One Day of Favour Is Worth a Thousand Days of Labour

Sermon outline

God's favour is a divine current that can lift you from your present season into your future dream overnight, so expect it, ask big, and guard it by tithing, obeying God and staying humble.

1. One day of favour is worth a thousand days of labour

   Joseph walked a long and challenging road, but overnight, by interpreting Pharaoh's dream, he was made ruler over Egypt. Jesus promised that whatever we leave for his sake returns a hundredfold in this life, because he is no man's debtor. Favour also becomes a generational blessing: when a couple start their line with the Lord, the blessing runs on to the third and fourth generation.

   Illustration: Joseph going from a long, hard journey to prime minister of the land in a single day.

   “One day of favor is worth a thousand days of labor.”

   • Genesis 41:15
   • Genesis 41:42-44
   • Mark 10:28-30
   • Psalm 102:12-13

2. Grace and favour: you are God's starting point

   Grace is the empowering presence of God enabling you to be who he created you to be, and when his presence and anointing are around you, you can only go upwards. Using Webster's definition, favour is kind regard, goodwill, partiality and advantage: when disadvantage was coming your way, God shows up and advances his child. You are not a beggar grovelling before God; you are made in his image and he hears your prayers.

   Illustration: As a young Christian he heard great preachers without fully grasping the Word, until over time revelation came and he began to walk in its power.

   “Grace is the empowerment of God to enable us to be what we should be.”

   • Genesis 1:26

3. Favour is the divine current from your present season to your future dream

   Favour is the golden key from the pit to the palace: God moves someone to solve a problem for you and give you preferential treatment. Stop building walls of distrust, raise your expectation and walk by faith, not in doubt, fear and unbelief. Favour is not normal, it belongs to the willing and obedient, and when it flows it comes like torrential rain, so learn to ask big.

   Illustration: As a young Christian he kept circling a parking lot until God asked him why he would not trust him for a parking place; on the next round a car reversed out, and from that day parking was never his problem.

   “Favor is not merely an experience. Favor is the divine current that takes you from your present season into your future dream.”

   • 2 Corinthians 5:7
   • Isaiah 1:19

4. Favour is not stagnant: it increases and multiplies

   When God looks at you, your family and your business, he has increase in mind, even while you are thinking small. Favour grows thirty, sixty and a hundredfold (he mentions the thousandfold for another time), just as Jesus grew in favour with God and man. It made Ruth the peasant a wealthy wife in a day, brought Esther into the palace and doubled Job's blessing, and miracles are designer-made for you, so do not perish for lack of knowledge.

   Illustration: The Lord prompted him to write little books of God's promises on favour, healing and prosperity, and he meditated on them in prayer until the Word was deep in his spirit. He also highlights the miracles in his Bible and studies them to lift his faith.

   “You must not only expect favor but you must respect favor so that you will be able to taste its momentum.”

   • Deuteronomy 16:15
   • Matthew 13:8
   • Luke 2:52
   • Ruth 4:13
   • Esther 2:16
   • Job 42:10
   • Hosea 4:6

5. When favour stops

   Favour stops when the tithe is withheld, when you deliberately ignore an instruction from God, and when pride fills your heart. Saul lost the kingship because he spared Agag and the best of the flocks against God's word. When money starts to pile up before you, never think it came by your own smartness or shrewd dealings: it is God who gives favour and lifts you up.

   Illustration: He has made it a constant practice to give God a tenth of all his increase, often more, because he knows a blessing is coming.

   “Favor stops when you deliberately ignore an instruction from God.”

   • Malachi 3:8-9
   • 1 Samuel 15:9-11
   • 1 Samuel 15:26
   • Proverbs 4:23

6. I am a real somebody

   He gives viewers a statement to write down and meditate on: they are valuable to God, created for life, power, prosperity, success and dignity, with the seeds of greatness inside them. Self-esteem rooted in God lets you lift your head and believe him for great things. Whatever you have done, repent and get your relationship with God going again, and he will lift you up little by little.

   Illustration: In the many books he has read he has seen people with absolutely nothing become billionaires through a series of circumstances God arranged and people he connected.

   “God never created me to be a nobody.”