See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another. Isa. 48:10-11

When we were born again, we were transformed from the Old Man into the Spirit Man. This is symbolized by baptism. The previous chapter gives a brief overview of the state of man’s Heart prior to God’s sanctification. If Paul, in Romans 7, was still subject to falling victim to the Old Man after all he suffered, then how much more are we subject to the lusts of the Flesh? The above Scripture is one indication why God tests and sanctifies Believers. He will not allow His people to take the credit for what He is doing through them. Yet, if we are like Paul, unable to refrain from giving in to the Flesh, then only by grace are we able to do ministry without taking the glory. Of course, to acquire grace in the Kingdom, we must be humble.

It is not popular to preach suffering and humility, since that is not “seeker sensitive”. We have many methods and gimmicks for making the Church successful, because it is success we believe to be our goal, but this kind of success is the desire of the Flesh. Success is God’s responsibility. Our objective should be to walk obedient to the Spirit, wherever that might take us. This is the success which produces treasure in Heaven. It could look like failure on earth. Jesus’ ministry was a spiritual success, even though in the natural He would appear to have been a loser of losers. Our ministry should not be judged in the natural either. It is in the spirit realm and it takes faith to invest our life in that which cannot be seen with human eyes. Unfortunately, many of our objectives and ministry goals are carnal, because tangible, successful ministry makes us look good. At the root of our motive is the Flesh, not the Spirit, and that kind of ministry will not bear eternal fruit for the Kingdom, but will be burned up at the end of the Age. Paul warned us of this, because it is so easy to fall into. (1 Cor. 3:12-15)

For Believers whose objective it is to walk in the Spirit, the Flesh is our main opponent, yet in the Church, we rarely even mention it. We condemn the outward expressions of the Flesh such as sexual immorality, or foul language, but we tolerate the sins of the Heart, such as greed, materialism, and ambition. They are tolerated in the Church, sometimes even revered. Most Churches are trying to meet their budget or expand into new ministry. They cannot financially afford to offend people by exposing and confronting the Flesh. Their ministry goals lead them to compromises which accommodate the Flesh. The irony is that ministry should be the war against the Flesh. The Church, therefore, cannot effectively preach against the Flesh. It becomes a house divided against itself. Unless we are redeemed from our compromises and duplicity which we were born into, we will not stand. The Lord knows we are helpless to change ourselves. The Flesh is an enemy much bigger than we are. His intention is not to condemn us with out failings but to redeem us from our enemies. He will change us if we ask Him.

Jesus Is The Living Word
Jesus described Himself in Scripture as, “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. On other occasions He is described as the “Living Word”. This is an accurate statement about our Lord, since He is the essence of truth. It is part of His being. He not only knows it, He IS the truth. Truth and Jesus are one. They cannot be separated, nor can we get truth from Him without taking Him. We can’t separate Him from His salvation from sin. We can’t separate Him from being the Abundant Life. He is all these things. They are part of Him because He humbled Himself and gave up His life on the cross. It was His suffering and humility and death that granted Him the title of: “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. If we are to be like Him, we must take up our cross and experience the death of our Flesh. Then we will find the Way, the Truth, and Life.

Can you remember the sermon you heard on Christmas 1997 or Easter 1995? Now try to remember the personal discipline of the Lord. Remember those illustrated sermons by the Holy Spirit or the time when He guided you, directed you, or convicted you. We learn by experience much better than by words. We go through this Process because it must be experienced rather than learned. It is in the experience of the Process we are transformed. Teaching tells us what we must do to interact and cooperate with the Spirit. But the work of Holy Spirit is done in walking with Him through experiences He prepares for us. Prophetic revelation is wonderful, but it doesn’t change our Heart. It usually comes as a forerunner to the Holy Spirit working that truth into our Heart. As much as we would like to avoid the difficulties of the Process, there is no other way to have the character and treasure of the Kingdom developed in our lives.

If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us: 2 Tim. 2:12 NIV

The more we become like Christ, the more we can expect to suffer. If we believe that the world is operating in the Flesh, and the Holy Spirit and Flesh are at enmity with each other, then we can expect to be persecuted by the works of the Flesh inside and outside the Church. The irony is that suffering makes us more like Christ, and the more we are like Christ, the more the Flesh will attack us. Therefore, the more we suffer, the more we suffer. There is no other way to produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit and to have fruitful ministry. The less we suffer, the less we will become like Christ.

Walking In The Spirit
There is a specific period of time in which God prepares us with grace and reveals our call and the truth which is the basis for our “life message”. The more we surrender to the Holy Spirit, the more He will lead us into suffering. The more suffering we experience, the more dead the Old Man becomes, and the stronger the Holy Spirit is alive in us. Jesus, our perfect example, said, “I do only what I see the Father do.” He had a revelation of the Father and did only what He saw Him doing. Jesus is our example. If we walk in the Holy Spirit, then we cannot fail in ministry or in our call. That does not mean we will not look like a failure, but when the books are opened at Judgement Day, they will reveal success. We will have treasure in Heaven because we have chosen to allow the Holy Spirit to be Lord of our life and He cannot fail. Our objective as New Testament, end-time, born-again, Spirit-filled Believers is to completely surrender in everything to the Holy Spirit. We are not called to know more, or to do more. We are called to walk in the Spirit because in this way we will follow Jesus’ example to surrender His life to His Father, day by day, hour by hour. To walk in the Spirit as Jesus did required Him to completely put the Sin Man under the authority of the Holy Spirit. He moved forward only when the Spirit commanded. He did nothing without the Spirit’s prompting. That is humility. That is surrender. That is death of self, and that is the way to powerful ministry. We must learn to walk in the Spirit.

Jesus said, “Greater things you will do” (John 14:12). Why would He say that? His vision of the end times was of a sanctified Church, which was surrendered to the Holy Spirit, demonstrating the power and authority of God over all things. It is His intention to reveal the Father through our love for one another and through spiritual power, manifested in the Church. This is a “greater thing” in that it will not be through only one person (Jesus), but through millions of people (the Church) who are like Jesus. Jesus had a huge impact on the world when He ministered here. How much more will the Church have when it is ministering in full surrender to the Holy Spirit?

God’s Process of putting the Adamic Nature to death (sanctification) will allow us to walk in the Spirit. We will become like little children who are completely dependent on the Holy Spirit for everything. The Process will strip us of anything that the Flesh can use to fulfill itself, and in that way, we will learn to depend on the Holy Spirit. The things we suffer (the stripping away) teaches us to be obedient to the Holy Spirit. We learn that the works of the Flesh will not fulfill us and do not bring life, but death. When we walk in the Spirit, we minister life to a dead and dying world.

To be sanctified unto Jesus Christ is to be ruined for God. The more we become like Jesus, the more alienated we are to the world. To be ruined for God is to be a failure to this world, but a success in the Kingdom of God.

The more we suffer, the greater the vessel we are for grace. The world and the Church don’t need more truth, they need more grace. We have the Scriptures, but can we live up to their high standard? We need more grace in order to live in the truth. The way to a dynamic and powerful Church and ministry is to have more grace, and that means humbling and suffering.

Real spiritual ministry requires us to own the truth that we are ministering. We must humble ourselves and through humility gain the grace to acquire the truth that we are called to minister. We can’t produce in others the things we only know. How could an unbeliever lead another unbeliever to Christ? It would be the blind leading the blind. We can only bring to people the truths that we have acquired for ourselves. We acquire grace through humbling and when we have that truth we can minister it. If, as the Church, we are preaching only theories and truth without grace, we are like the Pharisees whom Jesus condemned and called blind men leading blind men. We become like a clanging gong when we espouse theology instead of Christ crucified. A seed cannot reproduce another seed. It must first go into the ground and die, then germinate to produce a small stalk, then a larger plant, then fruit which holds within it the seed. It is a process of growing toward fruitfulness. Our testimony is the most powerful thing we have in ministry, since it is an account of the grace and truth we have acquired. These are the truths which we can impart to others because we are in possession of them. It is through suffering and humility we acquire the truth of the Kingdom. God sanctifies us so that we will be fruitful ministers of the Gospel. When we know His humbling, we will know His grace, and then His truth.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 14 :11 NIV

The Promised Land
The Children of Israel were promised a land filled with milk and honey. We are promised the riches of Christ found in His Kingdom. The riches are more fulfilling and wonderful than anything we could imagine with the carnal mind. God sanctifies us so we can enter into the promises and provision of the Father to us as Believers. Sanctification is the path to provision and the promises He has made to us in the Gospel, but these are nothing compared to knowing Jesus Christ. With each provision, each promise fulfilled, comes a further knowing and being like Jesus Christ. These are imperishable gifts which we will take with us into eternity.

Moses spent 40 years in his personal wilderness and emerged the humblest man on earth. He had endured the process of sanctification which the Lord prepared for him. Even then, He did not enter the Promised Land. The Apostle Paul was conscious of the risk of losing all that he had gained when he wrote;

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last for ever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. 1 Cor. 9:24-27 NIV

To walk with God is a wonderful thing, but it is also a fearful thing. Paul was fully aware that should he ever begin to depend on himself, he would have lost some of what he had gained, and possibly been disqualified personally from the reward. He was aware that it was a daily choice to surrender to the Holy Spirit, even after He had suffered and acquired great riches in Christ. No matter what we gain in Christ, it never means we have “arrived”, or that now we can relax. Sanctification only gives us the ability to live for God, but the choice is ours every day.

Our preparation will enable us to fully surrender to the Holy Spirit and to walk more completely in Him. Our suffering will bring forth treasures of the Kingdom and the grace to minister them to others. If there is going to be an acceleration of the preparation and empowering of the Church, it will be because the Holy Spirit will set aside a group of warriors such as Gideon’s army who were not afraid. They will have the full armor of God and the grace to win victories over nations far more powerful than themselves. They will be a people of faith who have been purged of the demands of the Old Man and the Flesh, and who love God with all of their Heart, mind, and strength. For many are invited, but few are chosen. Matt. 22:14 NIV