These are notes on the sermon, Live In The Now, preached by Pastor Joseph Prince on Sunday, January 5, 2025, at The Star Performing Arts Centre, Singapore. We hope these sermon notes will be an encouragement to you!
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Happy New Year, beloved! May your 2025 be filled with good days and abundant blessings!
Pastor Prince began his first sermon of the year by calling our attention to how quickly time seems to be passing. We are just done celebrating Christmas and welcoming the new year, but before long, we’d find that we’ve come to the end of yet another year. Time feels as if it’s racing by…
But the good news is that our God operates beyond the boundaries of natural time.
Through a study of the different words that the Bible uses for time, we discover that God separates time into two categories: chronos, which refers to time in its sequential, natural order, and kairos, which refers to specific, favorable seasons when God pours out His goodness in extraordinary ways.
Even though it feels like time is accelerating, God’s ability to bless and restore is not limited to or hampered by the speed at which time is moving. In fact, He can even reverse time for us and bring restoration into every area of our lives.
The Bible gives us this beautiful promise:
This verse was originally spoken to Israel, a nation whose economy was rooted in agriculture and husbandry. When the locust swarms came and destroyed their harvests, the losses were devastating. But God assured His people that He would not only restore what had been taken but also the losses of years past.
For believers today, this promise is for every area of life where we’ve experienced loss—whether it’s wasted time, missed opportunities, strained relationships, or even failing health. God is not limited to restoring losses that occurred recently; He promises to restore losses that have occurred years ago or accumulated over the years.
Child of God, as we step into a new year, expect to see the manifestation of this promise in every area of your life and in accelerated ways. Yes, even that healing breakthrough you’ve been waiting for for a while now!
“But my life is still in a mess…”
“I still see dead areas in my life…”
Do you feel unsettled about how things ended for you last year? Or do you feel unprepared to face the year ahead? Perhaps you look at your life and see brokenness, dead areas, or feel the weight of your own inadequacies. Beloved, know that your heavenly Father can use every area of weakness to accomplish His purposes in your life and bring glory to His name.
The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 1:27:
Our weaknesses, far from disqualifying us, are often the very areas God uses to display His power. Pastor Prince shares how, as a young man, he was a stutterer and stammerer. Yet God chose him to preach the gospel of grace to multitudes around the world. Today, countless lives have been transformed through his ministry, not because of eloquence or human effort, but because of the power of God working through weakness!
We also see in the Bible how God can take what seemed weak and insignificant and make it a powerful instrument of victory in His hands. In Judges 15, Samson had to face a large group of angry Philistines. Though he was unarmed, he was able to defeat his attackers, killing 1,000 of them with nothing more than the jawbone of a donkey. So take heart, even if all you see are areas of deadness or weakness in your life!
This year, start by putting whatever you have into God’s hands. Even if you feel your life is “dead” or your circumstances are beyond hope, know that your heavenly Father can use your every area of brokenness and weakness.
Don’t try to resolve things on your own, through your own efforts, or set more New Year resolutions. Such attempts often fail because they depend on your flesh, which is weak. Instead, lean in to and depend on God’s grace! When you do so, He will be the one to fulfill what you desire to accomplish.
Beloved, the Bible declares that your future shines brighter and brighter! Our heavenly Father does not regress; He always progresses. Proverbs 4:18 says, “The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day” (NIV). You are the righteous one whose path is growing brighter and brighter! Have confidence that this year is going to be even better than all the years before. Trust that your daddy God will pour forth an even greater measure of His goodness, grace, and glory into your life. It’s going to be a special year filled with His blessings!
No matter what has happened in the years past, your heavenly Father is for you, and His heart is to prosper you in every area of your life. How do we know this? Just look at His original plan for man: He placed Adam and Eve in a garden of abundance, not in a place of lack. Poverty came as a result of sin; it is not God’s will for us, His children. So, don’t feel apologetic for prospering.
Now, this does not mean that we are for avarice or the love of money. Money in itself has no intrinsic grace or goodness—it’s merely a tool. If money becomes your god, you will find yourself empty. Beloved, we were made for more than chasing a life of material blessing!
True prosperity goes beyond the material. God wants to prosper us in every aspect of life—our health, our souls, our relationships, and so much more! Prosperity isn’t just about having financial abundance; it’s about being blessed so that we can be a blessing to others. It’s about having more than enough to give generously, support the gospel, and bless those in need. It’s about being a living testimony of God’s goodness to a world that desperately needs Jesus.
Money is a servant, a tool that we use to be a channel of blessing to a lost and dying world. So, don’t live your life chasing after it. Instead, live for the glory of God! Child of God, if you’ve been missing out on going to church because of the need to earn more, know that God can provide for you without you sacrificing what matters most—time with Him and with your church family.
While we recognize that there are people who may take God’s teachings to an extreme, for example, those who claim you need not go to the doctors at all if you believe God is the healer, they should not be taken as a representation of the majority. Reading about these extreme cases can cause us to doubt or even fear the truths that God is releasing to the church. But instead of basing God’s truths on these isolated cases, we should look at what God is doing! Remember that the enemy does not counterfeit what is of no value. God’s heart is for us to prosper and be in health, to be the head and not the tail, to give and not borrow!
Even though God has abundant blessings prepared for us, we can only experience them if we believe right. If we allow wrong beliefs to take root, regardless of all the good that God has in store for us, we will end up seeing only bad in our situations. And because of all the negativity and pressures on us, we might even experience anxiety and depression.
Consider this illustration: If you think God is always demanding from you, angry with you, or finding fault with you, you may find yourself battling guilt, depression, and a sense of unworthiness. Soon you’ll lose your sense of joyfulness and well-being, conscious always of having fallen short.
Beloved, your heavenly Father loves you deeply and desires to lavish His favor upon you. His original plan for you is to live in intimacy with Him in the upper room, a place of abundance and blessing. So step into this new year with confidence that your heavenly Father has prepared good days for you!
The grace of God and His righteousness are the most precious gifts we’ve been given. These are key to our reigning in life (Rom. 5:17). However, the Bible tells us it’s possible to have received God’s grace in vain.
How does this happen? Let’s take a look at the preceding verse.
These verses reveal that receiving God’s grace is directly related to our identity as the righteousness of God in Christ. This means we receive God’s grace in vain when we revert to a mindset of sin-consciousness or condemnation instead of fully embracing our righteous identity through our Lord Jesus’ finished work at the cross.
Why can we receive God’s grace today? Because of the divine exchange that happened at the cross! At the cross, our Lord Jesus took our sins upon Himself and gave us His righteousness. To receive God’s grace in vain is to live as though this exchange never happened. It is to identify ourselves with our sins, failures, and shortcomings rather than with the righteousness we now have in Christ.
When we are sin-conscious, it affects how we see ourselves and others. Not only does it trap us in a cycle of self-condemnation, but it can also cause us to be overly critical or judgmental of those around us, inevitably hurting relationships that are dear to us. While we still have the flesh, the sin principle, in us, we need to recognize that because of the divine exchange, our bodies are now the temples of God! So, while we still make mistakes and fall short from time to time, they do not define who we really are in Christ.
So, instead of being conscious of your sins, be conscious of your true righteous identity in Christ. This does not give us the license to sin. Rather, when we are conscious of our righteous identity in Christ, it allows us to fully receive God’s grace in our lives, and that is what brings about true transformation. Furthermore, because our bodies are the temples of God, we should honor them as such and not indulge in habits or activities that would harm our bodies!
Being Christ-conscious means seeing yourself as God sees you. When you own your righteous identity in Christ, you allow His grace to transform you from the inside out. You will also begin to extend this grace to others, seeing their potential and speaking life into their situations. Instead of saying, “Why are you always like that” or “I just knew you would fail,” speak words of encouragement, such as “This isn’t who you are. I see the best in you.”
Beloved, don’t let the enemy deceive you into dwelling on past mistakes or thinking you must strive to earn your heavenly Father’s favor. Our Lord Jesus has already paid the full price for your sins. Rest in His finished work, knowing you are completely forgiven. Today, you have right standing before God. When challenges arise, remind yourself that you are the righteousness of God in Christ. We honor the Lord and His grace when we fully embrace our righteous identity!
The word acceptable in Greek is dektos, which denotes “that most blessed time when salvation and the free favors of God profusely abound.” This is the same word that our Lord Jesus used when He quoted Isaiah 61 (Luke 4:19–20) and proclaimed that He had come to preach the free favors of God to us.
The word salvation is soteria in Greek, which means “deliverance, preservation, safety,” salvation in every area of our lives.
In this passage of Scripture, the apostle Paul is quoting Isaiah 49:8, which says, “Thus says the LORD: ‘In an acceptable time I have heard You, and in the day of salvation I have helped You.’”
Notice that Isaiah 49:8 says “in an acceptable time,” while in 2 Corinthians 6:2, it says, “now is the accepted time.” Something has changed!
Because of our Lord Jesus’ finished work at the cross, we are now living in the acceptable time where the free favors of God profusely abound! The prophets of old were constantly longing and waiting for the acceptable time when they would experience the grace of God. For us, this is a reality we get to enjoy today, in the here and now.
Beloved, God’s grace and favor are available to us not in some distant future but right now. Too often, we miss what God is doing in the present because we’re caught up in regrets about the past or anxieties about the future. Our heavenly Father is calling us to live in the now, where His grace, healing, and salvation are flowing abundantly. That is the key to accessing these blessings.
Let’s take a look at the story of Lazarus in John 11. Lazarus had been dead for four days before Jesus arrived. Martha lamented her brother’s death, saying, “If You had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21). She recognized our Lord’s power to heal but was stuck in what He could have done in the past. Jesus replied, “Your brother will rise again.” And Martha said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (John 11:24), shifting her faith to what our Lord would do in the future.
Given the situation, we can all relate to Martha to some degree. Feeling helpless about the present, we either look to the past or to the future. Some of us are stuck in regrets of the past, reliving mistakes and missed opportunities, while others look at the future with fear and anxiety, imagining worst-case scenarios.
Both steal the joy and peace that come from living in the now. Especially with the rise of social media, we often find ourselves either plagued with regrets due to comparison or overwhelmed by the constant stream of bad news. We’re constantly distracted by what we see and hear, pulled in many different directions, and unable to enjoy the present. Beloved, God’s grace is found in the present, where His presence is.
Hearing Martha’s lamentations, the Lord gently redirected her focus to the present, declaring, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Our Lord Jesus is always in the now. He is the great I AM, not the “I was” or “I will be.”
The present is where His healing flows, where His favor surrounds you. Even if you’re facing a bad report, remember this: what you see in your circumstances is not final. Don’t be stuck in the doctor’s diagnosis. Don’t regret not having done this or that, and don’t be trapped in the future, imagining the worst happening to you. Be in the present, where God’s healing is abounding toward you. Even if it seems like an impossible situation, God’s Word declares that with Him, all things are possible. He is both able and willing to turn things around for you.
Beloved, it’s time to let go of your regrets and fears. What is it that you need? God’s grace, healing, and salvation are accessible to you now. Whatever challenges you face, trust that God’s help, miracles, and breakthroughs are available in this very moment. Live in the now, and experience the fullness of His abundant grace!
In Mark 11:24, our Lord Jesus revealed a secret to answered prayers:
Notice the verse says “when you pray”? The Lord emphasized that we are to believe in that very moment of our prayer. It’s not about waiting to see or feel the breakthrough before we believe in His ability to bring about the answers we desire. It’s about believing in His heart to bring it to pass the moment we pray.
The key to seeing our prayers answered is to believe in that “now” moment! When you pray, believe you have received it, and then you will have it. Don’t allow the enemy to distract you with the “what-ifs” of the future or the regrets of the past. Instead, be conscious that your heavenly Father is with you in that moment. Know that He is present, working on your behalf, and that His timing is perfect.
No matter how ordinary or challenging your situation may seem, say to Him, “Father, You are here right this moment. I see You in this situation.” He hears you, He is with you, and His grace is available right where you are. Regardless of where you are, live one moment at a time, knowing the great I AM is with you. Believe that you receive when you pray, and you will see His faithfulness in your life!
We hope these sermon notes blessed you! If they did, we encourage you to get the sermon and allow the Lord to speak to you personally as you watch or listen to it.
© Copyright JosephPrince.com 2025
These sermon notes were taken by volunteers during the service. They are not a verbatim representation of the sermon.
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