For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Dr. Jerry Grillo on Awakening the Giver and Unlocking God's Favor
About this episode
Dr. Jerry Grillo, author, speaker, and host of the daily YouTube series "Favor Talk" on the God's Strong TV channel, joins Philip Cameron for a revelatory conversation about what he calls the battle between source and resource — and why keeping the giver alive inside you is the key to unlocking God's supernatural favor. Drawing from Matthew 14 and the story of the widow of Zarephath, Dr. Grillo unpacks how famine, scarcity, and crisis are not designed to destroy you but to reposition you. "The enemy's greatest weapon is to use the lack of something to destroy the giver in me," he says, "because if I lose the giver, I have no tomorrow." He connects the widow's act of making Elijah's cake first to the principle that giving defines the size of your harvest — echoing the prophet Elisha's instruction to "go get vessels, not a few." Dr. Grillo also explores how tragedy creates new trajectory for favor, tracing Ruth's story through loss and famine all the way into the lineage of Jesus and King David. His core decree: "God will turn your setbacks into comebacks when you wake the giver up." Discover Dr. Grillo's books and daily teaching at drjerrygrillo.com.
Part of our Giving collection of conversations.
More by Dr. Jerry Grillo
What's Discussed
Dr. Jerry Grillo, host of the YouTube series 'Favor Talk' on God's Strong TV, delivers a powerful teaching on what he calls the battle between source and resource. He argues that the enemy's primary strategy is to use scarcity and crisis to silence the giver inside every believer — because a dead giver means no future harvest. Anchoring his message in Matthew 14, the widow of Zarephath, and the book of Ruth, Dr. Grillo demonstrates that famine is not a dead end but a divine setup. He traces Ruth's tragedy-to-trajectory arc all the way into the lineage of Jesus, and decrees that every setback becomes a comeback the moment the giver is awakened. His books are available at drjerrygrillo.com.
- Source vs. Resource: The Core Battle
- The Enemy Assassinates Love Through Lack
- Elijah, the Widow, and Defining Your Harvest
- Movement vs. Arrival: Why Givers Stay Alive
- Waking the Giver: Decree Over Setbacks
- Tragedy Creates Trajectory for Favor
- Ruth, Naomi, and the Lineage of Jesus
Scripture in this episode
Episode Transcript
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Intro
Philip:Hey, welcome to the Daily Faith today. My name is Philip Cameron, and I am absolutely delighted you could be with us. We are so excited about today's guest — Dr. Jerry Grillo is with us, a man that has an extraordinary way of encapsulating thought into a phrase and a sentence. He writes epistles in a thought, and it's absolutely a blessing in my life. He's a dear friend and I can't wait for you to meet him again today, those seeing him for the first time and those who have seen him before.
Philip:Every Monday at nine o'clock we are on CTN, which is across the country. Wherever you're watching just now, you can see this on CTN — DirecTV Channel 376, Dish TV's 262, and glorious Channel 117. We're also seen on Integrity, with my dear friend Dale Hill, Destiny Television, and TCT. My dear friend, please pray for Garth — he is having a tremendous battle for his life at the moment. I want to see him see another day, and he needs the circle of God. We love him and Tina and all the family, the Koons family. So please be praying for them.
Philip:For those watching for the first time — and those that watch us regularly will know this — we have a mission work in Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. We've been there for 33 years. God positions you — and this is important to understand — God prepositions you in places that maybe today mean nothing, but tomorrow become the center of the world. I often think of those five stones that lay in the brook. David is running towards Goliath, and he jumps over the brook and then thinks, I better get some ammunition to fight my giant. He turns around and picks up five smooth stones. A stone that is smooth has been worked on — it's been ground and turned and rubbed. You don't become a smooth stone in five minutes. You become a smooth stone over centuries, over eons of time, and God put those stones in the right place at the right time for a Goliath to be slain.
Philip:Six years ago we rented and leased a house in Odessa, Ukraine. I didn't know why I was going there — we didn't speak about it much in our church services, I didn't raise money for it directly. It was just part of the vision that we have to help trafficked kids. And then the war broke out. My wife Chrissy was there the night before the war exploded, and we've been going there back and forth since the war started. We've been feeding thousands of people, helping folks that are in desperate need, living at the point of extinction.
Philip:I can't express the damage that's being done to this country right now. They just sent me a video the other day that I thought you'd like to see. The kids you see in this video are orphan kids, rejected by their own folks, now missionaries in a war zone — right in the middle of bombs and missiles. These kids went and shared the gospel. Watch this.
A year ago their world was a happy place. They had jobs, their kids were in school, the corner shop sold bread and cheese and everything else. Their world was just like yours.
Until, through the mist and snow, monsters came. The tracks rattled on the ice-packed fields. The guns pointed towards the world they lived in. It took less than a second to obliterate everything that they had spent their lives building. There are no accurate numbers as to how many have died. The end is nowhere in sight. We have been in Ukraine for years. From the first explosion we were involved — we took this assault personally. The bystander's hands could not stand on the sidelines doing nothing.
Our amazing group of young men and women did the unimaginable. Once again they drove into a war zone. Once victims themselves, they have felt personally the hand of grace and redemption. To go to this devastated world seems to them as normal as having a meal or going to church. They drove for hours, unable to stop and stretch their legs, as inches on each side of the vehicles were live mines. Every few miles they were stopped at checkpoints by nervous soldiers. They were running along the line between the Russians and Ukrainians.
Our team finally reached Kherson, a recently liberated city still held in the grip of desperation. They had brought food, wood-burning stoves that will save lives in the bitter, deadly cold that is to come. They brought blankets that to many is the only barrier between survival and death. On a dreary day, within the sound of guns and bombs, the most astonishing thing took place — the rescued became the rescuers.
Hundreds waited in the rain, shuffling along in a line that ended up in love — smiles, bread, fish, and the words of care from the heart of the redeemed. As they traveled they came across bombed-out villages, scarred by the strife of bullets, destroyed by the instruments of death. Their water, electricity, and everything else was gone. But the wood and stoves had become the guardian against the deadly cold.
We know it is impossible for most to even imagine this world. But by giving and praying together for this unfolding tragedy, we can join our hearts and hands to bring the hope that was sent to earth by the living God. If it were us, we would wait in line hoping that someone, somewhere, was thinking of us. We must go back. Will you send us? Every gift you give allows us to be his hands.
Philip:The young faces you just watched on that video were orphans. The voice you've just been listening to — her name is Jazz Goo — she's a house parent in one of our homes, once an orphan herself. These kids went right into a city that had been liberated just a few hours earlier from the Russian soldiers, and the people had been living there — those that can't escape, the older folk who can't escape, those with no money who can't escape — and they sit and wait for the bombs to fall. Our kids went right into the middle of the war zone and fed them loaves and fishes, loaves and fishes, the miracle of loaves and fishes.
Philip:I want you to pray right now about helping us. We want to go back again and again and again, and we are limited in our funds. This war has literally drained us — we have stretched everything we know how. We bought blankets at $20 each and we've bought thousands of them. These stoves — you can take wood, so a house that has lost power, you can take one of these stoves in, put wood inside the stove, and you can heat a house from an old-fashioned wood-burning stove. We have those, and they are giving one to that lady in the red coat — a widow — and that's them delivering a wood stove in Ukraine.
Philip:I need you to pray about helping us. $150 is what that stove costs us to put on the ground right there. Please help us. You can buy a stove. The wood is in the back of the vans. All of these photographs are taken by our kids in the war zone — you can see the hand of God and the love of God being extended. That's the people lined up — over a thousand folks standing in line in the rain to get bread and fish from us that day, given away by our kids.
Philip:We need to finish buying the house. There's a house in Odessa that we've been using for six years, and the man who owns it is selling it. He's given us a year, and now we're in the new year and we haven't done it yet. We are $70,000 away from buying that house. That house houses 24 girls — we can rescue 24 girls in that house. As we stand at the moment those girls are in Moldova, but they're going to have to go back to Ukraine at any time, and if he sells the house to someone else there's no way for them to go back to. I'm asking you in the name of Jesus to give a gift today — just write "New House in Odessa" or "Mission House in Odessa." Make sure you designate the gift — it'll go separately and it'll go straight to that house.
Philip:I believe there's someone watching this — Philip, I can do this. God has blessed me and I can make a place of safety for these kids. Our address is very simple: The Orphan's Hands, PO Box 25, Clinton, Tennessee 37716. The Orphan's Hands, PO Box 25, 37716. You can go to DailyFaith.TV. You can also call 1-833-DAILY-FAITH, and by doing so you can be God's standard. You can literally stop cold from killing a family, because that's the plan — Putin is letting winter do what his soldiers can't. If they take away the water and they take away the power and they take away the fuel, and there's a 30-degrees-below-zero night, it doesn't take bombs anymore.
Philip:They will come by cold. And we are standing between them and that. I need you to pray with us and ask God, what will you have me to do? The power of life and death is in your hand. Please call us, contact us today, and I know God will bless you.
Philip:My dear friend Jerry Grillo is with us. He's a great man of God, a man that I have unbounded respect for. He has written multiple books, and I'm going to let you know how to get a hold of these books — I'm holding seven right now. He has thoughts on God that I wish had been revealed to me, and he's a great source of inspiration in my life. Jerry, I am delighted you could take time. I know you're as busy a man as I am, but I am so glad you're with us today. How are you doing, my brother?
Dr. Jerry Grillo:I'm doing great. I want to say Happy New Year to everybody, and thank you. I don't know if I'm as busy as you are — I don't know about that. And I almost ran upstairs and got my hoodie. I have a couple of those hoodies sitting upstairs.
Philip:Well, you're not getting back on the Daily Faith unless you wear one of these hoodies. Calvin Klein does not do it for me. I've got the pull — I've got the horse right here. We're both backsliding. We're going to get Daily Faith hoodies on you.
Source vs. Resource: The Core Battle
Dr. Jerry Grillo:You know, when you were talking — first of all, I love your ministry, I love you, my wife, my family, my church — they love everything about you. But when you were just talking about the winter coming and waiting on winter, I was just thinking for a minute that the battle really is between source and resource. You spoke that word about loaves and fishes, and immediately my mind went to Matthew 14, when they were in a desert place — a place of scarcity, of famine. And a lot of times what hell has positioned us in — scarcities and famines — is nothing more than a setup for God to produce favor and bring source to that resource.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:Wow. So God's gonna intervene. You know, I was just thinking — if a thousand people gave seventy dollars, the house is bought. If seventy people gave a thousand, the house is bought. I mean, if we come together — if a hundred of us did $700, that's $70,000. Yeah.
The Enemy Assassinates Love Through Lack
Philip:So you think about what I say — if I could take someone and stand them outside that house right now, in war-torn Ukraine, and say, I can buy this house for a thousand dollars, I can save 24 girls' lives for years to come — 24, then 24 more, then 24 more — I can save them for a thousand dollars. Most people I know would say, oh my Lord, I can believe God for that. Seventy people thinking that thought and it's taken care of. And think of the value — I'm sowing a seed, but think of the harvest in the mind of God.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:Oh my goodness — 24, and 48, and I mean you start thinking about the value of human life, the value of a saved life. Let me tell you, the most dangerous season in my life is the season — or the person — who destroys the giver in me. The enemy's greatest weapon is to use the lack of something to destroy the giver in me, because if I lose the giver I have no tomorrow. Hell knows it. So that is just famine. He uses recession, he uses inflation. Everybody's crying about eggs being $13 a dozen, but you know what? That's all resource. When are we, the kingdom of God, going to realize that God is the source of all things of the earth, and I'm in the kingdom?
Dr. Jerry Grillo:You're in the kingdom. I said it — I have a dual passport. I have an American passport, but I have a kingdom passport. That qualifies me, and in the kingdom of God, Philip, it is recovery and restoration. There is no recession, no inflation. This is source against resource. I had a picture — if God has to do it, he'll put a bubble over those people just like he did in the desert in Exodus. At night he kept them warm by fire, and by day he shaded them with the cloud. God can do the supernatural if you and I — I'm almost starting to preach here — will not allow the enemy in.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:Love doesn't die. Love doesn't die. You know what? A thought just came to me — love doesn't die in the church, it's assassinated. It gets assassinated in me when I allow the circumstance and the crisis around me to kill the giver inside of me, because the only power I have in my future is what I can release right now as the giver in me.
Philip:Oh my gracious. Thank God. Is that powerful? What are your thoughts on that? All I can think of is when the prophet said to the widow, go get vessels — not a few. She had done the giving, she had baked the cake, she had done the thing that was necessary for her. And then he says, you go borrow vessels, not a few. He allowed her to define the size of her harvest. And she went and got all these vessels, and at some point in her life she sat down and said to her boys, okay boys, that's enough. And what giving does — or the limitation of giving — determines how far your boundaries and your horizons will be.
Elijah, the Widow, and Defining Your Harvest
Philip:Whenever this ministry is at a challenge, I start giving money away. I give thousand-dollar gifts continuously, because I know that only as I'm giving does God see me as faithful — not just into Moldova, not just into Ukraine, all the stuff we're doing there, tens of thousands of dollars a month. But whenever I find someone in need, I'm the first person to say, let's give them, let's sow. Because I know that by giving, by throwing my seed forward, I'm telling the devil, I know who I believe, and I am persuaded he's able to keep that which I've committed — what I've thrown forward, the thing that I've given forward to him. And what I've committed, I'm securing my future. I'm not going to allow the devil to kill the giver in me, assassinate my love. Write that down, folks.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:It's a key. It's a key. You know, when the prophet — think about it — he called rain down, he ended a drought. Then he gets a word from an adversary, Jezebel, and he flees to a cave. And here's what God says, and this is interesting — God tells the prophet, go to the widow. So here, he's not going to do great things. He says, I have scheduled a widow, because the raven quit coming and the brook dried up. It dawned on me that I'm not built for arrival — I'm built for movement. I'm not built for arrival, I'm built for movement. That's how the giver stays alive. Things keep moving when I keep moving. When I stop moving and think I've arrived, that's when God stops the raven from coming, makes the brook dry up, and then says, I've scheduled — and here, it wasn't for the prophet, it was for the widow. It was because he said, if I can move the prophet, the widow's going to die.
Movement vs. Arrival: Why Givers Stay Alive
Dr. Jerry Grillo:And what the Bible says is, I've scheduled the widow to feed you. But when the prophet got there, she has no idea who he is. So it's like, what did God tell the widow? How does the widow — what word is this? Is this a contradiction in verbiage? I've scheduled the widow to feed you, but the widow doesn't even know he's a minister, doesn't even know who he is, hasn't even been looking for him. And so the move is that the famine was killing the giver in her, and the famine was killing the giver in him. And she had to discern who he was. She was only willing to release what she did not have — she had to embrace a moment. She says, I have enough cake for me and my son, that's it. And she said, tomorrow we will die. So my tomorrow is assassinated when the giver in me dies.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:And God knew it — she had 24 hours of breath left. But if God could unlock the giver in that widow — this is what happened. He says to her, make my cake first. Take it off the top. Honor what God has done. Discern what is in the moment. Discern the pattern of a place. God is in the places. Matter of fact, he made places before he made people. That's how God built that house for 24 girls — not for that guy. He built a place first.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:Oh my gracious. And then he decided who was going to fill it, and then he was believing in the church, the kingdom of God, to wake up the giver in them — to put 24 girls in a place that God had built. Once we understand how God works, we are nothing but conduits of movement. That's true. And she makes the cake, but here's what he says — he decreed it. And I'm going to decree this right here: that God will turn your setback, when you sow into this thing today — I hadn't planned on going this way, we didn't even talk about this. God will turn your setbacks this year into comebacks. God will turn your emptiness into empowerment. God's going to turn every effort you have into energy. He's going to turn a dead season into a delivered season, because you woke the giver up in 2023. You woke the giver up and you said, I will not let 24 girls die and freeze when God built a house in the kingdom for them.
Waking the Giver: Decree Over Setbacks
Dr. Jerry Grillo:He didn't build the house for the guy — he built the house for them. He just used the guy to put a building in a place for 24 girls. And no one knew that the 24 would rotate in, 24 more in, 24 more. You know, 24 — double government, 12 and 12 is 24. I believe in numbers. That's double authority. I believe those that help buy this house are going to move into double authority, double power, in this ministry — into delivered seasons. And why? Because when you wake up the giver, you woke up God.
Philip:You don't know how much this means. You don't know how much it means, because what's happening is — at the end of last year we said we've got to pay it off, we've got to have the house by the end of last year. And here we are now into the next year, and he wants to sell the house. The devil's been saying to me, man, you have blown it. Now you're in January and the giving feeling is gone. And he has been really hurting me the last few days. And what you're telling me is this — that guy built this for the girls. And if the devil's talking, he's trying to silence what God said.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:So if he's talking to you about that, he is trying to silence what God has already said. And here's the thing — the greatest scripture in the Bible is not John 3:16. The greatest scripture in the Bible is Genesis 1, "and then God said" — God said — because anything God said, hell can't get unsaid. Glory. So Paul said, I speak because he has spoken. That's already spoken. See, here's the travesty — God has already spoken a house for 24. He's waiting on the givers in us, the giver in us. Because if I can wake up the giver, I will never have a season of lack in my house. Because you can't assassinate my love. If the giver stays alive, hell uses crisis situations, economies, governments — uses everything within resources suddenly. But so does God.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:Jerry, God uses crisis too. The devil means it for evil, God turns it around. So the devil says, boy, I got you this time — you're done. And then God stands up and says, whoa, not now — you're into my world. And you know what God taught me, Philip? Oh, this is very important — a key to people — because you can't avoid trouble, you can't avoid struggle, you can't run, there's no safe place on the earth from tragedy. Tragedy shows up. But you know what? The Holy Ghost said to me, he said, every tragedy creates a new trajectory for favor. A tragedy is not trying to destroy you. If there's no tragedy in Bethlehem Judah, if there's no famine, Elimelech and Naomi and their kids never go to Moab. But God had a Ruth waiting in Moab. And the tragedy changed trajectory to get a family to marry into the family of Naomi.
Tragedy Creates Trajectory for Favor
Dr. Jerry Grillo:Then Naomi's husband dies and her two sons die — another tragedy. Trajectory to get Ruth back. Oh my God. Back into the religion — back into the lineage of Jesus. What do you say? Ruth — the tragedy got Ruth into the lineage of Jesus. Unbelievable. She's the great-grandmother of David. Unbelievable.
Ruth, Naomi, and the Lineage of Jesus
Philip:Jerry, I've got to talk about your books. You've got to listen — if you're watching this program, you've got to get in contact with this man. DrJerryGrillo.com — DrJerryGrillo.com. He has books, and if you love your pastor, go right now to this website and order every one of this man's books. It will enrich your life hugely. It will bless your pastor, it will bless the church. This is one of the resources of my life. If you want to know who comes into my spirit and quickens me, this is one of the men that God uses.
Philip:He does a thing called Favor Talk — Favor Talk, every day Monday through Friday at nine o'clock on his YouTube page, and his YouTube is God's Strong TV. I want you to get in contact with this man. His revelation on faith — let me tell you something — will stir you. And what I love about it is it isn't loony stuff. It's foundational stuff. It's how we should have been, it's how we should be thinking. And all these books — Live Big, Dream Big, 31 Favor Decisions, Survive to Thrive, More Than Restored, Daddy's Gone, Saved but Damaged, and Life — Live It to the Win. You need to get these books and more from my friend Jerry.
Philip:We're out of time. I love you, man. You've got to come back — we've got to do this more often. And thank you for coming in to Tennessee. Come on, I'll take you for another nice meal. Thank you for watching Daily Faith. Please help us with this house. We love you. God bless you today. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye-bye.
Topics
jerry grillobiblical generosityfavorwidow of zarephathsource and resourceruth and naomisupernatural provision