Hello Dear Listeners, welcome to overcoming temptations. My name is Oyisi Okatahi. Today our topic is titled: Favor is better than Labor. One day while I was in Lagos, I stood on top of a bridge close to a major market and I saw how people where rushing up and down each one trying to make a living, striving hustling working hard. Many people live the rat race, we wake up early in the morning , we work hard, we are always pursuing something, we do this every day until we grow old and die. Like it is said we go through life but life never goes through us. Everything is vanity, we work so hard yet we hardly have enough to eat, we never take holidays or rest, we seem never to rise above a certain level. All that is labor, but I have good news for you, Gods favor can achieve the same results and much more than a thousand days of labor. There is nothing wrong in working hard, but God has a way of rewarding you even far above the effort you have put in, that is what favor is all about, getting more blessing than you really deserve.
Toiling to survive and hard labor was originally a curse. Let us read Genesis 3:17-19, I read from New Living Translation. And to the man God said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. 18 It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”
So before man sinned against God in the garden of Eden by eating the forbidden fruit. See what God said to man Genesis 1:28-29. Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” Then God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. 30 And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—everything that has life.” And that is what happened.
So man did not need to work to eat, food came to him naturally and freely, he was in total control and the whole world was under his authority. But that is what sin does, sin makes you loose favor and enter into labor. So to enjoy favor it is not by how you smile, dress or trick people, it is about your obedience to God. Once you obey Gods word as written in the bible, you open doors of favor. Everyone who achieves whether they acknowledge God or not have an act of favor in life, many people call it good luck. So ask God for favor today so that you can rest from your endless labor and may he grant you the favor you need in Jesus name. Amen.
