Favor With the Lord Ps 5:12 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO

Favor with the Lord ought to be our greatest concern; even more so than our favor with men.  Unfortunately, many Christians are much more concerned about finding favor with men than they are with finding favor with the Lord.  You might be saying, “If I knew how to have favor with the Lord, I would be more concerned about that.  But how do you have favor with the Lord?”  That’s a good question.  You find favor with the Lord when you are:

Righteous – Ps 5:12 – our righteousness is given to us by Jesus Christ.  When we yield to his righteousness in our lives so that he is able to live his life through us, we are guaranteed to be in favor with God.  A man who teeters and totters in and out of obedience to God’s righteousness is going to find that he is not living in favor with the Lord.  He’s double minded and unstable.

Submissive – 1 Sam 2:26 – Samuel grew in favor with the Lord because he ministered to the Lord [1 Sam 2:11].  One of the greatest things young people can do is surrender to the Lord and begin to minister to him at an early age.  I asked a fellow who is a young missionary what he did to prepare himself for the ministry as a young man.  He replied, “I surrendered to the Lord.”  That is the key.  Too much effort in the church is spent on entertaining and catering to the youth.  They’d be way better off if we would teach them to submit and serve.

Merciful – Prov 3:3-4 – God is favorable with you when you follow mercy and truth.  2 Sam 22:26 says, “With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful.”  Mercy and truth are the right combination.  To have mercy in dishonesty means you are a doormat.  To have truth and no mercy means you are a tyrant.  To have mercy and truth is to have favor with the Lord.

Wise – Prov 8:35 – wisdom is something that you should diligently seek from the Lord and once you find it you should diligently live by it.  When you seek and find wisdom and live by it, you find favor with the Lord.

Good – Prov 12:2 – “a good man obtaineth favor of the Lord.”  It is a cop out to say, “There is none good, no, not one.  Therefore, I can’t be good.”  People use that line of reasoning to justify yielding to sin.  However, a deacon is supposed to be “a lover of good men,” [Titus 1:8].  “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord,” [Ps 37:23].  You can and should be good. The fruit of the Spirit includes goodness [Gal 5:22]. When you are good you have favor with the Lord.

Consecrated – Lk 1:28, 30 – see also Lk 2:52.  Mary found favor with the Lord.  She was pure, she was righteous, she was holy and she believed the Lord.  This is exactly how young ladies can find favor with the Lord today.  Young ladies hardly consider their relationship to the Lord when they start noticing boys.  And often, with boys, they lose their consecration and purity and, thus, fall out of favor with the Lord.  You don’t want to do that!!

Married – Prov 18:22 – the implication here is that you should marry a good woman.  Contrast Prov 19:13.  When you get God involved in your choice for your mate, and he gives you a prudent wife [Prov 19:14], you are going to have favor with the Lord.  Your marriage will picture the marriage between Jesus Christ and the church [Eph 5:22-32].  And there is nothing more desirable in your marriage than to be in favor with the Lord.  He will bless you abundantly.

There are a couple of additional considerations here.

It is possible to get so burdened with the responsibility that God has put upon you that you think you have lost favor with the Lord.  Moses felt this way in Num 11:11.  He was so weighed down by the Jews that he thought God didn’t favor him anymore.  Well, in Num 12 we see that certainly wasn’t the case.  Likewise, times in your life may become unbearable.  Just remember to maintain favor with the Lord so that in those times you don’t think you have lost favor.

When you find favor with the Lord, then he can give you favor with men [Gen 39:21; Ex 12:36].  In other words, when you seek favor with men, you will often fear men and end up doing things that cause you to fall out of favor with the Lord.  Furthermore, men are fickle and you may find yourself in favor with them today and out of favor with them tomorrow.  So, the best thing to do is to simply seek favor with the Lord and let him bring you into favor with men.

Conclusion: Finding and maintaining favor with the Lord should be your main concern.  By these examples from the Bible you can see how to do it.