Lesson 4

BE WARY OF IMMORALITY

So many have expected me to start teaching on how to function in the anointing too soon but the foundation must be properly set, getting the anointing isn’t the problem, keeping the anointing and using it for God’s glory, that’s where the issue lies.

Before you go could function properly in the ministry, you must learn to put your body under subjection and God has made that provision possible; God has made it possible for we to walk in righteousness without fault.

Before I go into the provision of God to make us able to put our flesh to subjection possible, I shall first show us how immorality can destroy the ministry and us:

REUBEN: Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power: Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father's bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch. Gen. 49:3-4

Reuben’s life became unstable and his position was taken over by Judah because of immorality. Immorality would make your ministry:

a.     Loss it’s excellency: ministry where the minister is immoral would lack excellency, no matter how gifted or anointed the minister is. Holiness is the beauty of every ministry.

b.    Become unstable: the ministry would be falling downward, no matter how good your sermons sound and how great the miracles are.

c.     The ministry won’t excel: the ministry would stop growing. When the head is immoral, every other part of the body won’t be spared, instead of the church to be a place of holiness, it would be a place of immorality. The ministry where the pastor is immoral, most members would become immoral too because the best your members can be, is like you their minister. Luke 6:40 The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master. Simply put; ministry is reproducing your kind, if you are immoral, short tempered, sinful etc., you’ll just produce men of like mind

WHAT HAD GOD DONE TO MAKE US HOLY

God knew that by the arms of our flesh (1Sam. 2:9), we can’t succeed in ministry and had done something about it.

The reason many saints can’t live rightly is because they don’t know what God has done to make righteous living an accessible reality in their daily lives. We shall be discussing that now.

1.    He made us spirits (Jn 3:6): the first Adam is a living soul, and the living soul is control by the flesh that was why Eve was tempted through the hunger and cravings of her flesh. She ate the fruit in responds to the desires of her flesh (lust of the eyes). When God made the born again ‘spirits’ He solved the problem of the lust of the flesh. 1Co 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. If we’ve borne the image of the first Adam when we were not born again, now that we are born again, we bear the image of the second Adam which is ‘quickening spirit”, the scriptures has said that if we walk in our new image (the image of the spirit) we won’t fulfill the cravings of the flesh (Ga 5:16). Know your nature and walk in it.

2.    God has given the spirit of righteousness (Holy Spirit):  when we respond to this spirit in our day to day affairs, we shall walk righteously because God gave to us the spirit to enable right-living.

3.    God has commissioned His spirit to keep us from falling: Jude24 Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. God spirit is working to present you faultless in ministry till Christ comes.

4.    Christ has shed His blood: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Heb. 9:14. The blood of Christ doesn’t just clean us from sin; it takes away the hunger and desire to sin from us.

5.    God gave us His word:  Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. John 15:3. The word of God keeps cleansing us as we study it, it kills the desire to sin in us, it destroys the hunger to be unrighteous.

With all these provisions God has made available, no man has an excuse to sin (Rom. 2:1). Always remember in Isaiah 61:3….that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified. You are God’s very planting that should produce righteousness and not sin and in your righteousness, God is glorified.