Meditate On
Without Jesus, We Cannot. Without Us, He
Will Not.
I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me,
and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
John 15:5
In more than two decades of ministry, I have learned this
from the Lord: Without Him, we cannot. Without us, He will not. What this
simply means is that we need to recognize the fact that if we do not depend on
Jesus, there can be no real, long-lasting and abiding success—without Him, we
cannot. The Bible tells us that unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in
vain (Psalm 127:1). Believers who want to experience His success need to
recognize this truth and begin to depend on Jesus and Jesus alone.
There are some believers who may not articulate it, but
in their hearts, they believe that without Jesus, they can still succeed. By
believing and acting on this, they fall from the high place of God’s grace (His
unmerited favor) back into the law, back into trying to merit and deserve
success by their own efforts. God’s Word tells us, “For if you are trying to
make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from
Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace [unmerited favor]” (Galatians
5:4, NLT).
These are strong words of warning. Once you start
depending on your own merits and efforts to deserve God’s favor, you are back
under the system of the law. You are cut off from Christ and have fallen from
the place of having His unmerited favor work in your life. Don’t misunderstand
me, Jesus is still with you (He will never leave you nor forsake you [Hebrews
13:5]), but by depending on your self-efforts, you effectively cut off His
unmerited favor in your life.
So what do I mean when I say, “Without us, He will not”?
Well, Jesus is a gentleman. He will not force His unmerited favor and success
down your throat. He needs you to allow Him to work in your life. He waits
patiently for you to trust Him. He waits patiently for you to depend on His
unmerited favor, the way Joseph trusted and depended wholly on the Lord’s
presence, until His manifested presence took over, and His glory radiated from
everything that Joseph touched.
Beloved, let’s learn quickly that without Jesus, we
cannot succeed, and if we choose not to respond to His unmerited favor, He will
not force it on us. God’s unmerited favor is ever-flowing toward us and Jesus
is waiting for us to come to the end of ourselves. He is waiting for you to
stop struggling in your own attempts to somehow “deserve” His favor, and just
depend on Him. So in the areas that you are still depending on your own efforts
to succeed, start resting in Jesus’ unmerited favor and begin experiencing His
manifested presence and glory upon everything you touch!
BLESSINGS
JOSEPH PRICE
