I Press (contending For Next-level Victory) by Apostle Joshua Selman: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Declarations

The believer is an overcomer

Challenges are not unusual. What should be unusual in your life is defeat.

Psalm 23:4 — sometimes God does not remove adversaries, because they need to see that he is faithful. Sometimes Haman needs to join the feast, not because he is not an adversary, but so he can witness that God himself is the lifter of men. When it looks like Haman is still at the corridors of power, do not be threatened. Esther, his presence is still a strategy.

Four assignments

1. Help you know God functionally, not theoretically

   Daniel 11:32, John 17:3, Philippians 3:10

   • A man can know God, and the results can show; intimacy is a reality, both with men and with the spirit.
   • Your confidence in life is based on the depth of your revelation of God. The God you know is the God you reveal to your world.

2. Expose you to the mysteries of the kingdom

   Job 38:33

   • It is important to be like Christ, but you must also know how to function like Christ. Some believers have been taught to live like Christ but not to function like Christ; functioning like Christ takes faith, wisdom, and power.
   • It takes knowledge, high-level spiritual illumination, to establish that dominion.
   • Victory and dominion in the kingdom is not a gift, the capacity to walk in it is a gift, but the dynamics of walking in it is a consequence.
   • We do not have thirtyfold salvation, salvation is equal for everyone, but manifesting the riches salvation brings can be thirtyfold, sixtyfold, or hundredfold, according to your understanding and engagement of the word.

3. Expose you to God's prophetic program and your role in it

   Victory and dominion takes away distractions so you can focus and make kingdom come a reality. You do not have to be a preacher to have a role in the fulfillment of God's program.

4. Guide you to live a life of fulfillment and meaning

   You can be victorious by any parameter, but if you do not live a life of purpose and meaning, your joy will not be full. Six elements control fulfillment: security, variety, significance, love and acceptance, growth, and impact and contribution.

I press, contending for next level victories

Philippians 3:13-15, Micah 2:10, Proverbs 4:18

• Every matured believer must carry this orientation toward destiny actualization and victory in the kingdom.
• In God's economy we never plateau, we should never have a better yesterday.

There is always more

Revelation 4:1

• Even in heaven, there was still room to go higher.
• It is easy to look when you have nothing, but it is harder to keep looking in the presence of results, victories, and commendations.

Regardless our current strides, regardless the level of excellence and results we presently command, there is always more for the people of God.

Life is a race, not a single event

Hebrews 12:1-2, 2 Timothy 4:7

• Life and destiny are a race, not a single event.
• You can win today or manifest victory today, but that is not the culmination of your destiny.

Victory today does not mean victory forever. You have to repeat and sustain the principles that brought today's victory, else you can win today and lose so woefully tomorrow.

1 Corinthians 9:24

• Run in such a way as to win, as to get the prize. Never stop until you see the finish line.
• More than eighty percent of runners in a marathon know they will not finish, they run just for health or enjoyment, they do not plan to win. Less than ten percent run to win.

Sound of Revival is done and dusted for 2026. Liverpool will never happen in that manner again. Canada will never happen that way again. US will not happen in this manner again.

Both failure and success can be a distraction

Both failure and success, both discouragement and overcelebration of results, can become a distraction to your next level of glory. Rejoice and celebrate victories at every level, but do not be distracted by it. When you celebrate success without boundaries, it becomes a tool that leads to failure, the way beef left too long in the microwave burns: the same heat meant to warm it ends up destroying it.

Seven keys to press for next level victories

1. The price for deeper levels of intimacy with God

   2 Chronicles 15:10-15

   • There is a direct correlation between your intimacy with God and consistency of exploits.

   2 Chronicles 26:5

   • You cannot experience consistency of victory in ever-increasing dimensions when you ignore the one who gives the increase. One can plant, another can water, but only God gives the increase.

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   • You cannot tamper with the order set in Genesis 1:1. He is only omega if he is allowed to be alpha. If you let him start your journey, he defends whatever happens there. When God comes in to work with you, he does not just pick up from where you left off, he takes you back, corrects the pattern, and becomes omega to that corrected state.

   Proverbs 3:5-7

   • In all your ways, not just some, acknowledge him, and he will direct your path.
   • Except the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain; God gives his beloved rest.

   • Four ordinances of intimacy: a rich, consistent, intentional, systemic prayer life; the study of the word; time invested in heartfelt worship; and investedness in the corporate gathering of the saints.
   • Four ways to derive profit from scripture: you study it, you hear it, you speak it, and you obey it. They heard the word but it did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.

   Hebrews 10:25

   • Whether online or offline, do not forsake the corporate gathering.
   • There is a realm with God where only lovers get to, where God will fight a nation for your sake, because you have gotten into the place of bride.

2. The price of vision and an unbending focus

   Proverbs 29:18, Isaiah 50:7

   • You must fight an arrival mentality if you want to remain a champion. There are people who celebrate success too soon.
   • Vision gives you focus and the legitimacy to say no to many things, both good and bad, that would distract you.
   • Vision converts your energy so it produces profit, the way a river without banks just spreads and wastes itself, but once channeled into tributaries it can water a garden. Without vision, energy dissipates instead of producing profit.
   • Lives and destinies, individually and as a ministry, are like the pages of a book. Reaching page ten does not mean the book is finished; there is always another page to turn.

3. The price of greater enlightenment and transformation

   Isaiah 61:1-3

   • Gentiles shall come to your light, and their kings to the brightness of your rising.

   1 Corinthians 8:2

   • A student who does well in his first year, even with a perfect score, is not yet a graduate. He is excellent, still forming, still with potential. You do not judge overall excellence by the first session. With respect to where you are going, you are also a student, even while you teach and mentor others.

   • Three levels of darkness with respect to knowledge: complete ignorance, your hands empty of any keys; inaccurate knowledge, holding keys that are wrong for the doors you seek to open; and incomplete knowledge, your keys are right but too few for every door your destiny requires.
   • There are keys that open the door of favor, keys that open the door of influence, keys that open the door of power, keys that open the door of productivity, keys that open the door of longevity. Having a key does not mean it opens the door you want, the way a key to your bedroom will not open your kitchen. Some keys are bespoke, personality specific, which is why you must depend on the Holy Ghost to contextualize the key to your door.
   • Darkness is the absence of results, or the absence of consistent results. The presence of darkness in any area of your life is the valid diagnosis of your need for light.
   • As a man of God, there is a level of knowledge and transformation that, no matter how you pray and fast, will not let you lead beyond a certain size of congregation. It is not a curse; leading requires leadership, organizational principles, and excellence in addition to spirituality, not zeal alone.
   • Poverty, loneliness, failure, and friendship are all signs, and signs follow a certain kind of believing. You change what follows you by upgrading the belief that attracts it, not by relocating from it.
   • Curses and yokes are empowered by mindsets and beliefs, not just spirits. Spirits plus belief systems equal patterns. Complete deliverance is casting out the spirit influence and re-engineering the person's understanding, else a cast-out demon returns to find the same mindset still hosting it.
   • Four dimensions of the ministry of the word:

     • Doctrine, the foundational truths of the Christian faith. Hebrews 6:1-2.
     • The principles of the kingdom, its modus operandi, such as giving and receiving, and praise as a weapon for commanding victory.
     • Wisdom for living, such as the law of honor, the law of productivity, the law of relationships.
     • A word-compliant worldview, the lens through which a believer interprets politics, governance and economics.

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4. The price of greater value, productivity, excellence and contribution

   Proverbs 18:16

   • A man's gift only discovered will not bring him before the great. A man's gift discovered, refined, and served with excellence brings him before great men.
   • Productivity means you discover your value, refine it, turn it into products and services, and serve it to a targeted consumer base with excellence.
   • You know you are valuable by who is looking for you. Value must be needed and useful within the context of a civilization.
   • Apps can aggregate knowledge, which is profitable, but they cannot cast out demons or heal the sick. Genesis 12:3.
   • It is your assignment to be valuable and outstanding. It is God's assignment to announce you to your lifters and to your world.
   • Grace received, grace utilized, and grace maximized produces profit, not grace merely available.
   • Technology will replace many jobs, but as long as there are humans on earth, humans connected to God remain the ultimate solution to humans. A typewriter became a monument once technology upgraded past it, so refine and reinvent yourself rather than staying fixed.

   I release upon you the grace and the intelligence it takes to solve problems, to provide solutions, to meet needs, and to answer questions. You will be an undeniable solution, and you will not be ignored.

5. The price of attracting, building and maintaining strategic relationships

   Genesis 12:1-4, Genesis 13:5

   • God called Abraham, and Lot went with him. By Genesis 13, almost everything Abraham had, Lot also had.
   • Lot protected the evidences of the blessing but did not protect the connection that produced it.
   • When their herdsmen strove, Abraham let Lot choose where to go, and Lot left. It was Abraham who later came back to rescue Lot from captivity.
   • Define your enemy properly so you do not fight your helpers because of a seasonal conflict. If the person standing in front of you is called Pharaoh, do not fight, or you forfeit becoming prime minister. If he is called Ahasuerus, do not fight, or you forfeit becoming queen. If he is called Saul, do not fight, or you forfeit the chance to fight Goliath.
   • Some relationships you leave and never return to. Some you leave and must find a way back to, because you still need Abraham. Lot only settled near Sodom, but by the time they came to rescue him, he was living at its center.
   • Peter ran from Jesus, but Jesus still called him apostle and still needed him. After the resurrection, he went back to Peter and asked, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than this?" Many people fight relationships that only left them to go to the cross for their sake, not to abandon them.
   • The prodigal son lost every material thing, but what began his decline was losing the relationship with his father. He only recovered when he called his father by the right name again and said, I will arise and go to my father.
   • There are one-off relationships, seasonal relationships, and destiny relationships, and you must know the difference.

   Ecclesiastes 4:9

   • Four keys to attract, build and maintain relationships: learn people skills; learn honor, the discernment to recognize difference; make honor reciprocal; and give proof of love through time, energy and resources.
   • The way to the heart of the great is value, not begging. Every man's need is his point of contact.
   • Who hates you does not matter, but who loves you does. Do not trivialize those who genuinely value you, and swallow your pride to say I am sorry while it is still cheap.

6. The price of mastering humility as a lifestyle, even in the presence of undeniable results

   James 4:6, James 4:10

   • When God is opposing you, the anointing cannot help you, only mercy can bail you out.
   • One way to remain in humility is to be thoughtful, to remember where he brought you from.
   • Pride is a reducer, a depleter of honor and grace. Poverty plus pride makes it worse, success plus pride reduces its potency, the anointing plus pride reduces the fire.
   • It takes vision to start, it takes discipline to continue, but it takes mercy to finish.
   • The first door God opens is usually a test, to see your reaction, before he opens the next one.

   • Keep me humble, however high I am lifted, however great the results.
   • Regardless how high you lift us as a ministry, and regardless how high you lift every pastor here, grant the grace to remain humble.
   • For those already carried away in pride, restore them back to the place of humility, that they not suffer the plague that came upon Nebuchadnezzar.

7. The price of accessing divine direction and accurately discerning prophetic seasons

   Numbers 9:23, Psalm 32:8, Psalm 37:23, Isaiah 30:21, Psalm 23:1-3

   • There are limitations that come with human nature. Confusion is part of the limitations that befall all men, no matter how accurate you have been before.

   Proverbs 14:12

   • There is a way of doing business, a way of doing ministry, a way of doing family, that seems right to a man, but the end of it are the ways of death.

   1 Corinthians 13:9

   • Vision is powerful, but it also creates blindness. Focused ahead, you cannot see to your side or behind you, which is why you need someone to tap you and direct you toward a door opening where you are not looking.

   1 Samuel 16:6-7

   • When Samuel saw Eliab he assumed he was the Lord's anointed, but God told him this was not the one. Even a great prophet's emotions can tamper with what God is saying.

   • Most seasons demand a change in approach and strategy, sometimes location, sometimes adjustments in relationships. God can start a journey and the enemy can finish it if you do not know where the road ends. Know when the season that began at Brook Cherith has ended, so you do not stay in a place God is finished with, simply because it was God who sent you there.
   • Sound of Revival began as a vision three years ago, a leap of faith, and today nations have been blessed by it, in the same way an impression to meet in a studio with a few people became one of the largest online worship platforms globally.

   1 Chronicles 12:32, 1 Samuel 30:8

   • Assumption with God is dangerous. Do not assume that the way you followed yesterday is still the way for tomorrow. Verify, verify, verify.
   • Ways to discern the will of God include prophetic counsel, staying with the Holy Ghost, dreams, and visions.
   • The value of wisdom is in its ability to influence your decision making. You know you are wise by the superiority of the outcomes your decisions produce; when decisions are self-sabotaging or stagnating, something is wrong with your discernment.

Recap

1. Intimacy with God.
2. Vision and unbending focus.
3. Greater enlightenment and transformation.
4. Greater productivity, value, excellence and contribution.
5. Attracting, building and maintaining strategic relationships.
6. Mastering humility as a lifestyle.
7. Accessing divine direction and discerning prophetic seasons.