DON’T JUST ASK FOR HIS GLORY, YOU MUST KNOW HIS WAYS.
AS FAR AS THE VICTORY OF A BELIEVER IS CONCERNED, A MAJOR PART OF YOUR VICTORY AND YOUR EXCELLING IN THIS LIFE DEPENDS ON THE HEALTH AND THE QUALITY OF YOUR PRAYER LIFE.
EVERY KIND OF FAITH WORK OR CHRISTIAN PRACTICE THAT MAKES THE OUTCOME OF YOUR LIFE ABSOLUTELY DEPENDENT ON GOD, WITHOUT ANY PARTICIPATION OR PARTNERSHIP ON YOUR OWN PART AND FROM YOUR END IS INACCURATE
- Apostle Joshua Selman at Koinonia on ‘STRIVING FOR MASTERY’ (PART 2)
(PART A).
Wave your hands to Jesus, let’s give Him all the praise. Tell Him, thank You Lord for Your grace, thank You for the Holy Spirit, thank You for Your power.
Father, bless us tonight; let our lives be changed, let our lives be transformed. For the Bible declares that the Lord is that Spirit and it says where the Spirit of the Lord is, there’s liberty.
Ask God for a visitation tonight; Father, give me an encounter tonight. Give me an encounter by your Spirit, let my life change, bring a turnaround to my destiny, open my eyes, let light come from Heaven. Let all prison doors be opened; let it be a new phase for me in the name of Jesus Christ!
- That which God has in store for you will not pass you by in Jesus’ name!
Father, help us tonight. We have come to learn, we have come to grow, we have come to be built. Spirit of the living God, we submit to Your wisdom and we pray that You will open up the bread of life unto us, in Jesus’ name I pray.
God bless you!
The Psalmist said, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go to the House of the Lord. Many things happen in the house of the Lord; encounters happen in the house of the Lord, transformation happens in the house of the Lord, empowerment, fellowship, illumination, wisdom; ignorance is driven out like smoke before the wind in the presence of the Lord and tonight will be no different in the name of Jesus!
STRIVING FOR MASTERY (Part Two)
(The Laws of Dominion)
We started part one, but had to sacrifice it for the Easter celebration service and then, the Miracle Service. But now, we have to resume and please, pay attention tonight because your life will never be the same!
2 Corinthian 13:14
You see, the word ‘Communion’ is where we get the word, ‘Koinonia.’ it is a Greek word and it means communion, fellowship, sharing together, participation, like two people drinking from the same vessel. Church Gist. So, Apostle Paul said, among the many things that must be with you all, is what he calls the communion of the Holy Spirit – fellowship. Fellowship with the Holy is in two dimensions;
1). Intimacy.
Intimacy means that you get to know Him and everything that He brings as of the Father. Jesus said, when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth. So, the Holy Spirit’s primary assignment is to be able to guide us into the truth.
2). Partnership: You and the Spirit of God together, doing exploits for the Kingdom.”…and the Lord working with them, confirming the Word with signs following.”
So, every time you come, ‘this is Koinonia,’ it is not just a name of a ministry or the name of a program. It is an attempt to describe the experience that awaits you for every time you appear before the Lord. Communion that comes through the Word and communion that comes through the cooperate fellowship of the brethren and we break bread. Church Gist. To break bread there does not just mean to break physical bread like the Holy communion, even though that is profitable, but to break the Word (Acts 2:42). So for every service, please you must understand that you are not just being part of a vision or coming to honour the ritual of Spirituality. Every encounter with Jesus on this mountain is:
1). Adding to your spiritual development.
2). Giving God a chance in your life to evolve you into the version that will literally be a sign and a wonder.
Striving for mastery is a series that came by the Spirit of God to help us rise to levels of excellence in the Spirit. The goal of the series is to open us up to the systems of the Kingdom, to help us know that a possibility exists in the life and journey of a believer, where you rise from being a babe, an amateur in spiritual things; you can gain stature, you can have power with God, you can command victory perpetually through knowledge. The series hopes to drive away guess work and shadow boxing to our Christian experience, so that you can lay hold on eternal life.
There are many believers who love Jesus sincerely, but when it has to do with our faith walk and that which concerns our lives and destinies, I submit to you that most believers are confused and at best, just guessing their ways through life, in hope that they will walk in compliance with a few principles and for many of us, the only index that we use to measure progress is financial well-being and as important as that is, the moment an individual finds out that he’s doing well financially, he’s deceived to assume that, everything is alright and so, most people do not have the hunger and the drive again. In truth, money can help you do a lot of things and in that supposed accomplishment, you can forget that there are other weightier matters in the Kingdom.
2 Timothy 2:5
We laid a foundation in part one, helping us understand the spirituality of life. When I began, we were talking about the fact that, life and living is spiritual. You don’t have to be a Christian; you just have to be alive. It has nothing to do with the bias of faith; it is a fact that the realm of the spirit controls the physical realm (Hebrews 11:3, 2 Corinthians 4:18). Church Gist. So, we took out time to set that foundation straight, that life is spiritual. You cannot understand the subject mastery, until you first and foremost understand the spirituality of life. Life is spiritual, more than sociological, more than the logic of physical laws; life is spiritual.
We began to discuss a few keys that will help us to gain mastery;
1). The ministry of prayer. Jesus Himself, showing us how to live a life of mastery and excellence, emphasized on the need for a robust and a healthy prayer life (Luke 28:1, 1 Thessalonians 5:17)
As far as the victory of a believer is concerned, a major part of your victory and your excelling in this life depends on the health and the quality of your prayer life. No matter how well-meaning you are as a believer, if there’s a bankruptcy of fire upon your prayer altar, it will translate into a life of perpetual defeat. When your prayer life goes down, it is a matter of time, every other thing in your life will start reporting that absence of a healthy prayer life. Church Gist. Even Jesus prayed and He said, all men should pray. He taught His disciples to pray. The early Church, they met and part of the many things like we read in Acts 6:4, they continued steadfastly in apostles’ doctrine and in fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayer (Acts 6:4).
I did teach us, when we consider part one, that there are many dimensions to prayer. Please place your hand on your chest;
- In the name of Jesus, the spirit of death, by the power that raised Christ from the dead, right now I decree and declare in the name of Jesus; every influence of death, be broken!
We must learn to be sensitive to spiritual things. A spiritual man is not just one who prays and studies scripture, but you must train your organs of interacting with the realm of the spirit, so that you can pick signals to know, because one response can save a person and family.
- Whatever shut the ears of your destiny helpers, so that they don’t hear when the Spirit beckons on them, in the name of Jesus, by the anointing of the Spirit of God, I release them!
Every believer must submit himself or herself to the ministry of prayer. Say in the name of Jesus, I receive grace to pray!
Please hear me; the times that we live in are not times for ‘pray for me.; you must obtain grace from God to pray. There are times that Joshua Selman will not be there; you must master the acts of prayer in its entirety. Church Gist. I did teach you in part one of this series, that prayer had four principal assignment in the life of a believer. You have to go back to the message and understand the dimensions of prayer;
a). Growth and transformation. When we engage in the ministry of prayer, it supplies the strength for growth and transformation.
b). An avenue to make petitions and requests (Philippians 1:6).
c). For spiritual legislation.
d). Warfare and intercession.
2). The second key, if you want to contend for mastery, if you want your life to rise to a higher level of spiritual excellence is understanding and engaging the laws and the principles of the Kingdom. You can understand and fail to engage; you will still not get results. You need to understand, then obtain grace to engage the laws and principles of the Kingdom (Luke 11:52).
When it has to do with seeing the glory of God revealed in the life of a believer, there is always a part that you have to play. Church Gist. Every kind of faith work or Christian practice that makes the outcome of your life absolutely dependent on God, without any participation or partnership on your own part and from your end is inaccurate (Leviticus 9:6, Exodus 33:13, 18). There is a relationship between the ways of God and His glory. Don’t just ask for His glory, you must know His ways.
I gave us one law from the last time, part one and I think that’s where we end; the law of sacrifice of total surrender (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). If you really understand the extent of Jesus’ sacrifice, you will also be able to make whatever sacrifice it takes. Most believers want to gain mastery, they want to command power with God, they want to excel at extraordinary levels, but they violate this first law; the first law of dominion, as far as gaining mastery is concerned is absolute surrender. Not just what you do; who you are. You must assume a state and a posture in the spirit, where your life is completely surrendered.
I’ve said it in this house that, when you come forward to what we call ‘giving your life to Christ,’ in reality, you are not giving your life to Christ when you come forward to be saved; you are receiving His life, because there’s something wrong with that life, that’s why you are coming for another one. So, when you really come to Christ, from a theological standpoint, the person about to be saved is not giving his life to Christ; he’s receiving the life of Christ. Church Gist. Giving your life to Christ is an activity of surrender that prepares for service. The Bible now demands that you give your life to Christ, if and when you are prepared to be used by God. So, giving your life to Christ is an activity for matured believers who desire to be greatly used by God.
Let me assure you, two of you can be believers in the same church and same place, but the possibilities that you command among many factors will depend on the degree to which you are surrendered. You will never be able to receive the same kind of result with a believer who is yielded and surrendered, if and when you are not. You can call the same name of Jesus, you can read the same Bible; it is the realm of the Spirit that will tell you the difference. The law of total surrender stems from the understanding that, all that I am and all that I have, belong to Him and that I must lose the ability to tell Him no. Any believer who has not lost the ability to tell God ‘No’, is not truly yielded. You must consciously, as an act of your will, lose the ability to tell Him ‘No.’
Most believers are not yielded, they come to God, negotiating everything at their terms; they want the power of God at their terms, they want victory at their terms, the want an excelling life at their terms. When you come to Him, you die to self. I taught you that there are two things you must overcome to be great in life;
a). Sin
b). Self.
If you are free from sin and you are not free from self, you will still suffer. You must be free from sin and self. Unbelievers have two problems; sin and self. Believers have the problem of self. Church Gist. Let me tell you this; with one confession of truth, the issue of sin is done by faith, but it does not take one confession to deal with self. When it has to do with self, it is “I die daily.” Because there are many versions of that self that you will not see now, until you rise to a particular level. So, you die level by level.
When you surrender everything to God, therein lies true liberty in the Spirit. Taking His place to maintain your life and to maintain everything around your life will destroy you; you don’t have that capacity. It is burdensome to try to take the place of God in your life. You don’t know how many things He does, if you try to step into that shoe, it is too big. Eternity will not even afford you the opportunity to fill that space. Church Gist. So, hand over everything in your life to Him. That way, you save yourself the burden of ownership and now, the burden of stewardship is the one you can handle. You cannot handle the burden of an owner, because whoever owns is the one who sees to it that that process or that thing continue to remain. You don’t have the power to make anything remain; you can only maintain what you are given.
Let me tell you; anything you drive God from, you automatically invited satan into it. The absence of God is automatically the presence of evil. There are few times in the Bible where satan was invited, he’s a master at badging into lives and destinies. Surrender is a very powerful Kingdom secret.
The truths that I share with you, number one, they are not my ideas; an invention of mind. That will be evil and wicked. Number two, they are not vain babblings and philosophies of men. Church Gist. The truths that I share with you are scriptural, they are time tested principles from scripture and in the life of uncommon mentors and successful people across the globe. You can rest in the fact that, the spiritual menu that you are receiving is not that which will destroy you, but it is up to you, to open up your heart to receive holistically. Don’t just cherry pick what you think is relevant; your own assignment is not to tamper with the equation; trust the One who has led me to prepare that spiritual meal and take it holistically.
2). The law of mental transformation.
Whoever told you that your mind does not have a role to play as far as gaining mastery is concerned; I shared with you my own experience that probably based on my background and the level of spiritual exposure as that time, we were not really taught; when I began with God, the emphasis was the health of your spirit mind and I think it should be so in that order. When you begin your spiritual pursuit, the emphasis should be the health of your spirit mind, not just philosophies and laws. It always starts with God; not principles.
Proverbs 23:7
When I have the privilege of mentoring people or talking to them, my primary focus is helping and guiding their spiritual lives, but when we are able to achieve that, the next port of call becomes, to invest time and energy and quality information in reconstructing their belief systems. Most of us derive our thinking and our mindset from culture primarily; the cultural experiences that we’ve had are shapers of our understanding. Number two, our experiences; past and present and they can build destructive memories and those destructive memories can affect us.
We build our mindset from our associations; friends, relatives. The implication of friendship is that, subconsciously, when you bring people close to your life, what you are saying is that, you are submitting yourself to their own ideologies too. The failure that you have embraced in your life came as a result of programming. Church Gist. There are many people today, I have seen so many people, tongue-talking people and sometimes, anointed men and women of God and sometimes, when they see me do the things that God does through me, most of them will rejoice, but believe me, they do not know that there’s an ancient stumbling block resident within their minds that makes them believe that it is impossible for God to use you that far.
There are people today, the limitations to your exploits in the spirit and even towards gaining mastery has nothing to do with a demonic attack; all the spirits have been driven, yet you are still failing. You know why? Because there’s a stumbling block, there’s something that has been programmed in your mind that you can’t go this far. But by this teaching, in the name of Jesus, that stumbling block, by the power that raised Christ from the dead, let that stumbling block depart from you now!
When I began my walk with God, my life was full of visions and I submit to you, some of them, I’ve seen them happen already, some are still on the way happening and others are yet to come. But when I saw some of these visions, you can imagine at that level, starting naive in spiritual things on many grounds and seeing God show me all of these things, it was up to me now to believe; “God, can you do this now with me; to the nations and across the globe?” Thank God for the mentorship of great men like Dr. Myles Munroe who challenged me and made me know that it is possible. I told you, ambitiously, I wrote a letter to several men of God when I was starting, in Nigeria and across Africa. I took that step of faith, I can’t even remember what I wrote, I just wrote and told all of them that God called me; what do they have to say? How can you guide me? To my greatest shock, I was called at the post office, that there was one reply waiting for me and I went there and opened that letter and this was Dr. Myles Munroe, he wrote it hand written and he was encouraging me and said, “listen; as at then, he said I have the largest church in Bahamas by the grace of God and still, I am relevant in the political space. I am adviser to many presidents, I have written books with many best sellers; never, never limit yourself’ and I said, this is it.
As simple as what I’m telling you is, there are some of you seated here, you have robbed us of the books that we should be reading, some of you, businesses, some of you, even ministries. Listen; never downplay the extent of limitation that a poor or a faulty mindset can bring to your destiny. Church Gist. Don’t you think demons are the only things that stop you from going forward; mindset can stop you. There are times demons don’t need to do anything; when they find a mindset as large as them there, they will go back because the same thing will happen to you. We who are privileged to be in this side of the continent and this nation, subliminally, we have been programmed as individuals and as a people to put limitations on our lives. Our history itself, naturally comes with propositions of limitations. I’m not talking of being blindly ambitious, I’m talking of being full of confidence, knowing this that He that cometh from above, He’s above all.
Deuteronomy 28:1-2
When I started seeing visions, I’ll never forget; I was in Port Harcourt in 2007, attending to a dear lady then who was sick, she later passed on and I remember the teaching hospital there, it was my turn to attend her, you know as a man of God and I suddenly looked outside from that bed space and I was opened to a vision, I saw 37 flags and that was the international headquarters of Koinonia, I saw it there and I wrote it down. I said; “Lord, I believe it. We are going there.” Church Gist. For some of you, nothing good has come to your life because your mindset had commanded every good thing to return, to the extent that if people favour you, you don’t believe it because your mindset has been so deconstructed, it is against the laws of your life. For some, can something be that easy?
There are many of you here, who intellectually speaking, you are about the brightest and the finest, yet you have fallen into this deception of satan that you are good for nothing. You can choose to be in Egypt and yet be thinking Canaan. In fact, you have to think Canaan to go to Canaan. Church Gist. Right from when I was in one room, I stand by the God of Heaven; I believed everything God told me, I’m not just speaking in terms of finances and all of that, no. I believed it that one day, I’ll speak to kings and nations (Jeremiah 1:5-6). Church Gist. For someone, God is speaking to you that He’s lifting you, not just spiritually; He’s taking you to UN, AU and when you think about it, you just laugh at yourself and say; me?
I came to challenge that devil, every mindset that will not let you rise, ill speaking of men that kept putting you down, I curse it right now in the name of Jesus!
Sadly, but unfortunately, many of us probably came from families where it was a norm to speak words of discouragement. I remember a particular person many years ago, he got an award and when he called his parents, they said he should go and return it to the rightful owner because the father said, “this my stupid and useless boy, it’s impossible to have that award.” There’s a gentleman here in Koinonia, the gentleman came and met me a month or two in school of ministry and he had designed a drone; a drone system that will be such a blessing to several people and big men across this nation and he had designed also, something like the engine of a vehicle. Church Gist. I looked at him and I held his hands and said, my dear one, listen to me; “no matter what happens, let me give you two confessions; one, it is going to be difficult to rise to the top. Go and listen to my message, this grace called favour, because in Nigeria, you need favour, not just skills to rise. Number two, I told him, no matter what happens, don’t give up on your dreams.”
How many times have you seen people who produce results that were far less than what you know you could do and yet, you are forced to clap for them because their mindsets were more superior than yours; not because they had a better idea. Because of the colour of your skin, sociological context; you can allow life to reduce you to a point where many of us call ourselves grasshoppers. They limited themselves; God never call them grasshoppers, satan never call them grasshoppers; they call themselves grasshoppers.
One of the ways God delivers you from negative mindset, He will take you out of the environment that caused it. It is a system of quarantine; He will take you away from the naysayers and the negative cycles and quarantine you in a spiritual environment like this, where you keep hearing faith-filled words. Church Gist. Six months under this kind of atmosphere and all that is left in your destiny is fire, burning every mediocrity out of your life. How do you think God is going to send you to the nations? With this mindset? How do you arrive at another man’s land and yet, do what God says you should do?
- I’m here to speak to someone, no matter what your mindset is saying now, what God says about you must remain!
#MondayMoments
#ApostleJoshuaSelman
#StrivingForMasteryPart2
#KoinoniaAbuja
#KoinoniaGlobal
#ChurchGist