We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can—surrender our will and fulfill God’s will in us. The greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender. In this kingdom, our defense is based on the power of the kingdom’s laws that we understand and engage.
I will unveil two spiritual laws that will prompt your spirit into a new beginning and life in Christ. These laws are powerful and irrefutable. If you hang unto these laws and submerge your entire being in its principles, your life will be a wonder, even to you.
First law: The sacrifice of total surrender.
2corinthians 5:14-15
“For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all then were all dead. And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.”
1) Total surrender of self.
Mathew 16:25: “For whosoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”
This is one of the fundamental principles for making champions in the kingdom of God. This verse, Mathew 16:25, entails sacrifice. It will take everything from you, but it will give you everything—emptying your fullness and refilling you with the fullness of God. If you desire to gain mastery in the kingdom, learn the ways of God. For whosoever will save his life will lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for Jesus’ sake, that person will find it.
You are not ready to do business with God until you die to yourself. There are two things you have to triumph over in this pilgrimage: sin and self. If you conquer sin, you are still not free—it has to be sin and self. What an unbeliever needs to conquer is sin, while a believer needs to conquer self. Self and sin must die for you to rise.
2) Drawing an analogy from a grain of wheat.
John 12:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
I want to disclose a very powerful but neglected law of God. As long as God is still the wellspring of your good life, the deity of your championship, and the throne behind your prosperity, there must be a total surrender for eternal benefits. There are people who, when at the optimum of their career, detach from the law of surrendering and depend on the connection and capacity of the social height they have attained.
Forget about the certain levels of mastery that you crave. It is not by wisdom nor by power to attain such levels. If it is the God of the Bible that you want to see him strong and mighty in your life, you must submit to the law of complete, perfect, unassuming surrender. Another word for “surrender” is dead. If you are striving for mastery from God, or you want to obtain uncommon grace from God, you must die to your desires, feelings, and whatever thing that is not Christ.
3) You have been crucified with Christ.
Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Many people want to get mastery over the anointing. They witness the prophetic maneuver sampling by some men of God and long to possess such anointing. These men of God are dead to sin and self. If you desire to join that caliber, you must be dead to yourself. God does not trust you when you are alive to yourself. Your tendencies and variables are too many—your likeness to change your mind is predictable.
Do you need money? You should be dead to yourself. If you place one million on a dead body and depart for days, weeks, and years, and when you return, your money will be lying down unmovable on the dead body. But if somebody is alive, even in sickness, and you keep a million with him, you will return and find it deducted. He didn’t go out, yet the money left. The tendencies of men are numberless.
Many believers take God for granted. They think God is a genie to which they can evoke wishes. They hail all kinds of prayers. They desire unspeakable realms and powers to function—they fancy that level of grace and crave that height of influence and affluence. Yet when God demands a price that they have to pay—which is being dead to oneself, they withdraw into silence.
Behind every strange dimension of mastery and grace, there is blood dripping on that altar. The price of life is dead. The size of God is too heavy. If you carry him alive on your shoulders, he will crush you. Many people crave an extraordinary level of grace—they want to see God use them mightily, yet there are scraps they don’t want to let go. Do you perceive what it entails to die to yourself? It means there is nothing and no one that will ever have the ability and the effrontery to replace God in your life.
To die does not mean to throw away your ambitions. It means to demote them to the point that God stands at the epicenter of your life.
4) Loving Jesus more than anything
John 21:15: “So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, Lovest thou me more than these? He said unto him, Yeah, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He said unto him, Feed my lambs.”
If you like, fast for a year or pray for the rest of your life; if you do not cross the gate of death, forget about mastery and power with God.
When God comes to meet you, he will demote everything that is hidden in yourself. He does not demote it by ordering or by forceful subduing; He allows it to fail you one after another. When you are left with nothing to lean on, you will return to Him in tears and weeping, “I thought it was the job that sustained me” or “I thought it was my intelligence that heightened my financial status.”
What is the count rate of people who can give up everything for Jesus? It is easy to lift your hands and say, “I can give up everything.” Don’t be quick in lifting your hand in affirmation because your affirmation will be confirmed only when your action has been severely tested.
It is a very backbreaking law: you need the grace of God to keep.
You spent your life building your reputation, and fine-tuning your ambition, and here comes the King of Glory, pushing everything out and wanting to take their place as if you don’t have a life. And you say, “Lord! You want to damage my life and self-worth?” And God replies, “I don’t kill; I only kill to resurrect. I give you another body and a life of beauty and glory.”
Do you want to see the glory of God and power at work in your ministry, business, and academics? Embrace self-dead! If you package seed and offering before the altar of God, he will not impact such realm on you.
Our generation believes that money gives everything. They say, “Just squeeze an envelope and boom! Your intentions handed over to you.” They want to attain God’s realm of power using money. No! Only dead to self can take you to God’s height. There is a place for money, but not in the throne room of God. Total surrender! That is the price. When surrender is in place, your prayer works and tongues find value before God. In other words, you must sacrifice yourself on the stone table.
5) The living sacrifice.
Romans 12:1: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present you bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service”
Do you know what it means to surrender? You lose the ability to tell God no. To be surrendered means to lose the option of ‘No” forever. It is a whisper to God that, “God! Whatever you say, no more argument with you. You are the final authority.”
Genesis 22: 2: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you”
Even Jesus engaged in the law of total surrender. He came to the earth in obedience to the Father. The Bible didn’t hide the fact that Jesus himself did not want to die. In the garden of Gethsemane, a place of great resonance in Christianity, Jesus underwent agony before the crucifixion and cried out;
6) The dominance of the will of God.
“…O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Mathew 26:39)
That is the language of men who have died to themselves. Lord! Truly! Here is what I desire; nevertheless, not my will. Speak incessantly before God, ministers of the gospel, and say, “Not my Will!” What about the businessman? Let him also speak out, “Not my will!”
Sometimes, we kick God out of our lives and say, “God, out of the way!” We adamantly restate our refusal to let the wisdom of God take precedence in our lives. We reject God’s will because we will lose our ego, job, and circle of friends. I am so much in love with God while carrying his task on earth. I told my Christians, “If God asks me to close Koinonia Church, I stand before God of heaven to state that this will probably be our last service.”
Don’t think you can cajole God with words and say you love Him. God will probably test it. Do you want to strive for mastery in the Kingdom? You are supposed to arrive at the point where your mind is spiritually minded and a sound of total submission echoing, “Lord, for you, I can do all things.” There is nobody who has the power to give you all. You only have the power to give God access to be enthroned above your ego, and you will have it all. Nobody has the power to yield to you everything. You can only give God total access to your life to have everything.
Some things are too precious in our lives that must be let loose, and the glory of heaven takes hold. You have to give God access and say, “Lord, I don’t have a mastery of who you are, but you must be my God.”
When you get to this realm where nothing else matters to you, anything that comes close to God has already failed because God is in a position jealously guarded. Then you will hear God saying, “You have done this for me by giving me all of you! I know the desires of your heart, and since you have prioritized my glory, you will receive things you did not pray about.”
Fearless is the man who pushes beyond that realm of pain and gets to that point where, in reality, and experience, he has enthroned Jesus above anything. At this stage with God, there is nothing He will not give him. I share my experience where God said, “If you let men see me, then there is nothing I will not give you.”
Many people are in church today because of their material needs. Some are in church because something diabolic has been pursuing them, and they decide to run to the house of God. That is not bad—you are welcome to GOD’s house. But you must get to the point with God where you say, “God! No more child’s play. I crave a serious business with you.” You must reach the state of mind where you still place him at the center of your heart whether God blesses you or not. Whether your requests are answered or unanswered, you still hold God in high regard. Some Christians think the church is a business ground where you have to donate to God in exchange for the desires of your heart: breakthrough, marriage, and lifting.
It is a painful decision, but if you make such a decision where everything belongs to him: your life, reputation, and energy, there would be no limit to your lifting. At this point, you have entered the realm of favor, uncommon grace, and wisdom, where you become a friend of God. It takes death to be a friend of God. All these songs people claim, “I am a friend of God.” make no sense in the heavenly realms because their heart is still attached to their possessions. Do you know what it means to be a friend of God? The realm of friendship is the realm of revelation. If you want God to visit your altar, you must come to him.
We need to teach the church of Jesus Christ that “God” is not all about miracles, breakthroughs, and signs and wonders. Nevertheless, they are the manifestation of the kingdom. If we keep chasing and prostituting around power, breakthroughs, money, and results, then we have missed the purpose of the kingdom. You have to worship God and pass those realms of miracles and breakthroughs; you have to pass those realms and get to the point where you say, “God! You are everything to me. There is no plan B, and I perish! I perish!”
Many Christians try to test God to see if he is genuine. They make a “try and error” on God to test if it will work. If the test seems successful, they will embark, but if it fails, they retreat. So long as you have options for God, forget about any mastery, forget about seeing his power and glory. If you still have “plan B” concerning who empowers you, God will never come to you. Live the sacrifice of total surrender.
6) The price to pay
2Corinthians 4:12: “So then death worketh in us, but life in you”
For Satan to take you seriously, you must bring your blood—he demands for your soul. What makes you think you will fold your hands and casually emotionally come to GOD and say, “God! I need 1 billion and anointing for nations, and I promise I will serve you.” You think God is stupid and will say, “Son, oh! I was desperately waiting for someone to say those words to me. Come and receive it.” Never! Such greatness will never be bestowed upon you. There is a realm of death where God is the one who brings you alive—you no longer live for yourself. Otherwise, you will pray for a thousand years, but all in vain. When a man is alive to himself, it becomes a risk for God to give him supernatural power, pedigree, and wealth.
I believe with all my heart that we are entering seasons where “Mathew 25” is about to be replayed in the Church of Christ. GOD is coming like a mighty wind upon believers, and he is beginning to trust them with the talent to execute mighty things for the nations. I assure you, you will start seeing God bestowing gifts to men in spectacular ways. You will see Him trust men with graces for territories and nations. The question is, “Can you be dead to yourself to afford these gifts?”
Some prophets will rise like never before. Many apostles, politicians, and businessmen will arise like never before to proclaim the dominion of the kingdom of God. God is ready to give, but men are not inclined to receive. God is disposed to send down powers that will dumbfound principalities and powers. The price to pay is not just fasting, prayers, and bible studies; the price is dead to self. Everyone must assemble on that altar “self-dead” for the fire of God to come to possess them.
By this teaching, God is already answering you. God has seen that there is a measure of death you are unwilling to get into. For that reason, certain levels of power and wisdom cannot come to you.
Inspired by Apostle Joshua Selman.
