Been Toiling All Night? Let Jesus Save You
Now, which came first: Peter’s repentance or God’s blessing? Under the new covenant of grace, God blesses you first, and His blessings, favor, and overflowing love lead you to repentance! Peter and his crew of mariners had toiled painstakingly all night and caught nothing. Then, when Jesus stepped for the first time into his boat, Peter’s business suddenly began to flourish and thrive beyond his wildest imagination.
God’s blessings, favor, and overflowing love will lead you to repentance!
Do you feel as if you have toiled all night and caught nothing? Perhaps you feel as though you are in a dead-end situation in your career. Or perhaps whatever you have been trying to do to save your marriage just isn’t working. Maybe your toil is in the area of your parenting—no matter how much effort you put into reaching out to your child, the relationship just seems to grow colder and more distant by the day.
Now is not the time to give up, but to listen to your wonderful Lord and Savior, Jesus. Hear Him. Rather than depend on your experience and expertise, lean in to Him. You are not alone in your boat. Listen to Him and do exactly what He tells you to do. Our Lord Jesus told Peter to let down “your nets”—plural. Peter said, “At your word I will let down the net”—singular (see Luke 5:4–5). It is no wonder the net began to break and Peter had to call for his friends to come and help him.
Jesus is your very present help in time of need. Whatever your struggle is today, you can know beyond the shadow of a doubt that He is with you and knows exactly how to help you.
Whatever your struggle is today, God is with you and knows exactly how to help you.
There are also people who have been toiling relentlessly, trying everything they know to get their lives right and win God’s approval. The more they try, the more distant they feel from Him. The harder they push, the more they feel that they consistently fail and disappoint Him. They are just as exasperated, fatigued, and frustrated as the fishermen who had labored all night and caught nothing.
My dear reader, if this describes you, I want you to know that God loves you
even with all your imperfections. Yes, in all your failings, in all your mistakes, God still loves you! Come to Him just as you are.
God loves you, even with all your imperfections. Come to Him just as you are.
But Pastor Prince, you don’t understand. I have this horrible addiction.
Whatever that addiction is, my friend, come to Jesus. Let Jesus embrace you, hug you, and hold you. Don’t worry or be consumed by your weakness. Instead allow Him to love you into wholeness. Jesus will transform you with His perfect love.
Let me sort out my life first, then I will come.
No one tries to clean himself before he takes a bath. Jesus is the bath! Come to Him with all your inadequacies, all your addictions, all your habits, and all your hang-ups, and let Him do what He does best. Let Him save you and restore you to wholeness!
When you think of Joe Montana, what do you think of? Possibly one of the best quarterbacks to ever play football. When you think of Michael Jordan, you think,
One of the best basketball players ever. Now, what do you think of when you think of our Lord Jesus? While it is great that you know what all these sports superstars do, the reality is that what they do on the fields and courts won’t change your life. It is much more important that you know our Lord Jesus as your Savior. Saving is His job description. Saving you is what He does best!
Return to Grace
At this point you may be thinking, Pastor Prince, I want to believe you and just come to Jesus as you say, but isn’t there a place for repentance when you have fallen short? I’ve been cautioned that grace preachers like you don’t teach repentance.
My dear friend, let me say this right from the start. I believe wholeheartedly in preaching repentance. Let me show you something beautiful about the word for repentance in the Hebrew language. The Hebrew alphabet is made up of twenty-two letters, from aleph to tav. And each Hebrew letter has a picture, numerical value, and meaning.
The Hebrew word for repentance is teshuvah, which is made up of five Hebrew letters—tav, shin, vav, bet, and hei. The first letter, tav, has as its pictogram a cross. The last letter, hei, is the fifth letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and the number five in Bible numerics represents grace. Sandwiched between tav (cross) and hei (grace) are the letters shin, vav, and bet. These three letters form the word shuv, which means “to return.” Putting it all together, teshuvah or repentance means this: “Because of the cross of Jesus, return to grace”!
Taking note that Hebrew reads from right to left, we see that teshuvah (repentance) means this: “Because of the cross of Jesus, return to grace.”
Isn’t it amazing that hidden in the Hebrew letters we just saw are God’s heart and explanation of what true repentance is? Repentance is all about returning to God’s grace because of His goodness demonstrated at the cross of Jesus. It is not about returning to the law of Moses. It is about turning to the cross and returning to His grace. His grace is your source of power and strength over every sin.
Repentance is all about returning to God’s grace because of His goodness demonstrated at the cross of Jesus.
So if you have made a mistake, or you are struggling with a sinful habit today, repent by turning to the cross—seeing that mistake punished in the body of Jesus— and receiving God’s unmerited favor to overcome this area of weakness. This is how you practice true repentance when you have failed. Don’t run away from Him. Run to Him! He is your solution. He is your answer. He loves you and longs for you to return to His loving embrace!
Test What You Hear about Grace
If repentance is returning to God’s grace, how can grace be a license or excuse to sin, as some claim? Grace is the power of God to overcome every sin. But if anyone who is living in sin claims that he is under grace, let me be the first to tell you that this person is not living under grace. The authority of God’s Word proclaims that “sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). No one can use God’s grace to justify his or her sin! It is contrary to God’s Word and contrary to the gospel of grace. True grace swallows up the destructive power of sin.
Some people have been using the word grace freely. They call themselves grace preachers, grace ministries, or grace churches. But I encourage you to be discerning and to test everything you hear. Just because they use the word grace in their teachings doesn’t mean they are accurately or truly representing the gospel of grace. Test everything! Be sure that their position against sin is clear.
Sin is destructive and brings with it a whole host of damaging consequences. The consequence of committing a sin is not God’s judgment or punishment, any more than placing your hand in the fire and getting burned is a punishment from God. The destructive and painful effects of your hand being burned aren’t from God. They are a consequence you face for using your free choice destructively. In the same way, if someone is 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 sin and 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, over and over again.
I eventually found Joseph Prince Ministries and a friend gave me some of Pastor Prince’s teaching materials. I was amazed at what I was hearing and reading, because I had never heard the gospel preached in this manner. I knew it was truth and it began to set me free. I heard Pastor Prince preach a sermon where he said that the solution was to quit trying to win on my own and to confess to the Lord, “Lord, I cannot, but You can.”
This became my motto and I quit trying to quit using tobacco. I no longer stayed buried under guilt and condemnation. I believed and confessed that even though I was struggling with this tobacco habit, God still loves me no less and that Jesus’ finished work still avails for me. I can now testify that I have been tobacco-free for more than a year. Every time an urge pops up, I say to the Lord that I know His grace and what He has for me are much better than tobacco, and the urge leaves.
Praise God! This message of unmerited favor has changed my life and ministry. I am now preaching and teaching grace every time I step onto the pulpit!
Thanks be to God and thank you, Pastor Prince.
Robert, thank you for sharing your story and encouraging so many who are searching for the key to lasting victory!
Embark on an Upward Cycle of Lasting Victory
My dear reader, no matter how long you may have struggled with a bad habit, I want you to know it is never too late to invite our Lord Jesus and His grace into your situation. It is never too late to return to His grace, the only power that can give you permanent inside-out transformation.
Perhaps you too have been trying to quit whatever has you in bondage but still find yourself unable to truly break free. I want you to pay attention to how Robert found freedom and the power to stay on an upward cycle of victory. Notice how Robert said that in his desire to quit his addiction, he had “fought and fought” only to have to “quit and quit, over and over again.” Despite publicly committing to “cast off” his addiction before his congregation, he was back at it within a week. Robert, like many sincere believers, had gone down the “feel remorse and repent” route numerous times and still not found the victory he needed.
But real change for Robert happened when he discovered the truth of God’s grace, what the Lord Jesus has done for him on the cross, and how God still loves him and would help him despite his failings. And as he began to focus on these truths and return to these truths of God’s grace every time he felt an urge to return to his habit, he began to experience victory over his addiction.
This is what believing right—true repentance—did for Robert. It didn’t give him an excuse to continue in his sin or take sin lightly. No, it made him an overcomer. It made him a testimony of God’s amazing grace at work in the life of someone who chose to depend on that grace. Notice that the right living Robert wanted to experience became a reality not when he was trying to make it happen on his own, but when he discovered and then kept returning to grace whenever he was weak. This, dear reader, is the key to overcoming sin and every bondage in your life.
Today, if you’ve been trying to quit a habit, I encourage you to return to the truth of God’s grace—that what our Lord Jesus has done for you at the cross is so much greater than all your failings. That because of His perfect, finished work, you are still deeply loved, highly favored, and greatly blessed. When you let such a revelation of God’s grace wash over your heart again and again, you can’t help but deeply appreciate what the Lord has done for you and how His grace has set you apart to shine for His glory. You won’t want to continue in sin. Instead you will find every sinful urge gradually leave until they all leave for good. You will embark on an upward cycle of lasting transformation!
Practice Returning to Grace
My wife Wendy and I have met so many women—wives and mothers—who’ve come to us and shared how right believing in God’s amazing grace has set them free of daily struggles in their relationships with their spouses and children. They told us how entrenched mind-sets that used to trip them up and bring tension into their family life just began to inexorably dissolve when they let the grace of God wash over them and began to believe in His goodness. Things they had tried for years to change on their own, like an explosive temper or perpetual anxiety over their performance as a parent, just disappeared effortlessly. Many also expressed how, as they tasted and rested in their heavenly Father’s love for them, the guilt and frustration that came with the stress of daily parenting simply gave way to peace, to a permanent sense of God’s joy, and subsequently to healthier relationships with their husbands and children.
My dear reader, whether you’re trying to quit an addiction or want to be a more loving and forgiving spouse or parent, your answer is found in the person of grace and in returning to His grace every time you feel weak or fail. That’s what true repentance is all about. When you’ve made a mistake, remember and receive afresh the forgiveness and righteousness that Jesus has provided for you at the cross. Believe He is still with you, loving you, and working in you to walk in His victorious and abundant life. This is how you practice returning to His grace. The Lord’s amazing grace will bring deliverance, a fresh start, and new ways of living and loving that will radically transform your life, your marriage, and your parenting for His glory.
