Vessels Unto Honor Ownership Conference Day 5 by Apostle Joshua Selman: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Recap: vessels unto honor

• Believers are described two ways: identification with Christ and function
• Identification: branches connected to the vine, the righteousness of God in Christ, joint heirs
• Function: kings, priests, ambassadors, witnesses, and vessels (service and the fulfillment of God's agenda)

2 Timothy 2:20-21

• Vessels of wood, clay, silver and gold are metaphors for the kind and quality of the believer, based on stature and investedness in the things of God
• Honor and dishonor is not by pre-ordination. Some vessels by stature and alignment are unto honor. Others neglected the principles that make for maturity and are unto dishonor
• If a man purge himself from these, he will be a vessel unto honor, meet for the master's use
• Honor is defined by capacity and level of refinement that makes you fit for the master's use
• All believers are vessels, but not all can serve the program of God, and not all at the same level
• Some cannot be trusted with kingdom responsibility beyond a certain level. They lack the stature, consecration, intelligence and empowerment

The refining process

Malachi 3:3

Every vessel must go through a necessary, non-negotiable refining process

John 15:2

When you bear fruit the Father prunes you so you bear more fruit

Refining is a spiritual process that leads to growth, maturity, spiritual circumcision (consecration), and accreditation. A man approved of God

3 levels of refining

1. Purifying of your heart

   • God leads you into death to the flesh in experience. He prunes and purifies your motive
   • The heart is the greatest spiritual determinant of how far you go with God, more than fasting, praying, singing and serving
   • Amaziah did what was right in the sight of God, but not with a perfect heart 2 Chronicles 25:2. The singing was right, the preaching was right, but not with a perfect heart
   • The heart comes first Proverbs 23:26
   • God rids you of vain glory and the idolatry enshrined in the heart
   • At the end you are a consecrated believer. Consecration has two dimensions: abstinence from and devotion unto. The greater part is devotion, not abstinence
   • You can abstain from all appearance of evil and not be fully consecrated. The proof you are invested in God is what you can give up to maintain your position with him
   • Abraham Genesis 22. The killing was not the knife. It was to reprioritize your love for God above your most treasured possession. God gave Jesus, not an angel
   • Love him more than ministry, titles, business, preaching. Preaching can be an idol. Crusades can become idolatry
   • Once your motivation is not to glorify Jesus and reveal him, there is corruption in the heart even though the activity is accurate. That is why some noble adventures carry no weight in the spirit
   • God circumcises by testing your willingness to give up anything and everything as proof of love

2. Discipline of enlightenment and transformation

   • Knowledge, enlightenment and transformation are not gifts. God grants enabling grace but you submit, sometimes uncomfortably, to recalibrate your belief systems
   • Enduring sound doctrine 2 Timothy 4:3. He leads you to uncomfortable conferences, to study materials, to learn at the feet of people you do not like. It is the price for where you are going
   • Gold does not determine how far it will stay. It stays until it is refined
   • Second only to the state of your heart, your spiritual intelligence defines how far God can use you. You cannot serve the program of God in ignorance, however yielded you are
   • Paul prayed that the eyes of their understanding be enlightened Ephesians 1:18. Christ formed in you Galatians 4:19
   • There are things that when you know them they become systems of stability. If you know the opinions of men only wait for the participation of your heart to affect you, you stop trying to prove you are right. If you know how weak you are outside God's help, you value intimacy and prayer
   • It takes vision to start, discipline to continue, but it takes mercy to finish. A finisher has received mercy

3. Understanding the structure of his kingdom and prophetic program

   • You cannot serve in a grand program whose agenda you do not understand. Five years in a company and you cannot say what it does or who it serves
   • Some levels of glory depend on who you are serving, not what you do. Nations do business with you based on your ally. A time comes when you choose this day whom you will serve
   • Your belly wants to be God. Self wants to be God. Define who is God
   • You must understand what God is doing and your unique role in birthing and fulfilling it

Blessings of staying with God to be refined

1. God reveals the strategy unique for your victory

   • To manifest destiny you need: an understanding of your call, the strategy connected to the prophecy, and the timing. Lose one and you cannot fulfill destiny
   • The calling can be right but you cannot use another man's strategy. That it worked for brother A does not make it yours
   • My strategy can be five loaves and two fish to feed 5,000. Yours can be to build the machine that makes the bread. My strategy can be to walk on water. Yours can be to make sure your boat is working well
   • God told me years ago: put your teachings online, raw audio, my angel will take it to the nations. I obeyed with childlike faith and that is how God announced me to the nations
   • Yesterday's strategy cannot produce tomorrow's victory. The victory of tomorrow will be for the strategy of now
   • Brook Cherith 1 Kings 17:2-9. When the water starts drying and the raven refuses to come, the season is ending. At Cherith you did not need relational principles. Going to Zarephath, you had better learn how to talk right or you die of hunger even as a prophet. It is still God feeding you but now it is a widow, not a raven
   • People drop from grace to grass because the strategy stopped working. Times change. Your heart may be sincere but you need the strategy for the hour
   • There is a way to carry the ark such that it preserves the glory. Invent your own way and you will be disappointed at the casualties

2. Empowerment to function for the season

   • The spiritual wherewithal to do exploits for the kingdom

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What believers are purged from

• These are specific to individuals: the debris to be purged may not be the same for another person. Personality and vulnerability differ. For one, lust was never the issue but money is. For another, the lust of the eyes
• Generically there are works of the flesh we all are purged from, but God's emphasis differs

Weights and the sin

Hebrews 12:1

• Weights are encumbrances, not necessarily wrong. Burdens that distract and slow your pace and efficiency
• The lighter the plane, the higher and faster it flies. In Jonah 1 the boat was about to capsize. They were willing to lose their valuables but the real weight was Jonah
• Weights can be men, relationships, habits, thought patterns
• The word weight is the Greek ogkos: things not intrinsically sinful that burden you, distract you and interrupt the efficiency of your service. Sometimes ambition. Sometimes overestimation of self
• The deeper you go with God, the stricter the ordinances of your consecration. Things that are not sinful become sin to you at a certain level. Do not make a doctrine of it. It is a personalized dealing
• Not everybody was told not to cut their hair, but if your name is Samson, make sure a razor does not touch your head Judges 16
• Satan studies the ordinance of your consecration. What is the secret of the power of God upon you? He is not a fool. He is after efficiency. So he asked Eve, what did he tell you? Genesis 3:1-3
• God can prohibit you from many things that make no sense. Only for your kind of calling. People will find your life strange but it is connected to the glory revealed in you
• Some great men of God always kneel before starting a meeting. It is part of the ordinances given from the beginning
• God can prohibit you from a certain threshold of pleasure, not because it is wrong, but because he knows it will become a weight for you
• Some must fast once or twice every week. It preserves the level of glory on them. Run from a man doing great things for God who cannot explain the ordinance of his consecration
• Glory rests where some weights were refused. Some cannot carry glory because there is no space. God must declutter

3 categories of weights and sins

1 John 2:15-17

The word love there is an ungodly attachment and affinity to the world

1. Lust of the flesh

   • Gluttony. Food can be a weight. When God makes a demand you must have power to turn your plates upside down
   • Slumber. Sleep stopped the disciples on the mount of transfiguration Luke 9:32. He gives his beloved sleep Psalm 127:2, but there are times he demands you watch Matthew 26:40
   • While men slept the enemy came Matthew 13:25. He waits until the challenges of ministry push you to sleep

2. Lust of the eyes

   • Materialism is not having materials. It is the influence of material possessions on your heart posture and relationship with Jesus. Many poor people are materialistic
   • Solomon: everything my eyes saw, I wanted Ecclesiastes 2:10. A man needs real deliverance for his eyes
   • Jealousy, covetousness, envy all depend on sight. A man who loved his wife looks at another and the wife becomes a burden
   • Godliness with contentment 1 Timothy 6:6, not godliness with mediocrity. Contentment is being grateful where you are while trusting God to rise to the next level
   • One of the cures for envy is gratitude. Where you are is still someone's prayer point

3. Pride of life

   • Different from pride. It is the self-glorification derived in the presence of obvious results. It cannot affect a man who is doing nothing
   • You are a great man of God or businessman or politician, God is moving mightily and the devil ministers to you: do you really need God? Solomon. Nebuchadnezzar and his 90 ft statue of gold Daniel 3
   • There are boundaries where you can receive praise. Cross it and, if your heart is connected to God, there will be a beep in the spirit
   • A time comes when humility becomes a daily, conscious effort. The line between honor and worship is thin. Receive honor but it must not get into worship. Then it is idolatry
   • Why God asks people to give: often it is not about the money. He is doing something to your heart. A seed can become an idol. Status can become an idol
   • If God changes my assignment, I will announce it before the world with tears. My life belongs to him
   • The praises and criticisms of men mean nothing when you are dead to them Romans 6:11

What God can trust you with

• Can God place a demand on your account? Your reputation? Your ego? Whatever you cherish? And you say yes sir
• God wants you to fly at 40,000 feet but you lack the capacity. Some planes need an emergency landing. Some fly direct from Washington to Nigeria without stopping because of capacity
• Get to brutal honesty: Search my heart, Lord. You know what can bring me down. Show me mercy on time. Deal with it on time
• It is easier that God deals with you in secret than men deal with you openly. Men crown him king today and crucify him tomorrow. God shows mercy
• The day they put you in a seven-star hotel, a president says from today you are my father and I am your son, prayer looks unnecessary. That is when you know whether you love God
• You can have a bill of 10 million and God says do not call anybody. I want to reveal myself as Jehovah Jireh. Do you have the stamina to stay?
• Naaman came with his chariots and gifts. Elisha said keep your gifts, receive your healing, go home. Gehazi said no 2 Kings 5:15-27. I hope what left him did not land on you
• What you can give up will determine what God can trust you with. If there is nothing you cannot give God, you become unlimited in your adventure
• Discipline in the presence of plenty. God cannot make kings and presidents your sons if you have no self-control. Not every door is for you to enter. Not every gift is for you to receive
• Can you look at greatness and turn back because it was not God's will? Can you see a table with plenty and walk away with joy because the king has demanded your absence?
• Can you be silent when you have something to say? Jesus before Pilate John 19:9-11. Dust coming from everywhere and God says be still Psalm 46:10
• Learn when to speak and how to speak. Sometimes you speak with people, to people, to God, through people and systems. Speak with God and he will speak to people
• In serving God's program there are rankings and you do not assume it. To be the gateway to spiritual activity or business in a territory there are demands. The key is not only excellence in buying and selling but being a defender of the cause of Christ
• God will anoint some to raise others, because he has worked on your heart so that the rising of others does not threaten you
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Apostle Joshua Selman
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• People who are great and humble command my respect. I detest pride. It is a depleter
• The noblest position is the child of God, then son, ambassador, leader. I would rather lose being the leader and remain the child. You lost being a child of God the day you became a prophet, an apostle, a millionaire. Go back to being a child of God. I do not go before God as an apostle

Activities that lead to maturity and stature

1. Systemic, consistent prayer

   • The prayer of edification. No requests. Praying in the Spirit takes you into the refinery. The Holy Ghost speaks: work on pride, lust, anger
   • One evidence of encountering God is a revelation of the true state of your heart: anger, lust, hate, bitterness you did not know were there
   • Pray: Lord, search my heart. Take me far. Walk upon my heart Psalm 51:17
   • Pray in the Spirit daily and anger dies. One morning you can forgive the one you could not forgive. God may tell you to buy a gift and give it to a sibling or mother
   • John the Baptist ordained Jesus yet was offended and sent to ask if he was the one Matthew 11:2-3. He did not allow the refining to get to him. Unforgiveness and anger killed him
   • There is prayer that gives you and there is prayer that changes you

2. Invest in knowledge

   • If baby Jesus were your church member, would he become the savior? If baby Elijah were in your youth fellowship, could you train him to be a prophet?
   • The level of spiritual maturity across a territory is traceable to the enlightenment of the vessels who serve at the altar. Sincere but bankrupt of knowledge, you teach members nonsense sincerely
   • Sincerity is wonderful but not important. Grow in knowledge
   • 4 areas of knowledge:

     1. Doctrine, the foundational principles of the Christian faith
     2. The mysteries or principles of the kingdom, its modus operandi
     3. The wisdom of Egypt: how the world functions
     4. Mastery of your craft, your field of endeavor

   • The world gravitates towards those who know what to do. Gentiles will come to your light Isaiah 60:3. Do not rush around saying invite me. Build capacity so that when the window opens it becomes a door
   • Favor works easily with competent people. Pharaoh called Joseph. Had he failed to interpret, he would have gone back to prison Genesis 41. He offered an economic solution and without a parliament became steward over it
   • Some are Josephs by destiny but lack capacity to provide solutions. Pharaoh has called you five times and returned you to prison
   • The church is not a place to raise spiritual but dull people. Competence makes you rare. Make it difficult to find another you. Joseph's counsel to Pharaoh Genesis 41:33 was a polite way of saying, I dare you
   • Preaching well is only 20% of the job. Managing relationships that come with growth is the rest. Some pastors came for conferences, said things they should not, and set a church back five years
   • Ahasuerus's counselors: by reason of the position she occupies, there is a level of character we expect Esther 1:16-20
   • Can you sit before kings and befriend royalty without flattery? Speak to great men without insulting them but communicating truth? Mastery of words, emotional intelligence, being misunderstood and comfortable with it

3. Worship

   • Ministering unto God is the greater part. You are not asking for anything. Declaring his holiness and loving kindness, calling his names
   • If we behold him we are changed 2 Corinthians 3:18. You become like the one you worship
   • One encounter in worship can redefine the next 10 years. You do not need to be a musician to be a worshipper
   • Paul and Silas praised, the prison doors rattled and chains broke Acts 16:25-26
   • Worship is the business of intimacy. The shekinah rests on you like a hen on her eggs. Anointings come with it
   • The word wait is qavah, men who stay Isaiah 40:31. Stay until glory rests on you
   • After people insult you and bills are rising, take them to the altar. Every time the world fights you, run to his presence. His presence is where winners emerge
   • Where will the money come from? I do not know, but in his presence there is fullness. How am I sure the sick will be healed at the crusade? Go to his presence and stay there. Carry power. Carry glory
   • Proof you are filled with the Spirit: you sing in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs Ephesians 5:18-19. Many songs came from the secret place

4. Strategic mentorship

   • When God wants to make a mighty man he directs you to a man he has accredited Acts 10:5-6
   • Fatherhood and mentorship is not a hijacking of your will. It is to guide you into a victorious life. Africa's definition of it is almost occultism

Bible names are pathways in the spirit

• Every major name that describes the work of a man with God is not just a name. It is a pathway that produces a certain kind of believer. Abraham, Sarah, Elijah, Daniel
• Daniel is both a person and an office: a combination of political leadership and the prophetic

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• You know it is the Spirit training you when you find a parallel of your work in scripture and consistency of that pattern

A charge to pastors

1. Do not manipulate God's people for gain

   • There are nobler ways to serve with integrity and God will move their hearts to bless you

2. Manage the love for money

   • Do not become such a slave to money that you trade your conscience and the sanctity of priesthood

3. Manage excesses in lifestyle

   • When you go overboard you bring defamation to priesthood
   • The loyalty of the people is a trust

• When God brings members, respect that they came to be built. Do not trample on them because they love you. Serve them with excellence
• Redefine leadership as servanthood, not lordship. Do not abuse the privileges of honor and priority. Wealthy people stop coming to church because they conclude men of God are not serious
• Restore maturity to the pulpit in words, conduct and life, managing people and resources
• Do not behave like children on the pulpit. It makes the government come against pastors. Pastors are contributors to nation building. Act responsibly so kings are comfortable to learn from you

Forgiveness, tolerance and unity

• No single man can host the program of God to his satisfaction alone. Unity does not mean uniformity. It means achieving the same goal
• The body of Christ has suffered from the spirit of competition and the pressure to outshine
• When God is moving it does not matter who the steward is. Rally around it and receive maximum benefit. Your growth affects my efficiency and mine affects yours
• If God has lifted you high, reach down to those coming. You are secured, so stoop without embarrassment
• Those below: do not see greatness and act like you did not see it. Respect it. If you resent it, you will never get there. Do not say he was just lucky. It is capacity
• Do not point hands to insult any man of God. But respect where you are going enough not to sit consciously being misled. There is a way God moves and a way God does not move
• Practice humility. It is difficult to criticize a humble person even if you do not agree with him. Pride is a depleter

Deal with it

• After this conference go for a retreat. Do not say I am a general overseer. Lock yourself up and flog it out with God
• This thing has to end. I know I am manipulating people. I know the prophecy is a lie. I know the miracles are not genuine. I deceived that person to get a million rand from him. Lord, I am sorry. Go to the threshing floor and let him walk upon you
• If your lifestyle is settled but your limitation is knowledge, contend for light. Your spiritual ignorance is alarming. God cannot bring members or business opportunity because you lack the intelligence to steward influence at that level
• If you have knowledge but care only about personal victory and not God's program, you have done well for yourself but are not useful to the kingdom

Way of the altar, way of victory, way of purpose

1. The way of the altar

   • Intimacy, God walking upon you, removing the dross

2. The way of victory

   • Enlightenment and transformation, using the word to produce an indomitable life

3. The way of purpose

   • You realize God blessed you to give you the convenience to serve his program
   • You study his program and your unique contribution

The mantle on Africa

• In 2005 the Lord said the mantle of revival and apostolic reformation had come to Africa. It starts with a few and spreads like wildfire. Africa will export the purest form of apostolic Christianity. Once it was in Europe, then the West, now the continent of Africa
• Africa is exporting refined businessmen, kingdom entrepreneurs who hold billions for the kingdom yet their hearts are with him, mothers in Israel who give birth to the prophets of the next season
• I have seen it in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia. It is spreading like fire

Intercession for South Africa

• The apostolic comes with governmental responsibility. Anything that goes wrong in the nation is the business of the church. Our assignment is not to debate but to intercede until God's program is birthed
• Every time the new is about to come, Satan sends a counterfeit. Do not interpret things from a carnal mind. Intercede
• Philippians 1:19

Southern Africa

• The church is a stakeholder in nation building. The apostolic cannot be unconnected to governance, the well-being of the people and nation building
• Do not join in complaining, blaming and hating. The healing of the land starts with my people 2 Chronicles 7:14

Salvation

You cannot be called a vessel until you are in Christ. The business of vessels and their purification is for those in Christ. Salvation first, then transformation, then becoming a witness