Hello, everybody! This is Will Ford and welcome to God Today. I am WIll Ford from 818 The Sign. Listen, I want to share something with you, today, regarding my own personal testimony. A lot of people know me for other things I do around the country. But, I want to share with you what God has done in my life and it is probably connected to the same thing that has happened in your life as well.
I remember, as a little boy, growing up in two different churches. I went to one church that was all about the name on the building and whether or not we did all the right rituals and rules within that building. But then I went to another church and there was a lot of warmth. But there was one little lady in that church, in that fellowship, who was on fire for God. She was secretly spirit-filled. She came to me when I was 9 years old and said, “I have this tract for you.” She gave me a chick tract! She gave me the chick tract and I read the tract and I got to the prayer at the end of that chick tract and I will never forget it, that is when I first received that seed of salvation that came into my heart, and literally I woke up that next morning and everything was different, everything had changed. Of course, I had years of learning how to walk in faith and going through my own sanctification process, but I will count that as my salvation experience.
Do you know what I struggled with later on? I went from there, of course, I wanted more, and I went from going to a fundamentalist kind of church that was legalistic, to a charis-maniac church that was legalistic. I went from “don’t raise your hands” to “you better raise your hands”. I went from “don’t speak in tongues” to “you better speak in tongues”. And guess what? Both of them made me really, really tired. Especially the charis-maniac one.
I came out of that experience and I said, “Jesus, I am so tired of trying to give you my life. I don’t know how to do this.” And the Lord said, “Great, now I can give you my life.” Romans 5 says, “We will be saved by His life.” When I received the life of Christ and I understood what the grace of God truly is, that we cannot earn salvation…you don’t understand. For me, I didn’t understand this – salvation is a gift. You can’t earn a gift, you cannot earn a gift. I was working so hard and striving all of my life to earn the gift, to earn the approval of my father, trying to earn the approval of my Heavenly Father and to earn the approval of people around me. And I had already received this amazing gift from the most powerful person in the universe.
I heard someone say it like this years ago. He said, “Think about it. When Jesus Christ died on the cross for you’, He was basically saying this, ‘I love you so much, I would rather die than spend eternity without you.’” That is what His death proved on the cross, that was His gift to you. Not only that, but He rose from the grave to give us eternal life as a gift. We have eternal life now, in our hearts. The Kingdom of God resides within us. We do not have to die to experience this eternal gift. We don’t need to die to experience Heaven. We can have that right now, Heaven on Earth right now as a gift. We don’t have to earn it, we just have to receive it by faith. So, if that is you and you have gone back and forth, maybe you have received salvation but you don’t know what it is to experience the grace of God as a gift. You are tired of the rules and you want the law of God to be written on your heart…can I pray for you right now?
Father, I pray right now for my brother, for my sister, all who are watching all around the world. I ask you, Lord, for the grace of God to rule and abound in their hearts right now, in the name of Jesus. God, I am asking you that you would baptize them with the love of God, that you would let them experience that Abba Father experience, fresh and anew. In the name of Jesus. I break off of them the stranglehold of religion, I break off of them the stranglehold of mediocrity. I thank you for releasing your Kingdom, your power, and your love in their lives fresh and anew because they are saved by your life. In Jesus’ name. This is Will Ford on God Today. God bless you.