Grace Revolution: Experience the Power to Live Above Defeat Read Online Free PDF Page A

deliberately dabbling in sin and living a sinful lifestyle, they will be burned by the destructive consequences that come with sin.

Don’t Add More Fuel to the Fire
    The only way to help precious people overcome the power of sin is to preach them into God’s amazing grace. Some ministers think that when there is sin, they need to preach stronger, harder, and harsher sermons on the law of Moses. I believe with all my heart that they are sincere. But the Word of God tells us that “the strength of sin is the law” (1 Cor. 15:56). Preaching more of the law is like adding more fuel to the fire. People don’t get liberated and transformed when we beat them down with the law of Moses. They get liberated and transformed when they encounter the love of their Savior!
    People get liberated and transformed when they encounter the Savior’s love!
    I believe that truly born-again believers are not looking for an excuse to sin. How can they, if they have been impacted by Jesus’ love and sacrifice? I believe that they are looking for a way out of sinand out of the prison of fear, guilt, and condemnation. And the more strongly I preach God’s amazing grace and unconditional love, the more my ministry office receives testimony after testimony from people who have been set free from all kinds of sins and addictions.
    These accounts tell us that God’s people don’t want to sin and are overcoming sin by turning to the cross and returning to grace. We receive testimonies from people who have been liberated from pornography, alcoholism, drugs, and sexual immorality. Now
that’s
the power of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Sin no longer dominates people and true repentance occurs when the gospel of grace is preached!

Change Your Mind to Believe Right
    We have looked at the Hebrew word for repentance. Now let’s look at the Greek word for repentance—
metanoia
.
Meta
means “change,” while
noia
is from the word
nous
, which means “mind.” So
metanoia
or repentance means “a change of mind.” 5 Why is changing your mind important? Simply because right believing always leads to right living.
    When you believe right about God’s grace, about your righteousness in Christ, and how you are called to be set apart for holiness, everything changes! His love touches you in the deepest recesses of your heart and you begin to experience transformation from the inside out. That’s the grace revolution in action. You begin to live above defeat and experience lasting breakthroughs because the power to fight off any temptation is not from without, but from within. It is not contingent upon your willpower; it is contingent upon the power of the Holy Spirit living mightily and actively in you, bearing witness to the gospel truths you believe.
    When God’s love touches you in the deepest recesses of your heart, you begin to experience inside-out transformation.
    Let me share with you a precious testimony I received from Robert, which bears out this point poignantly:
    I am a pastor in North Carolina who works full-time outside of ministry. I also attend a theological seminary. I was preaching right living and was trying to live right and do increasingly more to serve Jesus. Life was very demanding and I felt myself being burned out. I had considered stepping out from ministry for a short while to finish school. It was all just too much for me.
    I also had a fifteen-year struggle with addiction to spit tobacco. I even stood on the pulpit one Sunday and confessed my addiction. I held up a can of tobacco and said that I, as David did to Goliath, would cut off its head and feed its carcass to the birds.
    Full of remorse, I told the people I had resolved to put the addiction away, and many came to the altar that day to cast off their addictions too. However, I was back at mine within a week and feeling great condemnation. I am positive that many others who came down that day also did not have lasting victory. I fought and fought, quit and quit,