This Grace Called Favour by Apostle Joshua Selman: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Students in the School of the Spirit

Spiritual growth is for people who take God seriously — those disciplined enough to walk in keeping with divine principles. 2 Timothy 4:3 warns that in the last days, some will refuse to endure sound doctrine.

Believers are not fans or followers. A follower is one who subscribes to an individual or platform based on emotions and conditional interest. In the kingdom, those submitted to growth are called disciples — students who have entered a covenant of submission to learn.

Within that covenant, two things define a disciple:

• You do not choose the menu for your growth — that is the assignment of the Holy Spirit in partnership with God's shepherds
• The menu a spiritual shepherd serves is knowledge and understanding — Jeremiah 3:15

According to 2 Chronicles 15:3, any territory is in serious trouble when three things are absent:

1. The knowledge of and allegiance to the true God
2. A teaching priest
3. Law and order

Every time you appear before the Lord, you must fight every spirit of distraction. In the parable of the sower, Satan's singular assignment is to steal the word. Those who heard and had understanding bore fruit — some thirtyfold, some sixty, some a hundredfold.

The Grace Called Favour

Philippians 1:7 — Paul says, "Ye all are partakers of my grace."

When God calls a man, among the many equippings he grants are several kinds and dimensions of engracings. What you should receive by submitting under a ministry is not merely spiritual information — you must become partakers of that grace. To partake of a grace means to be a benefactor of that spiritual investment.

2 Corinthians 8:7 — Paul urges believers: as you abound in faith, utterance, knowledge, diligence, and love, see that you abound in this grace also. It is possible to embrace certain dimensions of grace and yet the fullness of it may not find expression in your life.

Why Favour Has Been Difficult to Receive

Of all the dimensions of grace, favour has proven to be among the hardest to receive and replicate. Many believers receive graces for prophecy, miracles, the anointing, and revelation with relative ease — but not this one.

The primary reason: a flawed definition.

The mainstream definition — that favour is unmerited access — is incomplete. Favour is multi-dimensional, and calling the whole of it unmerited is destructive. When believers believe favour is unmerited, they see no reason to study its dynamics or comply with its principles.

Favour is merited.

The one dimension of favour that genuinely resembles unmerited access is salvation — the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. Every other dimension of favour is merited.

Consider wisdom: because people know wisdom is merited, they pursue it. They study everything about it. The same logic must apply to favour.

Proverbs 13:15 — "Good understanding giveth favour, but the way of transgressors is hard."

This verse presents two women, each pregnant:

• Good Understanding — her child is called Favour
• Transgression (violation of patterns) — her child is called Hardship

Hardship is not merely a sociological phenomenon. It is not simply the absence of privilege. Hardship has a mother — and her name is transgression.

What Favour Is

Man by default is limited — not necessarily because he is evil, but because of the constraints of wearing a mortal body. Good people and bad people face the same limitations. God, in his wisdom and love, designed what can be called systems of advantage — spiritual mechanisms that, when accessed, can turn an ordinary limited believer into a sign and a wonder.

Examples of systems of advantage include:

• Speed — the grace that compresses ten years of progress into one or two
• Restoration — as when a woman who waited fifteen years for a child receives triplets; God did not just give children, he gave back time
• Favour — the equalizer that brings a life back into balance when it has been cruel and imbalanced by default

Definition 1: Favour is divine help — divine assistance. God in partnership with men, providing help and support to one's life and destiny.

Definition 2: Favour is when God raises men to invest their time, their resources, and their credibility over your destiny.

Luke 2:52 — even Jesus, the Word of God, had to contend for favour to excel in his assignment. He increased in wisdom, stature, and favour — with God and with men.

There are two levels of favour:

• Favour with God — produces encounters, illumination, angelic visitations, and understanding of scripture
• Favour with men — produces earthly advancement, open doors, and the loyalty of key people; this is what enables excelling in life and destiny

Both are necessary. The earth has been given to the sons of men. Many believers have favour with God — access to revelation — but suffer in life because they do not understand the dynamics of the favour that operates in the human realm.

Every testimony of victory and success in this kingdom is connected to favour.

In this kingdom, who hates you does not matter — but who likes you matters.

• A king rejected Vashti and she lost her throne immediately
• The same king loved Esther — and a village girl became queen
• Haman hated God and the Jews, yet remained in the palace and had dominion as long as the king loved him
• Ruth met Boaz and in a moment her life was changed
• Israel endured 430 years of Pharaoh's oppression — yet when God placed this grace upon them, those same Egyptians gave them gold, silver, and everything they used to build the tabernacle

All blessings come from God — but they come through men to men.

When God says yes and the helpers of your destiny say no, the answer remains in the realm of the spirit. It will not manifest in this realm.

Even God needed men. Jesus, the eternal Word, could not come to earth until a woman donated her womb. As mighty as the Word was, it remained in the realm of the spirit until Mary said, "Be it unto me according to your word" — and the Word became flesh.

There are people in the earth who are uncircumventable. You cannot go around them. If God wants to help you, he will make them favour you. That is how you pass through that gate.

Most of what believers pray for today — the answers are not coming down from heaven. The answers are already on earth, sitting on the tables of certain individuals. It is literally within their power. One signature can turn a life around.

The Four Keys That Activate Favour

Key 1 — Honour

Honour is the key to access. When a door closes and refuses to open, the padlock used to shut it is called dishonour.

Definition: Honour is the discerning, the celebrating, and the rewarding of men for their distinctive difference — their uniqueness.

Real honour begins with discernment. All men are equal in Christ, but as far as the discipline of purpose and the sacrifice of destiny is concerned, all men are not the same. Great men are not great by accident — they are testaments of endurance.

• The difference between a senior advocate and a young lawyer starting out is years — years of investing to build credibility, years of mistakes, years of paying the price to learn
• Many wealthy men and anointed ministers, if they told their stories, would bring a listener to tears
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Apostle Joshua Selman
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• Awards are not displays of luck — they are testimonies that a price was paid

The clearest and cheapest expression of honour is thanksgiving. Ingratitude is a display of dishonour.

• Do not send a one-word text. Give people a sense of exclusivity: "You are that valuable to me."
• Honour is magnetic — it keeps helpers within your vicinity
• It is the Holy Spirit's job to send them to you; it is your job to maintain them through honour

Many believers have had doors shut against them — by uncles who could open opportunities in a heartbeat, by bosses whose signatures carry enormous weight, by ministers who discerned the grace upon a person but were met with pride. It was dishonour that closed those doors.

Your certificate will give you a job. Honour will guide your promotion.

There is a realm you reach where everyone has the same qualifications. The distinguishing factor becomes the practice of these mysteries.

Honour is a stream of income — one that requires no capital to start and is marvellously failproof.

The dimension you honour is the dimension that delivers to you.

• A father can be blessing nations prophetically and yet never see fruit in the life of a child who refuses to honour the prophetic grace in him
• Matthew 10:41 — he that receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward

There are people today who obtained land they never paid for because they honoured their way into ownership. There are househelps who received inheritances worth millions because the entitled children were too irresponsible to be trusted with what they despised.

Key 2 — Value

Definition: Value is a measure of your usefulness — through your ability to provide solutions within the context of a civilization.

Proverbs 22:29 — "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings."

This is the law of competence. It is not enough to be valuable in the abstract. Your value must be:

• Exceptional — not merely average
• Needed — within the context of the civilization you are serving
• Useful — what you cannot personally be paid for does not count in the marketplace

How do you know you are valuable?

• By who is willing to pursue you
• By the inconvenience people are willing to endure to access you
• When people press through crowds to get to you, pain is no longer a factor — that is what value does

Focus on developing yourself more than your business plan. It is good to give value, but it is better to be the value yourself.

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Success is not what you pursue. You attract success by who you become, more than by what you do. Your becoming is greater than your doing. The most important thing about success is not what you obtain — it is the version of you that must be attained to have that result.

• A better-cultured version
• A more disciplined version
• A more spiritually developed version
• A more cautious, more refined version

Beware of arrival mentality. Do not stop developing until the kings of an industry are your audience. It is only kings who can reward you in a way that befits your sacrifice.

• Joseph received nothing for interpreting the dreams of the butler and baker — except the leverage that eventually took him to the palace
• When he solved the king's problem, what he received, read for yourself
• David, for killing Goliath — read what he received

Key 3 — Relationships

Amos 3:3 — "Can two walk together except they be agreed?"

The word agreed here means compatible. Everything becomes fruitful on the basis of relationship:

• Children come through the relationship of husband and wife
• The anointing comes through the relationship between a believer and the Holy Spirit
• Understanding comes through the relationship between a believer and the word

Definition: Relationships are advantageous connections. Not every person who is physically close qualifies as a relationship — if there is no mutual advantage, it is not a relationship in the kingdom sense.

There is an intelligence required for managing relationships. Many believers have been at a disadvantage here, while those outside the faith often intuitively understand what relationships can accomplish.

When God lifts a person, the first thing to do with that lifting is to use it as leverage to build relationships. Forget acquisition — acquisition is tertiary. Lifting has a window; use it strategically, because according to the law of times and seasons, it will not always be like that.

Four categories of people every believer needs:

1. Divine Connectors — they cannot help you directly, but they know who can and will connect you
2. Men and Women of Influence — willing to invest their credibility and track record to help you rise
3. Gifted People — those who produce results; sometimes you need more than kindness, you need outcomes
4. Burdenbearers — their assignment is not to move you forward but to stop you from going backward

Do not build relationships only with those who have already risen. Those who are rising are more powerful investments relationally than those who have already arrived. If you were not there for someone in their season of infancy, do not expect a seat at the table of their greatness — they remember who helped them rise.

Relationships require investment. Do not give two minutes of your time over ten years and expect people to remain committed. When people do not perceive you as an advantage to their lives, they will love you quietly — and leave you in a group chat.

Key 4 — Prayer

Favour can be provoked through prayer. It is one of those systems of advantage that prayer can activate.

1 Chronicles 4:10 — Jabez prayed: "Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, enlarge my coast, let thine hand be with me."

When God says amen to a prayer for favour, he moves upon the hearts of kings and nobles — making them attentive in ways that defy their natural selfishness. He raised a fish to bring a coin from its mouth. He used Pharaoh — the very oppressor — to supply the gold Israel used to build the tabernacle. When favour is upon a life, even enemies can become instruments of blessing.

There are those for whom land that could not otherwise be purchased in a lifetime has simply been given by favour. The key to integrity is not only character — it is favour. Access to the hearts of men is what keeps a person from compromising under pressure.

Minimize knocking on the offices of men and ask God to do the knocking for you. Those men are too busy living out their own destinies to attend to you by default. But God is the Father of spirits — he can wake any spirit in the middle of the night and issue a divine instruction.

Acts 10 — Cornelius was praying and sowing seeds. God himself told Peter: get up, go to the house of Cornelius. That was how the salvation of the Gentiles began — not through knocking on human doors, but through a man whose prayers moved God to knock for him.

Key 5 — The Esther Anointing

Esther 2:15–17

When Esther came before the king, she required nothing except what Hegai — the king's chamberlain, the keeper of the women — appointed. She went to the one who knew the king most intimately and asked: what does the king want?

The result: Esther obtained favour in the sight of all who looked upon her. The king loved her above all the women. He set the royal crown upon her head and made her queen.

This is the Esther anointing — a grace for favour that can be imparted. It is an oil, a grace that causes one to find favour with all who look upon them.

The Holy Spirit can search the mind of the Father. He can also search the heart of your destiny helper — and he knows what that person needs. This is the grace that insists upon the hearts of men.

The proof of favour is not money. The proof of favour is the loyalty of the hearts of men toward you and toward your assignment — access to systems, structures, and gatekeepers.

The Five Keys — Summary

1. Honour — discerning, celebrating, and rewarding men for their distinctive difference
2. Value — developing yourself to provide exceptional, needed solutions
3. Relationships — intentional, strategic, advantageous connections
4. Prayer — provoking favour through persistent, specific intercession
5. The Esther Anointing — a grace for favour that can be received by impartation

These are the currencies. Buy it with honour. Buy it with value. Buy it with relationships. Buy it through prayer.