I was reading from Joyce Meyer’s book, How To Succeed At Being Yourself, about grace and favor (p. 139).  Favor is part of grace; both words are translated from the Greek word, charis.  Joyce writes, “Esther, Daniel and the Hebrew children, Ruth and even Jesus Himself received favor from God that caused them to be accepted instead of rejected in specific situations…Esther needed favor with the king. She was selected by God to bring deliverance to her people who were in danger. She stepped out in faith and went into a place that was hard for her in the natural. God gave her favor she was believing for, and she fulfilled the call on her life.”Â
Are you in a hard place right now? Do you need God’s favor for something in your life? Are you believing for it? God can do the same thing for you, that He did for Esther, a Jewish girl who had lost her parents and was raised by her uncle, Mordecai, and was raised up as a deliverer for her people.
 When Queen Vashti defied the king, and would not come into his court to display her beauty as he requested, she was removed from her royal position as queen, and her position was given away to another woman.  Her disobedience cost her the crown, and she lost all honor in front of the King and the people. Esther and all the beautiful young virgins in the king’s province of Shushan were taken under custody, and given 12 months of beauty treatment, six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with perfumes, to prepare for their one night with the king. God wants to prepare our hearts for something great, that we would be saturated with His very presence wherever we go.
 Esther found favor with the king, and was chosen as queen. She stood out among all the others as she submitted herself to authority, and laid down her own will to honor God. She knew that it was not  about her, but about God and His kingdom. She even risked her own life to save her people, and God exposed the evil that had come against her and the Jews through Haman. In the end, Haman and his sons were hung, and God’s people were delivered – because one woman was obedient and had found great favor in God’s sight.
To fulfill the calling on our lives by God, we need His favor. It is available to you and me today. We just need to ask for it, to obey God, Â and to receive.
“So Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus, into his royal palace in the tenth month, which is the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign. The king loved Esther more than all the other women, and she obtained grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins, so he set the royal crown upon her head and made her queen instead of Vashti. Then the king made a great feast, the Feast of Esther, for all his officials and servants, and he proclaimed a holiday and gave gifts according to the generosity of a king.” (Esther 2:16-18)
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