The Triumphant Christian Part Two: Why Defeat Persists by Apostle Joshua Selman: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

The Man Born Blind

John 9 — Jesus healed a man born blind, and when questioned by neighbors and religious leaders about how his eyes were opened, his answer was strikingly plain: "A man called Jesus made clay... and I received sight." He didn't yet know Jesus as Lord or Savior — he simply obeyed an instruction he'd been given, and the result followed. Sometimes a believer's breakthrough doesn't wait for complete theology; it follows simple obedience to what has already been made clear.

Three Kinds of Deficiency: Ignorance, Inaccurate Knowledge, Incomplete Knowledge

Someone dialing an international number who is missing two digits can enter eight correct digits and still never get through — the eight correct digits don't compensate for what's missing; the call simply fails. For some believers, the problem isn't ignorance — it's incomplete knowledge. That's more frustrating than plain ignorance, because you are carrying real truth and still not winning with it. The person who is entirely ignorant is simply in darkness and needs light. The person with inaccurate knowledge is carrying a counterfeit and needs deliverance by the word. But the person with incomplete knowledge already holds real truth — line upon line, precept upon precept is still required before that truth becomes whole enough to produce results.

Three Levels of Knowledge Every Believer Needs for Dominion

1. Know how God functions.

   A new phone comes with a manual precisely because owning it doesn't automatically mean you can operate it. If you don't know how God functions, you will eventually blame Him for things that were never His doing, and — because zeal alone doesn't discern — you become vulnerable to influences that look like God but aren't, since Satan himself can appear as an angel of light.

2. Know how the life of God in you functions.

   Receiving eternal life is like receiving a piece of software — powerful, but only as useful as your understanding of how to run it. Many believers carry that life as an unopened gift: authentic, but unused, because they were never trained to release what's actually embedded in it. If salvation alone guaranteed victory, there would be no need for ongoing transformation, impartation, prayer, or a continual walk with God — but there clearly is, which tells you receiving is only the beginning of the journey, not its conclusion.

3. Know how the kingdom was designed to function.

   Beginning in the Beatitudes, Jesus laid out the operating principles of a kingdom that runs on its own internal logic, not on the assumptions of the natural world. Believers who fail to press into these three levels of knowledge may never become triumphant in actual experience — but "the people who know their God, not just His person but how He functions, shall be strong and do exploits."

His Face and His Ways — You Need Both

There are two incomplete postures within the church. Some love the relational side of Jesus — His face, His presence, His love — but lack patience to be mentored into the ways, patterns, and principles He operates by. Others want only the keys and the power, with no genuine relational hunger for Him at all. God is relational, but He also operates on earth through patterns, systems, and principles — and every blessing already made available in Christ will only manifest for your profit once the principles connected to it are understood and engaged.

Imagine being handed a trumpet by someone who loves you completely and wants your success — you truly received it, but if no one has shown you how to use it, you can hold it for years, blame the giver for its silence, and still never produce a sound. Ephesians 1:3 — God has already blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. Receiving is potential and access; knowledge is what turns potential into experience.

Believers Fail Because They Misunderstand How the Kingdom Functions

Scientifically, someone in genuine pain runs from it — that's the natural, expected response. But scripture describes a posture that looks like lunacy by natural standards: "though the fig tree does not blossom... yet I will rejoice." That only makes sense once you understand how the kingdom actually operates — not by denying pain, but by a different governing logic entirely. Many believers fail to live victoriously not for lack of love toward God, but for lack of understanding of how the life they've received, and the kingdom they now belong to, were actually designed to function.

Every repeated failure among believers becomes a misrepresentation of the power of the cross to a watching world — it gives Satan, who is fundamentally an opportunist, exactly the material he needs. He waits at the point of frustration and financial or relational bankruptcy to whisper an accusation against the God who claims to love you but whose child can't pay her bills or live a victorious life. That accusation only lands where the principles of victory were never taught — where relationship with Jesus was present, but the ways of Jesus were never learned.