin of adultery is greater than His grace, and in fact, God can’t – or won’t – work in a person’s life depending on how big their sin is.  In other words, God can overlook or overcome the sin of a coffee addiction, but can't- or won't- overlook or overcome the sin of adultery.  Do you agree that adultery is bigger than God's grace?

Now, am I saying to you that adultery is fine and you won’t have to reap the fruit of that ungodly decision?  Of course not.  If you commit adultery you are making a foolish choice and as far as your relationships with people go - your life will be devastated. I am also not saying a coffee habit will produce the same results as adultery.  What I am saying is this: in the eyes of God sin is sin, and He moves in your life based on what Jesus did not how perfect of a life you are living.  He doesn’t give grace only to the perfect or only to those who don’t do the “big sins” He pours out His grace no matter how big or how much the sin is.  In fact, here is what the Bible says in Romans 5:20,  "Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more..."  The greater the sin, the more the sin, the greater the grace!  Now that will set you free from sin and not keep you bound by it! God's grace makes you fall in love with Jesus, not want to sin more.

Grace is way more powerful than sin will ever be.  Please my friend, do not disqualify yourself from the blessing of God because you think you don’t have it all together.  God is not looking at you based on your performance. He is looking at you through the eyes of love and grace.  He doesn’t answer your prayers based on how holy of a life you are living or how well you are keeping all the commandments.  In fact if we look at the ministry of Jesus when he was on the Earth, the people who could not receive from Him were those who thought they had it all together, who thought they didn’t sin and who thought they kept the law perfectly, or at least better than the average person.  They were the self-righteous and thought that God heard the prayers of people because they did everything right. When in fact, Jesus was able to do miracles for the adulterers, the prostitutes, and the thieves. Jesus was unable to help the self-righteous because they rejected the simplicity of God’s Grace and felt as if what they had done and how they lived earned them the right to approach God. That type of thinking is self-righteousness and people who think this way will reject the blessing of God by believing that He won't or can't bless them if a certain standard of performance isn’t met. It’s the same today, many people think that God answers prayer based on how good their performance has been or when there is no sin in their life. They will be unable to receive God’s blessing if they haven’t performed perfectly and tell others that the reason why prayers go unanswered is because of their lack of performance or sin in their lives.

God’s Grace is infinitely more powerful than sin. He doesn’t respond to you with His grace because of your performance.  He responds to you and answers your prayers based on what Jesus did and your faith in Him.  So if you have an area in your life where you are struggling, don’t hide from God or disqualify yourself from His blessing. I am here to tell you that He is for you and hears your prayers and wants to help you no matter how big you think your sin is.

I have posted a new Grace Thought video, #2 where I talk about this very issue.  I believe it will be a blessing to you.   As you listen allow the Word of God to comfort you and allow you to rest in His Amazing Grace.

You are a blessing,

John

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