Above Only Peniel 2026 Day 2 Jalingo Nigeria by Apostle Joshua Selman: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

The ministry of the word achieves a number of things in the life of believers. Every time the word of God comes forth, it sustains the power to achieve several things in the lives of those who pay attention.

What the Ministry of the Word Achieves

1. Illumination and enlightenment. In Ephesians 1:16-18, Paul prayed over the church that God would grant them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, that the eyes of their understanding would be enlightened. Illumination opens up your spirit and your mind to an awareness of what is there.
2. Understanding. Illumination makes you aware; understanding helps you comprehend. That is where the profit begins: you can be aware of a truth and yet it never blesses you until it is understood.
3. Empowerment. The word does not stop at understanding, else there would be no difference between the ministry of the word and an intelligent lecture. There is empowerment that comes with the word.

God's strategy for achieving anything in the kingdom is His word. The way He builds men, heals, delivers, restores, and imparts is by His word. Miracles, signs, and wonders are powerful; they testify that God is love, that He is mighty, that He is in the midst of His people, but miracles do not build people. Many that Jesus healed still doubted him, even one who was raised from the dead.

Four Dimensions of a Productive Word Ministry

1. Doctrine. From the Greek didascalia, a body of instruction that empowers and strengthens like a manual that turns a student into the likeness of the teacher. Doctrine is the foundational precept on which the Christian faith is built; without it, an experience is not built on rock.
2. The principles or mysteries of the kingdom. Jesus taught relatively little formal doctrine, since he had not yet died and risen (the doctrinal teaching is largely found in the epistles), but from the Beatitudes onward he taught the principles of the kingdom, contrasting how the world operates with how the kingdom operates. Doctrine builds conviction; the principles of the kingdom bring victory. Without them, faith may be unshakeable but not victorious.
3. Wisdom for living. Believers live among people of different convictions and must learn to coexist. Some are doctrinally sound and understand the principles of the kingdom, yet fail in the workplace because they lack wisdom for living: people skills, effective communication. Doctrine concerns those in the faith; the principles of the kingdom concern those in the kingdom; wisdom for living concerns those on the earth.
4. A word-compliant worldview. Christians must have a lens through which they interpret politics, governance, and business. Matthew 5:13-16 teaches this: believers are salt and light, meant to preserve and expose, so that their good works are visible and point people to God. Without training in this, godly people remain ignorant of global trends and irrelevant beyond the walls of the church.

Above Only: Keys to Exemption and All-Round Victory

Job 22:29-30 and Psalm 91:10-16 are the two opening texts for this section, both promising protection and a lifting up for the person who dwells in God, regardless of what the ordinary lot of men would predict for them.

The destiny of the natural man, unassisted by God, is highly unpredictable and uncertain. When you examine life from a purely philosophical or sociological standpoint, you are left with fear, because all that can be deduced from observation is uncertainty, confusion, and fear. The average person of a certain age will have stories of sickness, injustice, and betrayal, and will assume it is unique to them until they hear the same story from another, another city, another nation, and realize it is a common thread. Solomon, who explored life from the most privileged position available to any man, concluded, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," and, "Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."

Different people carry different privileges (economic, educational, territorial), but eventually the same lot seems to catch up with everyone. When sickness comes, those factors no longer stand. A professor can be hospitalized beside an illiterate; a godly man beside an ungodly one. What, then, is the edge?

What Is Exemption?

• To be exempted means to be free from an obligation or a liability imposed on others, whether by men, by circumstances, or by spiritual factors.
• To be exempted means to be excluded from a consequence.
• Exemption means immunity and dominion over everything that threatens the victory and liberty of the believer.

Biblical Proof That Exemption Is Real

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Apostle Joshua Selman
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1. In Exodus 8:22-23, God said He would sever the land of Goshen from the plague of flies, drawing a clear division between His people and Pharaoh's people, so that Pharaoh would know the Lord is in the midst of the earth.
2. In Genesis 4:13-15, after Cain killed Abel, he cried that his punishment was greater than he could bear, fearing that whoever found him would kill him. The Lord set a mark upon Cain so that whoever slew him would suffer sevenfold vengeance. Even under judgment, a mark of exemption was placed on him.
3. In Daniel 3:24-28, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into a furnace heated seven times hotter for refusing to bow to the king's golden image, so hot that the men who threw them in were themselves killed by the flames. Yet the three walked freely inside it, joined by a fourth figure "like the Son of God," and came out with not even the smell of fire on them, nor a hair singed.
4. Isaiah 43:1-2 promises the same exemption in advance: the redeemed and named one who walks through fire will not be burned.
5. In Acts 12, after James was beheaded, Peter was bound and kept under four quaternions of soldiers, awaiting execution. The church prayed, an angel came, his chains fell off, and he walked past the guards and through the iron gate, which opened by itself.
6. When Pharaoh decreed the death of every Hebrew infant, Moses' mother placed him in a basket on the Nile. Pharaoh's own daughter found him, loved him, and raised him in the very palace of the one who had ordered his death.

Exemption is real. Do not get too used to pain, to failure, or to defeat.

Life can appear deeply unfair: some rise on the advantage of the nation they were born into rather than their own character, while determined, well-behaved people from difficult circumstances struggle regardless of their discipline. Yet the lot of all men does not have to be your lot within the economy of the kingdom.

Consider Jabez, named for the sorrow his mother suffered in bearing him, whom that name shadowed for years, until one day he called on the God of Israel: "Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast… and keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me." And God granted him that which he requested. Though your beginning be small, scripture says your latter end should greatly increase; it does not say your beginning must be great, only that anything beyond the beginning is not meant to remain small.

Transformation, a change of state, is a possibility every field of human enquiry agrees on, whether approached through science, philosophy, or faith. A man does not have to remain in the same condition indefinitely. The prodigal son, having degenerated to feeding swine, said within himself, "How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger. I will arise and go to my father." His decision changed his condition.

Exemption, however, does not occur under every condition: as a chef must create the right conditions for a dish to turn out as intended, there are conditions that a believer must meet to walk in the reality of dominion, exemption, and all-round victory. Two keys make that possible.

Key One: A Functional Knowledge of the God of Exemption

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Exemption is sponsored by the power of God, and it requires a functional, not merely theoretical, knowledge of Him. Daniel 11:32 says the people who know their God shall be strong and do exploits. Dominion for the believer is not a fabrication of your own intelligence; it is derived from the strength of your relationship with God. In John 15:1-16, Jesus likened himself to the vine and his Father to the husbandman: every branch that abides in the vine bears fruit, but cut away from the vine it withers. Your journey to dominion does not begin with learning principles; it begins with an encounter and a functional knowledge of God. Zephaniah 3:17 describes the intimacy of that God: mighty to save, rejoicing over His people rather than merely tolerating them.

God is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent: if He has said it, He can bring it to pass (Genesis 21:1 records that the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and did unto Sarah as He had spoken). The three Hebrew boys did not walk into the furnace on a whim; they had a functional knowledge of the God they served, and so did Daniel when he was thrown to the lions and King Darius found him alive the next morning, saying, "My God hath sent his angel." The secret of exploits is to pay the price to know God as a functional revelation, not a theoretical one.

There are three ways scripture teaches us to know God:

1. By studying His character. Psalm 103, from beginning to end, is among the most concise descriptions of God's character in scripture: His loving-kindnesses, His tender mercies, the fact that His mercies triumph over judgment. Goodness itself, one of the most visible expressions of His glory, is an aggregate of three qualities: being thoughtful, being kind, and being compassionate.
2. By studying His principles and His ways. This is what scripture calls His wisdom: studying how He operates.
3. By studying His power and His works. The heavens declare His glory. In Ephesians 1:19, Paul prayed that believers would know the exceeding greatness of His power toward those who believe.

The dimension of God you know is the dimension you will reveal to your generation. If you encounter Him as Deliverer, you will be a deliverer; if you encounter Him as Healer, you will carry that grace to others. A family, and a generation, that rejects the place of God's word and prayer has also rejected exemption.

Proverbs 3:5-7

This is the charge behind restoring the family altar: trust God rather than your own understanding, acknowledge Him in every decision, and let that posture, not self-reliance, direct your path.

Key Two: Know Who You Are in Christ

Knowing who God is, is foundational, but if you do not also know who you are, it is like having electricity that works but powering a defective appliance. Ephesians 1:19-21 speaks of the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised him from the dead and set him at His own right hand, far above all principality and power. Ephesians 2:6 extends that same positional reality to believers: raised and seated with Christ, not just Christ himself.

There are three elements to the believer's identity to study:

1. Your oneness with Christ. Scripture calls us joint-heirs, branches connected to the vine: he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. We did not merely follow Jesus in his death and resurrection; scripture teaches that we died with him, were buried with him in baptism, and were raised with him.
2. Your positional advantage. Raised up and seated together with Christ in heavenly places, far above every name that is named: a spiritual reality, not mere sentiment.
3. The responsibilities connected to that privilege.

Scripture calls the believer the righteousness of God in Christ, the temple of the Holy Ghost, a joint-heir with Christ, an ambassador, light, salt, and a blessing. Genesis 12:3 is the root of that last title: the promise that through the blessed one, all the families of the earth would be blessed. It is never too late to add salt to a meal, and it is never too late to find your place, because you are salt. Being confident of who you are in God is different from arrogance; it is not boastfulness, it is the settled knowledge that the life of God flows through you.

Low self-esteem can kill, and the cure for it is not therapy but the revelation that you have been grafted into Christ. Whatever your background, your case can be different. Nobody else will do the assignment of believing yourself, for you.