With every open door you walk into for the next season, there are infirmities within you that will be on display. You have weaknesses you have not discovered yet because that aspect of your life has not been tested yet. For instance, you think you are very peaceable and organized until you get married. That’s when you now have someone who knows you pretty well and can point out all the weaknesses you swept under the carpet. On the day of adversity, however, God has given us His Word; “I Will Be There by Covenant!”.
The Fear of God
We are incapable as a man in the flesh. The earlier you know the unreliability of your flesh, the better you will cleave to the Holy Spirit. There is no amount of prayers you can pray to kill sexual desires because sexual desires are not sinful. It is simply your weakness. Even after marriage, your spouse is not going to be the most beautiful and most attractive person in the world. Someone will be more attractive to you. Even if your spouse is the most attractive to you, they will not be the only attractive person. The weakness will not go away. The fact that it won’t go away does not mean you should act on it. What will keep you is the fear of God. That is what kept Joseph. Sexual temptation will not go away. Stick to Grace!
Nobody should think any sin is above them. Given the “right” circumstances, you will be shocked with how far you will go. The best of us are still vulnerable in the flesh. That is why the strongest of us are not those who can withstand the temptation the most; it is those who flee the temptation the fastest. The power of seduction is in making an irresistible offer to your flesh. Remember how Eve sinned in the first place. Once you entertain the thought of the offer, you are already on the path to compromise. The Grace of God will lift you as you humble yourself. The fear of God will keep you from falling. The fear of God is our response to His Grace towards us. If God has been good to you for you live above the desires of the flesh, why will you choose to sin against Him? Notice that nothing about your abilities and strength is mentioned here. Simply the Grace of God!
Have You Considered my Servant Job?
God will use you as a bragging right in the camp of the enemy because you stood your ground in the midst of persecution but the devil fell in the midst of glory. If the gates of hell act as if they have not noticed you, God Himself will be the one to bring you to their attention. It’s just like a good manufacturing company that trusts so much in the capability of their product. However, don’t be fooled. God does not trust you because you are the best. He trusts you because you succumbed yourself under His grace where you cannot fail because He cannot fail. Indeed, Job did not fail. Anyone who does not stick to grace will fail. It is not by might or strength. It is by the Spirit. God is not bragging about Job because of Job. He is bragging about Job because of what He has made Job.
If you ever read the book of Job, you would realise God still justified Job as righteous even though the arguments he raised against God were not right. This is because one of our infirmities as humans is that we don’t know how to pray. When I talk about weakness and infirmities, I am neither referring to your sins nor justifying your sins. Jesus experienced all our infirmities too when He became human, yet He was without sin. Humans being forgetful, for instance, is one of our infirmities. If God was not gracious towards us, we all don’t deserve to be alive because even our heartfelt prayers are sometimes unrighteous, how much more our most evil actions?
A Man in the Image and Likeness of God
We cannot even make it to Heaven by our own ability. In order to dwell in the presence of God forever, one must be perfect. If you have ever sinned or entertained the thought of sin, you are disqualified. This is why Jesus is the centre of it all. There is no need to build a new foundation because our foundation is Christ. All we need to do is to build on this solid foundation. Our works on this foundation will be tested but the foundation will not be tested because Jesus has already been tested 7 times and He passed it all. He is the visible Image and Likeness of the invisible God.
Because Adam fell very early, the possibilities of fully being in the image and likeness of God were not fully modelled. There has not been a single person born who has not fallen short in one form or the other. This is why Jesus did not only come and die on the Cross. He had to live in order to model what it looks like to be the man God intended in Genesis 1:26. Therefore, our faith is to simply look unto Jesus, because He started and finished this walk of faith. By fully being man and fully being God, He showed us what it means to have all the infirmities of the flesh and still walk in the fullness of the Spirit.
We no longer have an excuse. Our flesh is not an excuse. Our infirmities are not an excuse. A lack of a model is no longer an excuse. Jesus’ life showed that it is possible to live above the limitations of the flesh without struggling. Jesus made his flesh powerless in the existence of His being. He was never ruled by His flesh. If flesh still rules you, you cannot be entrusted with the Kingdom. If anything at all, our flesh is simply a reminder that we need to continually rely on the provisions of the Spirit and never on ourselves.
Made Perfect in Weakness
Why did God still allow us to still have a flesh that is susceptible to sin (and will forever remain susceptible to sin regardless of our ascendency in the Spirit or our spiritual ranking)? So that we partake in the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Christ. Christ killed His flesh so that you can kill yours. He overcame the world so that you will overcome it too. If you don’t win the war against our flesh, you will never manifest sonship in this Kingdom. It is only sons who inherit the Kingdom. You will still remain a child. How do you overcome the flesh? Galatians 5:16. There will never be a point in your walk with God that you can rely on yourself.
It is not a one-day event. Your faithfulness will be rewarded after. However, remember that nobody ever graduates in the School of the Spirit. You are only promoted to the next class. You forever remain a student to the Spirit. He is your Teacher. Immediately you step out in your own strength, you will realize how weak your flesh will always be. You can become the strongest in spirit but as long as you still have flesh, you have weakness. Not one, not two. A lot! God is not going to take them away because that is how we rely on Grace from beginning to end.
2 Corinthians 12:5-10 NLT
[5] That experience is worth boasting about, but I’m not going to do it. I will boast only about my weaknesses. [6] If I wanted to boast, I would be no fool in doing so, because I would be telling the truth. But I won’t do it, because I don’t want anyone to give me credit beyond what they can see in my life or hear in my message, [7] even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud. [8] Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. [9] Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. [10] That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Not Perfect but Perfected
God is not looking for perfect people to work with. He is looking for people He can make perfect. On the Mount of Zion are just men made perfect. We can only be made perfect; we can never be perfect in our own accord. You do not understand. That is the foolishness of God. Have you ever known what to do but still lacked the zeal to do it? Have you ever lived in sin although you knew what you were doing was wrong? Some of you are still in this situation. Guess what; because I have experienced that myself, I approach you with compassion and truth.
If I had made it out of sin based on my own strength, I will boast about it in your presence and shame your weakness. Because grace is what saved me when I couldn’t even save myself, I relate with your weakness and impact the same strength that I had received. This is a Kingdom of scars. We all have scars to show how God healed us. We don’t have wounds anymore because grace embalms us. Whoever has been forgiven much loves much. So you see, we don’t need to live in sin for grace to abound. The reason why grace abounds is to keep us from sin. Without grace, we are mere mortals who cannot even overcome self.
Even though you were not qualified, His Grace was sufficient. You did your best but your effort does not match His exceedingly great reward because of Grace. He has chosen to glorify Himself by forming His image out of mere dust 🥹 When we say it is by the Grace of God, we are not being cliché. It is indeed He who has helped to this day, and that is why we stand here today.
May God glorify Himself in your weakness.
💯🔥🙏. AMEN🙏
Amen and Amen 🙏