THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST SERIES

DOKIME

(CHARACTER)

We have been looking at the character of Jesus as applied to our lives and the importance of developing Christian character. I believe it is the most important goal that we should have in our Christian life. Thank God for meeting our physical needs, for financial needs and the desires that we have in our life. Above these things is the need to grow into the character of Jesus. This is the highest calling. Rom.8 tells us that we are chosen and predestined to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that’s the highest purpose of God. When this life is over, when Jesus returns again, when we all return to Him, to be with him forever, it will not be what we have gained, what we have accumulated in this life that is really important, but it will be how much our spirit and our soul have been transformed until it is in the image of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. That is the highest treasure. We need to be reminded of that. We need to set our goals for that and that’s why we are doing this series.

Rom.5: 3 onwards, “Not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulations produce perseverance (The word perseverance we have learned is the word hupomone.) character, and character hope and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our heart by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

We have looked last week at the importance of the renewal of our emotions. We have always talked about the renewal of our mind. Our mind, our thought patterns need to be firmly grounded until our minds are thinking like unto the mind of Christ. But another aspect that we have shown last week throughout the New Testament is how emotion can rule peoples’ life. How we need our emotions to be renewed.

If we were to place it in a sort of order in which we have to deal with them, I would think that before we can seek guidance from God, before God can really speak into our life we need firstly to deal with our emotions, to calm and smooth our emotions, secondly the mind and thirdly only can we really hear what is in our Spirit. We do not try to calm the emotions or renew our thought pattern by our natural method. We definitely need the Holy Spirit to do it for us.

And when we say that they are in this order, it doesn’t mean that the emotions of the mind are more important than that of the Spirit. But we place them in the order that the Spirit of God needs to deal in our life in those areas and in that order. And the Word of God needs to deal in our life in that order. The Spirit and the Word need to deal with our emotions before our mind, because our mind has the capability of thinking and analyzing with great intelligence all those things that our emotions cook up.

If you have fear your mind will tell you 20 reasons why you should have the fear. When they did not cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, the Israelites reasoned with their mind. They said that there are giants and they are like grasshoppers. They gave reasons. There is a wrong reasoning. The more intelligent you are, the more reasons you may give. So we know that it is not mental capability or I.Q., because some of the most intelligent people use their intelligence to fulfill emotional needs.

The first thing to be dealt with in our lives with the Word and the Spirit should be our emotions, unless your emotions are already dealt with. In fact you can’t even hear God unless your emotions are dealt with. And every time you want to seek God’s guidance whether for a business, a life partner or any decision, if your emotions are involved in the process you will never really hear from God. You can never really interpret your dream, interpret your vision or interpret a manifestation or a prophecy or even hear God’s voice clearly. For your emotional screen will be louder on your inside blocking out every other interpretation.

Therefore to live in a perfect will of God, the first and foremost important thing is to let the Word of God and the Spirit of God into our lives as much as possible. This is best done through meditating on the Word and praying a lot in the Spirit until your emotions are filled with rest. When your emotions are dealt with, something on your inside enters a rest, a rest so calm that no storm can stir it any more. And that’s the rest that many times is missing in many Christians’ lives, because their emotions are like little storms on their inside.

We must learn this pattern in our Christian life before making any decision. If our emotions are not calmed and rested by the Word of God and the Spirit, we will miss God. Some people happen to hit the bull’s eye once in a while, in spite of their emotions. But that’s never the way to operate. Which is why one of the hardest things to hear God for are the things you get emotionally involved with. The moment emotionally you are involved with something the harder it is to be neutral. The harder it is to be neutral the harder it is to hear God because the only place to hear God is the place of surrender. Any other place that is not a place of surrender is impossible to hear God.

After our emotions are dealt with, we enter into a rest and then our mind begins to be dealt with. When the emotions are dealt with, your old thought pattern and unrenewed thinking can be dealt with by the meditation in the Word. And you begin to think in line with the Word. When something contradicts the Word you refuse to go into that area. You will say no, I will think in line with the Word and your thinking pattern began to follow the Word of God and follow the mind of Christ. That is the second area we deal with, which is the renewal of the mind. When you achieved the renewal of the mind, you experience something called the peace of God, which guards your heart and your mind. Sometimes you have peace in your heart. That’s in the Spirit realm. But we need peace in our mind. I know a lot of people who sometimes get sleepless nights. If you have sleepless nights that are troubled, you haven’t settled either your emotions or your mind into the Spirit of God.

The Spirit within us must rule and reign over our soul. And when He does rule over the emotional part of our soul we get spiritual rest. When He deals with your mind, you get spiritual supernatural peace in your mind. You’re never troubled, never worried because there is a deep internal spiritual rest that you have entered into.

And as we progress, these are areas that we say these are the working of hupomone and makrothumia in our lives. And hupomone comes from the root word meno which Jesus used in the word abide in Jn.15. Abide in Me and let My words abide in you becomes a permanent feature in your life when you are established in hupomone. When those things succeed you enter into a realm called in verse 4 character. Rom.5: 4 and perseverance character.

The word character is the word dokime. Now the word dokime is not normally translated as character. But it is translated character here. The root word of the word dokime is the word proof. You become the living proof of Christ, of God. Just for come cross-references in II Cor.13: 3, Paul using the word dokime. “Since you seek of proof of Christ speaking in me.” Dokime or character is something real from the time we have faith in God. Being justified by faith we have peace with God and in the process of God’s dealings in our life the invisible realm becomes written into our very heart and our very life. We become quote and unquote, the living proof.

What is the definition of proof in the English language in the normal circumstances? If a brother said that he has deposited $1000 in his bank, I would reply, “Brother prove it to me.” What am I saying? I am saying show me that is real. That means that I am not going by his word; I want some evidence. Something that is truly real. He may take out the deposit slip and he may show it to me and say look, this is the proof that I have deposited on such and such a date into such and such account with such and such an amount into the bank. And if that is not enough, he pulls out his bank statement and say look these are my monthly bank statements. This is the proof. What is he doing? He is giving proof.

What is a proof? Firstly, proofs involve the truth. It’s something that is the truth. Not a lie. The ultimate reality. In other words it is something dependable upon. Everything else can change but this is the truth. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.

No.2, dokime involves the understanding that is reality. It’s for real. It is something real. Something tangible. Not something imaginary. Nowadays you have brochure reality and you know how brochure reality affects you. It causes your emotions and your mind to react in such a way like what you are looking at is real. But it’s not real. It is only simulated, but you react in the same way. Just like sometimes your car is parked next to another car. Your car stops next to another car at a traffic light, you just happen to look at the car next to you and suddenly you feel yourself going backwards and you react. Actually it’s the other car going forward. It’s a form of false impression. That is not something real. It is all in the mind. But we are talking about the ultimate reality. Something true, something tangible. That’s what the word dokime mean.

I believe that the root form of the English word document comes from the Greek word dokime. Something authentic that settles a case. The real thing, not a duplicate but the real thing, which is the original document. The interesting thing about all these things is that the ultimate truth and ultimate reality that God was trying to establish from the start of the universe is in living epistles. Truth is not just a creed, a set of principles or precepts although it includes that. Truth is life, its living.

When Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life, He is not saying that He is a walking book. He is saying that this is the ultimate reality. Now lets look at this fact that God wants to establish us as living epistles. That is His prime goal. In Heb.8 and 10. He says that this is the new covenant that he will write his law in our hearts and in our minds so that we began to become the living proof of dokime of God. We become the living epistles that other people read. Therefore if the Christianity you know is only in your head but not in your life, it is a lie. It hasn’t become a dokime in your life if you know what you ought to do but you are not doing it. It is a lie. Your Christianity is a fuss. It is something false. True Christianity is not the establishment of a great theology, a great creed or precepts or principles, although it includes these because these are the part that renew our mind.

But true Christianity is when your become the living proof of your theology, in your action, in your words, in your belief. And up to this day if you believe in something in Christianity but you are not practicing it you are a lie as far as God is concerned. You haven’t reached dokime yet. The hupomone hasn’t completed its work yet until and unless that dokime is established then only it is a reality. Until then it is, as far as God is concerned, mental imaginations of what you ought to be. Until we become what we believe, until we practice what we believe until the fruit of our life become the personification of the principles and precepts that we believe in. That’s dokime, living proof, living epistles, and the ultimate reality.

Now we see what the goal of hupomone is. That ultimately when hupomone succeeds in your life, you’re abiding in the Word, you become Jn.1: 14. “The word of God made flesh” The Word of God is not just a Word of God in your mind. The Word of God is not just a Word of God in theology. The Word of God is not just a Word of God in ink on paper. The Word of God becomes flesh. It becomes a part of your life, a part of your personality. Let me point to some of the great precepts and great principles that the bible has come up with. Sometimes philosophers or people in this world who had gone through hard times are able to come up with some wise sayings. Where does the great wisdom of the sages come from? From their lives. As they observe life they understood something from the reality. And they put it into a form, which our mind can comprehend, but it comes from the original reality in their lives.

Many times Christianity in the modern era can become a mental religion. And we think that just because we have heard something we have gathered the information that we have got it. You haven’t got it until it’s in your life. If you believe that by the stripes of Jesus we are healed, you acknowledge the principle, you understand the theological significance of the atonement and the propitiation of Jesus for your sin and for your sickness, but you are still sick. Dokime hasn’t come yet. It is only in your mind and your imagination.

You need to hupomone on it long enough until it is an automatic factor in your life. That’s what we are talking about and if you believe that God supplies all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus, but you are not experiencing it yet, you are still in the realm of hupomone. Because the moment you start experiencing it, dokime has taken place. You become the living proof. If you say I believe that God will supply all my needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. But your rentals are not paid, many bills in your life you are still struggling with and you still believe it. There is nothing wrong with believing, because believing is the process of entering into dokime, but you are still in the hupomone stage.

We are not saying it is wrong to confess, to believe all those things. But I am trying to show that we should not stop there. Many people stopped there and they achieved some results once or twice. They think they have got it. You don’t get it just once or twice. When it becomes automatic and normal in your life only then has dokime taken place.

Let’s say that you say that God will supply all your need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. But you are struggling with putting food on your table, with having a proper car in your life and a roof over your head. And then you say that God supplies your needs. You believe it with all your heart and your mind. You confess it with your mouth but you are still in hupomone stage.

If you are at that level, are you a living proof that God supplies all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus? The answer is still no. When will you be the living proof? When your faith breaks through, when the supplies start coming forth and you have the supply in your life so much that you began to supply other peoples’ needs. You become the living proof, the dokime of Phil.4:19. The powerful concept you understand is dokime. When dokime comes faith has completed its job. We need to know that dokime is the Word becoming flesh.

Now Jesus Christ never had any problem with health or supply. He lives as a living proof of God supplying all His needs. Even when it comes right down to 5 loaves and 2 fishes, all He does is He looked up to God and gave thanks and He had enough to supply 5000 people. That’s the living proof. God wants our life to reach into the living proof. Until what people are talking about are what we are living. What Christian is theologizing about, we are living. And when people say by His stripes I am healed, but they are not fully healed. They are still not living proof of the divine healing of God. There is nothing wrong if we keep on believing, keep on confessing, but understand where we are, that we are still at the hupomone stage.

The key behind it is to put to practice what God has told us. And see what I call the actualization of the words of God given to us. There is a period of time. When it is just word without manifestation, but as you hupomone all the way, it reaches a place of substantialization. It becomes substance in the living realm in the natural world. And you become a living proof to the natural world of all God’s principles. That’s what God wants us to do. God wants us to be living epistles of Christ. He doesn’t want us to just go around with written epistles. Although that’s good but He doesn’t want us to just go about with mental understanding. That’s on the way, on the process. He wants us to become the living epistles of all that Jesus said. That’s dokime. From the time you start receiving what you ought to be to the time you are what you ought to be, is the process called hupomone. But there are factors that are involved in it being actualized in our life.

Looking at James from the Greek New Testament. There is a lot of play on the words hupomone and hupomano. Hupomano is actually the same word. The word abide found in Jn.15 is the word meno. And the word meno means to abide as if you are abiding in a house. You cannot use the word meno when you are going to a hotel and you are going to stay there for a few days. You cannot say in the full sense that you abide. Because the word abide also means a home. But the full sense of the word abides means that it’s permanently dwelling there. If that is not your permanent dwelling, you are not abiding, you are only lodging temporarily. The word abides talks about it being at home in your life. Not just hearing it on Sunday or in your devotional life. It becomes a living part of your daily life, your thought life. That’s the word meno, abide, being at home in, with.

And then when you add the word hupo, the word hupo means upon. You abide upon. It is a preposition that emphasize in a continuous sense of abiding. You are in a place. You are upon a place. This is upon. Something you have entered into and abiding upon. And so it starts with hupomeno, which is more the verb form.

Like you say I will run in the 400 meters race in the festival of sport. Then you say the run was very good. You have changed the word run into a noun. The run has come. Are you in the run? It has become a noun. From a verb it has become a noun. So it starts with hupomone, which starts with meno, meaning abiding. And then it enters into hupomone, which is a noun. Hupomone is the noun of the process. The verb to hupomone means just to abide upon. But when you call something by a noun, you are including the whole process. When you use the word hupomone as a noun, you include the whole process of hupomone and everything behind it. Are you running in the race? I am running in the 100 meters and running is only one part of the race. The beginning part is to sprint. The ending is to cross the finishing line. The run includes everything, from the beginning to the end. Hupomone is a noun for that abiding process and that’s why hupomone has been translated as patience. It is the noun patience the attribute that enables you to run the race.

James chapter one. I am showing you where all these things occur in verse 3. Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience or hupomone. A quality in your life. Let me bring it further. It you say, someone has the run in him. You are saying he has the quality to be able to run. Someone has an artist on his inside; he has the ability to do art. It’s a whole thing produced into a substance and put on your inside hupomone patience. But let patience or hupomone has its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete lacking nothing. Look at verse 12, “Blessed is the man who endure all temptations.” The word endure is the word hupomone the verb. Hupomone produces hupomeno, you are enduring. It’s a process of it.

Now there is something very interesting here that he is bringing forth. There is a difference between success and failure in this hupomone process. It says in verse 2 my brethren count it all joy when you fall into various trials. The word trial is the same word translated temptation. He is saying count it all joy when you are being tempted, being tested, being tried. We all know that temptations alone in themselves have not produced strong people. There must be something in the person being tempted to rise above the temptation, overcome it and have something. Because for every person who overcomes temptation there will be 9 others who failed. So the temptation or the trials in it self is no virtue. Its what you do in the trials, what you do in the temptation with the weapons that you have, that God has provided that enables you to go through. And the word is the word dokime.

Look at verse 2-3, “My brethren count it all joy when you fall into various trials or temptations, knowing that the testing (dokimeon, which is one of the words of dokime, dokimeon) of your faith produces patience. Dokimeon is bringing out dokime from your faith. I put it in a different way. It says the dokime of your faith through hupomone, or producing hupomone. There is a process. Faith is in the spirit world. If you can see it you don’t need faith. If you can taste it, you don’t need faith. Faith is what we believe in the spirit world in the Word of God. You can’t see it, you can’t feel it, and you can’t touch it with your 5 senses. And hupomone is a process in which it converts faith into dokime, the living proof.

You see how important hupomone is. It is through the process of hupomone that you turn a non-reality into a reality in a natural world by some substance in the spirit world. How can we convert what you believe into a natural truth? Then in verse 12, “Blessed is the man who endures (hupomone) temptation for when he has been tried (dokime) he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”

You notice something here, that there is a process of dokime that is brought forth through hupomone. Now not everybody has that. Not everybody who goes through temptation is able to come out with dokime, living proof that it works. Why is that so? The next verse tells us. In verse 13, verse 13 in an important key. “Let no one say when he is tempted I am tempted God.” All temptations in James 1:13 Arise from your own heart. Something is not a temptation if you don’t have a desire inside. It is only a temptation when you have something on your inside reciprocating to what is offered.

Lets look closely. For God cannot be tempted by evil nor He Himself tempt any one. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires. Then when desire has conceived it gives birth to sin. And sin when it is full grown, produces death. Let me illustrate from the negative point of view so that you could understand the positive. When you have a flower, this flower was once upon a time attached to a plant somewhere. When I pluck this flower do you know that it starts dying? Its life has been cut. The process of death is already there over the next couple of days it will die. It will not produce seeds. It will be unfruitful. If this flower has not been plucked out in its natural form, it will reach its full bloom. It will produce seed and those seeds have the ability to produce another plant. But that process has been halted, stopped. Almost like Jesus cursing the fig tree. The day Jesus cursed that fig tree, it actually died. It took the next day for them to see that it died when it becomes visible.

Sin starts as a seed. Most people don’t realize it. The seeds of sin are in our heart and in our mind. Thrown by the enemy and if you receive them and you allow it to develop in your life, that seed of sin will become fully bloom and kill you. It will kill you spiritually first and then it will kill you naturally. In the air right now, there are a lot of bacteria and viruses are not killing you. Because when they come into your body, in body there are white blood cells, which destroy all that is around you. When somebody comes into the church and they are having a cold, every time they sneeze at your direction, they had just donated to you a few thousands bacteria or viruses. It doesn’t mean you will automatically be catching a cold, because you sat with somebody next to you. You will only catch it if that seed of that cold which is a virus is allowed to be full bloom in your body. But if it enters your body and your white blood cells say lets go and destroy all the viruses. There was never a chance for the virus to reproduce. A virus is so small that the ordinary microscope cannot see. Only bacteria can be seen. Viruses are so tiny. How can it be so powerful? It is not powerful. It is like little ants only when they work in numbers can they be powerful to destroy human body. You and I are so much bigger than a virus. But when the virus becomes millions and millions, that’s when you began to feel it.

There is such a thing as sin growing until its visible. Do you know that sometimes people already send in their heart is a seed. If you don’t deal with that seed it will grow and become harder and harder to deal with. If you are out in your garden and you see the seeds of weeds growing in your lovely grass and if you don’t start pulling out those tiny little fellows, it’s going to be a hard time for you when they are fully-grown. Now all these processes are taking place on your inside. Temptations arise from own desires and when the desires conceived, they give birth to sin. In other word you act on those desires. You allow desires to guide your life to help you make those decisions. Actually it’s just a desire. And when they begin to guide and make you to make those decisions, you are allowing death to come in your life. Spiritual death comes first and then later natural death.

Now the opposite is also true. The principle works both ways. That when God’s Spirit comes into your life, He puts desires on your inside, He draws you on your inside. And so you are like Adam to represent the human race. You have all those things and desires on your inside. What happens is that the enemy inside all of us is the fallen nature inherited from Adam. But thank God inside all of us is the seed of God when you accepted God. But there are only seeds and so Satan comes and he tries to encourage the wrong seed to grow.

I repeat this truth is James chapter one. You are only tempted when you have something inside responding. Let say some people cannot resist smoking because they are addicted to smoking. They can’t go without a puff. I am not tempted because there was nothing in me that responds. You are never tempted by something that your inside never responded to. There are a lot of good things that God has placed into each one of us. What Satan does is he draws those wrong things, the good things into the wrong avenue. And he either gets you in the bondage physically through natural addiction or in the soul addiction.

People sometimes get into wrong relationships. Many homosexuals lack a father figure. Inside them they are looking for a real good father figure. When they lack this father figure they began to seek out men. But in their heart what they wanted was a relationship with a father figure. But because of lack of morality they think they can get that father figure by their physical satisfaction. What they are getting is not just physical satisfaction but it is their soul craving for a father figure. There was a vacuum in their life. The tendencies will be there but it has been perverted into something else. Somebody taught them first and maybe the first man that they look up as a father figure was someone in authority who abused them sexually. They began to put 2 and 2 as one and think that homosexuality and the father figure is one. They had their needs met in a wrong way. Many lesbians too may lack a mother figure in the same way.

Its just like some people who associate water. Maybe when they were small they fell into water and they nearly drowned and then when they grow up for some reasons they don’t like water. They associate water with the horror and the fear they had. Thus water becomes a psychological object and not a physical object.

And so as a result of that Satan twisted it into something wrong. And they cannot tell the difference between their homosexual desires and the need for a father figure which has been merged into one by the enemy. So Satan takes those desires in our life that are not met and he starts twisting and turning them into the wrong avenue and gets us locked into a physical addiction, psychological addiction and every temptation since then. Every temptation in your life has become a temptation because there is something on your inside that responds to it. And that something on your inside that responds to it was a seed that the enemy has nurtured to a different level.

Some of you before you come to know Jesus may have fallen into temptations and now you have more things to uproot. Some of you may have allowed the bad seeds to be matured to a small little shrub. Some of you may have little seeds that are not dealt with. Some of us are born without a father figure. When we are born again we still need those things to be dealt with and to be healed.

Let me make a very strong statement here. If despite all our inadequacies and imperfections, we have been brought up properly by good Christians fathers and mothers, we may never have the faults and weaknesses that we have now. We are not saying they are not there, but they would have been dealt with. We were not perfect but the imperfections would have been dealt with properly by godly parenting.

Children have different personalities and each different personality can either be brought up correctly or wrongly. Suppose one of your children is very adventurous but you didn’t nurture that attribute correctly. You never encourage that adventurous spirit. You suppress that. Every time your child does something adventurous you whip and beat him up. As a result, the good nature gets twisted into the wrong thing. Something good has become something bad.

On the other hand, instead of suppressing that adventurous spirit all the time, you go to the opposite extreme and you give too much liberty without control. You are an absentee parent. Your child began to mix with people and you as his parent don’t even ask what time he comes home. You are not concerned about the friends he mixes with. And you let him go wild. When your child grows up he becomes wild. You didn’t bring him up properly.

Both are extreme. Every attribute in your life God has placed on your inside the moment you are born, if you had a perfect Christian environment filled with God’s Word, and the fellowship of godly man and woman, no matter what kind of weaknesses you were born with, you would have been a godly person in the Lord today.

And a lot of temptations today would not have been temptations if they had been corrected properly early in your life. But not all of us have that kind of ideal godly environment. So here we are with our imperfections nurtured by an imperfect upbringing. We have to deal with such faults. It’s never too late. Some of us by now are adults; we have our own children to deal with besides our own life. It’s never too late.

What we need to realize is that the process to deal with the seeds that attract temptations in our lives is taking place. Every time there is a temptation there is something in your life to be dealt with. Understand that Satan has no power. He only seems to have power because of something in your life that responds to it.

Remember Jesus said that before He went to the cross, that the prince of this world has come and he has nothing in me. That’s found in the gospel of John. He has nothing in me. There is nothing in His life that attracted Satan’s offer. He has been brought up correctly.

In the same way my friend, when you have faith in the seed of God’s Word in your life for different things and allow that seed to nurture in your life, hupomone starts developing in your life. Maybe you have the desire to just be with God’s people, a desire to be in church, a desire to be in the prayer meeting, you could have it clouded by other things, but when you begin to respond, you are developing hupomone in your life.

The Spirit of God doesn’t force you to choose, but He draws out from your life the right things. When you respond correctly to the right promptings and the drawing of the Spirit, you allow the Holy Spirit to develop your hupomone. Good friends also do the same. Good and Spirit filled Christians make you want to love God more. It draws something out from your life that is good. It makes you want to pray more; it makes you want to read the Bible more. So we should allow ourselves to be exposed more to godly fellowship. If you are very weak and can’t overcome temptation alone, then get together with a fellowship that could draw out the best in you. Because in all of us there is something good that God has placed inside us that can be drawn out. And He draws out from your life. And then as you began to respond to the right thing and flow in the right thing, hupomone starts developing in your life. An ability comes into your life to develop. And what you believe slowly becomes part of your life. And you don’t understand how you changed but you have changed.

James chapter one, it says, let no one say when he is tempted that he is tempted by God. Where is the secret to victory over the enemy on your inside? We are saying now that the real power in the Christian life is in the character of Jesus. When your emotions are dealt with, when your ungodly desires are dealt with, your mind is dealt with on your inside, the more you overcome the inside, the greater your power over the devil and over circumstances.

Here is an important secret too. If there is nothing placed on our inside, there is nothing to grow. You can tend your garden but if you don’t put the seed in, it’s a wasted effort. There are a lot of Christians who have not the right seed sown into their life yet. Who grow apple trees without planting apple seeds? We need that seed to be sowed, the seed of God, which is the Word of God in our life for healing, righteousness, health, etc. The Word of God contains all the seeds of every need in your life.

If you have a problem with alcoholism, you got to find the root of that seed. Why did you go into alcohol? There is something in your soul that was drawn into that. It is not just a physical problems, it is the emotional problem deeper than the physical. God will reveal to you the root cause of your problem. And He will replace it with different seed. Every time you got into alcoholic addiction there was always a regret in your life. How you wish you could be free from it? Now that’s a good desire, that’s a desire that God has placed on the inside that can be nurtured into the positive side. Why are people overcome by temptation or trial? It is mainly because they have no seed to nurture in the hard time.

If you know what God’s Word says, you can be in the worst financial crisis in your life now, but there is a revelation of God like a seed that comes into your life where you know that God can never fail. You know you have given your life to God, you know you obey God, that is a seed. You throw out the hard time and hold on to that seed. You say that you know that God will not let you down. And you say it in your mouth you and believe it in your heart and you have the spirit of faith. You throw out those things thrown against your life. Your friends laughed at you. The people around you mocked you, but you keep saying you know God is not a lie. You know His Word. His Word is true. You are holding on to the seed and through time that seed becomes dokime. When the first result comes, it becomes a part of your life. As you keep on doing that over and over again, it becomes sealed on your inside. Suddenly you can never be shaken in that area anymore. Dokime has entered.

Let me show you some people who have entered into that realm in II Cor.8:1-2 “Moreover brethren we make known to you the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia, that in a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their liberality.”

The word trial here is not the word temptation. The word trial is the word dokime. If it were just a trial and temptation, they wouldn’t have the result that they have. So it is not the temptation that benefits people. It is what you have on your inside during the temptation that you hold through that helps you to overcome. Temptations in themselves neither help nor hinder, it is what is in your inside that either helps or hinders. It hinders when you got something on your inside that responds to it. And you are able to overcome. The temptations seem to make you a better person. Not because of the temptation but because during the temptation you held on to the word of faith and it becomes a dokime in your life. Temptations in themselves are nothing.

So I would like to encourage you, don’t blame your circumstances. Don’t say if you were in a different situation it would be different. All your temptations and your trials have nothing to do with who you are and what you can be. Don’t think that if your circumstances are different, you could be like somebody else. Don’t ever blame your circumstances. The worldly circumstances around you may be the enemy’s attacks on your life, but the enemy has no power over your life except what is on your inside. In whatever circumstances that come to your life, deal with your inner responses to the devil and shut them and pulled out the root causes whether in your emotion or intellect and hold on to what is the right desire.

Remember in this series I said yield to the deepest instruction on your inside when you are under the greatest pressure of decision-making in your life. May be you are tempted in the area of finances; you are tempted to do the wrong thing, to bribe or to steal. May be you are tempted to lose your integrity and to let go your Christian principles, but on your inside there is something rising forth, and that is your conscience. Although its not easy but you yield to your conscience. Suddenly the scriptures come through. Whatever you yield to that will be your master. If you yield to sin in your life, sin becomes your master. But if you yield to the righteousness and the morality in your life that rises forth, at first is a weak yielding, but if you yield, according to the book of Romans, righteousness becomes your master. When righteousness becomes your master, being righteous is an easy thing. We were slaves of sin then we become slaves of righteousness. Being holy, being righteous, doing the right thing, being prayerful, reading the Word, walking in integrity become as easy as ABC, because we are yielding to righteousness on our inside. Every time whatever circumstances you are in now, look for the seed on your inside and this is the promise of God in your life. I Cor.10: 13, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”

My friend, in every temptation that you are going through right now, there is a way and a provision God gives. I don’t care how difficult your circumstances are, but let me tell you, you have an answer on your inside. People have looked for a way of escape on the outside, but they are looking in a wrong direction. Remember James chapter one the temptation is only powerful because of the response on your inside. It’s a wrong response. But if you are Spirit filled, you pray in tongues, you read the Word, you meditate on the Word, you get into the right atmosphere of Christian fellowship and you hear on your inside, there is a right desire to yield to. You yield to the right desire and the right desire will give you the strength to overcome. It’s not the strength to push it out; it’s the strength to root it out.

Many people have been trying to fight it as an outside battle. Alcoholism is not an outside battle. Smoking is not an outside battle it’s not something that is outside. They are looking in the wrong direction. Trying to resist. It’s on your inside. When the root is dealt with and then something on your inside there will always be the answer of God in every temptation and trial. And you will find the key on your inside and you yield to that key. Yield to that word and the key that God gives you. And as you yield to it there will be progressive strength. Suddenly when you yielded a few times, there is no more desire for the wrong thing. When there is no more desire on your inside, no matter how great the temptation is, it makes no difference because your inside has been dealt with.

Hupomone doesn’t work on the inside. The key in Christian life is this: we only change the outside in proportion to what we change on the inside. The key to answered prayer, if your prayer in your life that is not answered, whenever you pray actually God starts changing you first before He answers your prayer. The key to all of Christianity and Christian life, the key to all the promises of God and all the blessing that God have is you change on your inside and God changes on the outside. We take care of our change on our inside and God will take care of the change on the outside.

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THE BOOKS OF ADAM AND EVE

The above two books are ancient extra biblical literature that did not make it into the canon of the Word of God. They depict the life of Adam and Eve after they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. After their expulsion, Adam and Eve had to learn to live with new phenomena that we take for granted today. They experienced the first sunrise, the first rain, the first thunder and lightning and thought these were punishment from…Read More

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