WHEN YOUR DESIRE FOR LIFTING BECOMES GREATER THAN YOUR DESIRE TO KNOW HIM AND TO LOVE HIM, THERE WILL BE A PROBLEM IN YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE.

MORE THAN THE FOCUS ON MIRACLES OR BREAKTHROUGHS, WE MUST SET OUR EYES ON JESUS.

THE MORE YOU FOCUS ON JESUS, THE MORE YOU WILL FIND OUT THAT MANY THINGS YOU THINK ARE WORRIES ARE NOT REALLY WORRIES.

WHEN YOU ARE DISTRACTED IN YOUR FOCUS ON JESUS, THE DEVIL MAGNIFIES EVERY OTHER THING TO STOP YOU FROM THAT FOCUS.

SATAN IS COMFORTABLE WITH ANY OTHER THING WE SAY, PROVIDED JESUS IS OUT OF IT.

IGNORING JESUS IS A REAL ATTACK.

DESIRING TO BE FREE DOES NOT BRING FREEDOM; THERE ARE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT.

-Apostle Joshua Selman at Koinonia,
November Miracle Service.

Thank You Jesus!
Out of the lips of babes and sucklings, You have perfected praise. Thank You Jesus.

Psalm 27:4
When your desire for lifting becomes greater than your desire to know Him and to love Him, there will be a problem in your Christian life. When your desire to love Him and to know Him becomes less than your desire to be a good preacher and a celebrity, you will be in trouble. “One thing have I desired, not to work miracles, not just to have results in my life.” As important as these things are, one thing have I desired, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His temple.

Believers hear me, we must get to a point in our lives where the entirety of our lives is hinged on our love and our passion for Jesus. Not just God, because God means many things. Jesus is that advocate, the Image of the invisible God. Church Gist. In as much as we are here tonight to receive miracles, we are here to celebrate the mighty hand of God and this He will do. I am telling you in order of priority; more than the focus on miracles or breakthroughs or the desire to see our requests come to pass, we must set our eyes on Jesus.

The more you focus on Jesus, you will find out that many things you think are worries are not really worries. They are worries to the degree to which your lack of concentration has magnify them. There are many things we call worries today in our lives that are not worries. Believe me when I tell you; they are only worries because our egos make them so. They are worries because our lack of faith makes them so. They are worries because our carelessness towards focusing on Jesus make them so.

When you are distracted in your focus on Jesus, the devil magnifies every other thing to stop you from that focus. Why would he say to look at the brazen serpent when there were other serpents that were coming to kill them. Would you watch a serpent come to kill you and then you won’t run away? Church Gist. He said, don’t be distracted at the ones on the ground, just lift your eyes and look, for as long as you look at that, the ones on the ground will have no power over you.

So don’t come to church expecting to receive miracles minus your encounter with Jesus. Don’t come to church to receive the grace for a job. Thank God for the wonderful testimonies, but let me tell you; everything becomes profitable in your life when it is with respect to Jesus; prosperity with respect to Jesus. Lifting with respect to Jesus. Open doors with respect to Jesus. So, for every amen you will shout tonight, let your spirit man say amen and let it be with respect to Jesus. Not amen as the marketing of flesh.

When people come to church, many times they are not interested in Jesus, they are interested in the preacher, the worshippers, they are interested in the excellence and that is wonderful but you will be surprised how people can start a service from the opening prayer to the grace and there is nothing Jesus that will cross their minds. You have to discipline your spirit man to get to a point where Jesus becomes the central focus. Thank God for the vessels that He uses but it is a stupid thing when a messenger claims he is greater than the sender. When you are a messenger, it means that someone gave you a message to deliver. The one who is greater is not the messenger, the one who is greater is the one who sent because He is the one who backs, the one who pays for while you going. The moment the messenger becomes greater than the sender, you will now begin to defend yourself. “When I sent you, lackest thou anything.” Not when you went. That means when people see you, it is easy for them because of the excellency of your delivery to assume that you are the sender.

You must remind them, reminding them may steal your ego but it will lift you. Reminding them may look like you are demeaning your influence. We live in a world where everybody wants to be influencer, everybody wants to be the celebrity. We live in a social media world, everyone wants to snap with you, to leverage on that credibility and that deception. It drives us into believing that our lives without Jesus will still make sense.

The Bible is full of people who started with Jesus and in the presence of an excelling life, they are tempted to ignore Him and He respected their choice. A man like Solomon, who saw the manifested presence of God twice in his life. He got to a point where he rejected God and then, at the end of his life, he said “vanity upon vanity”. The man had most of the things we are praying for. The things we wrote in our prayer requests now, he had them.

Jesus is what gives value and fulfilment. If you are here and you are a preacher, please listen to me; no matter what you preach, no matter what you say, I beseech you by the mercies of God, draw people’s attention to Jesus more than yourself. You will not go down when you lift Jesus. As He is rising, you will rise too (John 17:1). Every time God desires to be glorified, He gets glory by investing His glory in the Son. So, when God wants to be lifted higher, because you are the one lifting Him, He will lift you higher too.

There are people who will not pay attention to Jesus. Do you know you can come into church and with powerful worship like this, with a sound word like this, there are people who will sit down and not pay attention to anything Jesus. But let the manifestation of the Spirit starts, signs and wonders and miracles, they are suddenly alive. Let there be a moment for impartation of power and they are alive, you will see the thirst and the desperation and you are tempted to ask; “what do you really come to find? Did you come to see Jesus or did you come to just seek His hands?” You will really get the best of a man when you get his heart, not his hands.

Satan is comfortable with any other thing we say, provided Jesus is out of it.
Matthew 4:19
When you keep your eyes on Jesus, you will turn and look at your life and see that you have become the prayer request of many people, even without knowing. Because you chose to follow Him. Church Gist. You will never truly find peace and find rest until:

1. Jesus becomes your Saviour; the One who saves you.
2. He becomes your Lord; the authority that you submit under.
3. He becomes your king. When this happens, you will find peace that surpasses all understanding.
   When this happens, you will be prepared to make a destiny that counts. There are many young people who come to church nowadays and honestly speaking, Jesus is not their focus. They shout in church, they make noise, you will think they are serious. I am not being sarcastic. You look at their lives, there is no conversion, there is no growth, there is no intention. Church Gist. Just loitering the things of the Spirit for the purpose of history, not transformation; “I was there, I saw it.” But they were never changed. It is these ones that the Bible says, “ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth”. Tonight, more than a sermon, more than a charge, more than admiring an anointed man. Believe me when I tell you, you need Jesus. Not you want Him. Your life depends on it, here and in the afterlife.

The thing about God is, He will never force you even at the detriment of your eternal salvation, He will give you that honour of making that choice. Most people again come out, just because you come out and stand here does not mean you are born again. For some of us, you recited a poem and repeated after a man of God, it does not automatically mean that you were saved. It has to be from your heart. So many people come out and recite and say all of these things and then leave and truly, you know they were not saved. This is one of the reasons why you can pray for them from now till next week, they never get filled with the Holy Ghost because they were not saved. It is one of the reasons why people cannot receive the Baptism because that salvation experience was not really true.

Jesus is calling us, I don’t know about you, but He is the one who helped me. My dear people listen to me; without Jesus Christ, we are only acting a movie right here. Thank God for the excellence and administration. The whole world is watching and we are not ashamed to let them know: if there is anything that is not worthy in this life and in this ministry, it is because we took our attention away from ourselves and to project Jesus. Preachers, let’s minimize all these attracting attentions to ourselves. There is honour that befits priesthood and that honour should be given to the measure required but our focus should be on Jesus. When our focus is on Jesus, all these petty things that destroy people; anger, jealousy, all these things, there is no basis for it now because it is Jesus that you are projecting.

If you are in ministry here, let me give you a sincere secret, get ready for empty pews in this end time ministry if the attention remains on you. You want the Lord to bring people, as many who will be saved, you must be able to serve people that meal of Jesus. Jesus, His person; Jesus as the principle of the Kingdom. When your attention becomes on Jesus. When we were little children growing up, 90-95 per cent of everything that was taught in Sunday school was with respect to Jesus. The average child, almost like a subliminal programming knew John 3:16. You ask our children now, John 3:16 and keep quiet and hear what they will tell you. Absolutely nothing. But ask them what is the latest App, latest phone, I am not saying those things are wrong. But I’m saying, something is wrong with our priority. Ignoring Jesus is a real attack. The fact that the devil can prevail over your mind to trivialize Jesus, is a sign that this attack is in an advance stage.

There are matters in families that are not allowing people go forward and just when the devil thinks he’s getting away with it again, like he has done before… There are people, God Himself will reach down to your foundation and pull you out.

Usually at the end of the year, I take out time to just rest and make sure that I have my little time to rest and prepare but, a group of people came from my village and they said, “Look, you need to come. There is fire on the mountain and you are blessing the world.” I said, “you people should leave me. This is the end of the year, I want to rest”. They said, No! You have to come. I sat, when I looked at what was happening, I said in as much as I love everybody in truth and without bias, I love my own people too. I told them and said, do you know what? I am coming and by the Spirit of God, I am going in partnership with the battalions of heaven. There are things that need to be settled.

See, the devil is not stupid, there are rules of engagement. Desiring to be free does not bring freedom; there are rules of engagement. I came here with a burden tonight because as I was praying, I asked the Lord, “Father, please let people not come and cry and say amen and fall and stand up, only to return back into frustration.”

You have to believe God tonight and be serious. Believe Him and open up your heart and be determined that I am not going back the way I came. The woman with the issue of blood said to herself, if I may but touch the hem of His garment. There are men of God here, make up your mind; “I’m not going back with my head empty”. Business people, make up your mind that I am not coming here to go back and live a life of struggle, living from hand to hand, pillar to post. Up today and down tomorrow.

You are going to pray one prayer and give a prophetic red card to everything that is anti-Christ buried whether in foundations or inheritance. I’ll like you to make a declaration:
“In the name of Jesus, I am cutting away from ordinances and handwritings speaking against the purposes of Christ in and through my life!”

Most Challenges that you see, that believers go through, aside from the issues that relate to ignorance and lack of accurate spiritual understanding, most of the challenges are tied and connected to orchestration of demons.

• Father, every hand that is tied in the realm of the spirit affecting your people’s productivity and capacity to make structural progress, in the name of Jesus Christ, let fire fall on you now!
• Everyone who is a victim of the oppression of delay, I decree and declare against the spirit of delay, we come against you by the power that is in the blood of Jesus!

There is a mystery called the Book of Remembrance. The Bible says in the book of Esther that once upon a time, a man who sat at the gate who was an uncle to the village girl that would later become Queen over 127 provinces, Hadassah or Esther. The Bible says, one time they conspired to kill the King Ahasuerus and Mordecai was privy to that information and he supplied that information and he preserved the life of the king but the king forgot him.

There are many of you here, if your efforts and contribution to the lives of others were to be rewarded, you will never be where you are. But in a strange way, there seem to be a spirit that trails your progress. You help the rising of many but it looks like you are forgotten. I am about to pray for you because something is coming on you. God does not forget, but men can forget. The distance between and your next level is one destiny helper away. God uses men to lift and help.

When I came into this City, I found out that over arguably, 50-70 per cent of the opportunities and the lifting of men in this City is purely by relationship, even beyond competence – relationship. Someone can stand by you and hold your hand and wipe your tears forever, just because of relationship. There are many competent people who cannot rise because the person to speak their praises to the king is not there.