Switch 2026, Day 3 - Emerge by Apostle Joshua Selman: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is potential power. It is knowledge that is applied, understood, and engaged consistently that produces profit. Just because there is access to truth does not mean it will profit anyone. It is when truth is engaged with understanding that it produces profit.

When pastors and ministers of the gospel are trained, a template is provided for a robust and vibrant spiritual atmosphere within a territory. What the average believer becomes is largely a product of the kind and quality of the priesthood that raises and trains that person. What any believer in a territory will become is not just dependent on the will of God — it is dependent on the kind and quality of priesthood.

When there is widespread deficiency in an area of spiritual understanding, in the performance of the word, in leadership, or in character, it will largely be traced to a deficiency in content from the pulpit. A pastor's conference is therefore very important — it is one of the ways a land is healed. Every time a society or territory was in trouble in scripture, it was not the government God addressed. He went to the church. 2 Chronicles 7:14 ties the healing of the land to his people, not to government.

The ministry of the Spirit goes beyond the communication of words. It edifies beyond the realm of intelligence. This is the difference between the ministry of the Spirit and a lecture. While it appeals to the mind and sells superior ideas, behind the frailty of human words the Holy Ghost is doing something to the spirit man too. Ezekiel 2:1-2 — the prophet was asked to stand but did not have the strength. The Spirit entered into him and set him upon his feet. It takes more than desire to stand. There is a business of the Spirit that can lift men to stand.

Foundation Scriptures

Three scriptures lay the foundation for this teaching on exploits in ministry.

• Colossians 4:17 — "Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfill it." Note the structure: it does not say received from the Lord but in the Lord. To receive from a man requires only proximity. To receive in the Lord requires a depth of relationship.
• 2 Peter 1:10 — "Give diligence to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, ye shall never fall."
• 2 Timothy 4:5 — "Watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist. Make full proof of your ministry." It is the minister's own responsibility to stop men from doubting the calling — through doing business with God to change that narrative.

Four Redefinitions

Effective ministry requires a unified understanding of terminologies. The first reason people fail in learning spiritual things is assumption as far as definitions are concerned. Four key terms must be redefined.

1. Ministry

   The average understanding of ministry involves a pulpit, a Bible, a microphone, and a congregation. That is sincere but fundamentally wrong. Ministry has nothing necessarily to do with a congregation, a pulpit, a microphone, or even speaking.

   What makes anything ministry is first the motive, then the goal.

   Ministry is any activity motivated by love for Jesus that is intended to reveal him, bring him glory, and bless believers, the body, or society.

   By this definition, there are many preachers but few ministers. There are many singers but few ministers. Ministry extends beyond the pulpit:

   • If cleaning the pulpit is motivated by love for Jesus and intended to make the space conducive so that Jesus is revealed and lives are blessed — that act of cleaning is ministry.
   • If singing is motivated by love for Jesus and intended to reveal him and bless men — that act of singing is ministry.
   • If preaching is motivated by love for Jesus with the goal of revealing him and blessing people — that act of preaching is ministry.

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   The Bible records a man called Amaziah who did everything that was good — but not with a perfect heart. The problem was not the correctness of the activity; it was the heart condition. Ministry is not defined by the religiosity of the activity but by the motivation and the goal.

   This is how Jesus called Peter into ministry. He did not just say, "Come, follow me." He asked, John 21:15, "Lovest thou me more than this?" He did not ask if Peter could fish or speak. He said: prove that love by letting it be the motivation to feed my sheep and feed my lambs.

2. The Great Commission

   The term "great commission" is not found in the Bible — it is a theological term to capture the corporate mandate Jesus gave believers. Many ministers of the gospel are not effective because there is still a hazy understanding of this mandate. Soul-winning is part of it. Casting out devils is part of it. But these are only pieces of the truth. An incomplete understanding of the mandate affects efficiency.

   The great commission is a mandate Jesus gave first to his disciples and, by extension, to the entire body of believers — not just ministers — that captures three dimensions:

   1. The salvation of sinners — world evangelization
   2. Discipleship — helping believers attain maturity and stature
   3. Territorial transformation — transforming societies through the wisdom and power of God

   Three scriptures must be held together to form the complete picture:

   • Mark 16:15 — "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." The first mandate: go and preach.
   • Matthew 28:18-20 — All authority has been given to Christ in heaven and earth. "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." The second mandate: go and teach.
   • Acts 1:8 — "But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses." This is not going to preach or going to teach. It is becoming the evidence. For context, see Matthew 5:13-16 — "You are the salt of the earth… you are the light of the world… let your light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."

   No minister has liberty to choose only one of these. All three must be understood and pursued:

   • World evangelization — God's program for the world of unbelievers, in partnership with the Holy Ghost, angels, and yielded vessels
   • Discipleship — God's program for the church, to bring believers to maturity and stature
   • Territorial transformation — God's program for society

3. Kingdom Advancement

   Kingdom advancement refers to any and every scriptural strategy deployed to enthrone Christ in the hearts of men and across every strata of human activity.

   Whether it is business, ministry, singing, or kingdom financing — any scriptural strategy deployed with the goal of enthroning Christ in the hearts of men and across every sphere of human activity is kingdom advancement.

4. The Church

   The church is three things:

   1. God's strategy — the only strategy that sustains the formula for refining and developing men and birthing God's program
   2. The corporate gathering of God's people
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   3. The institution that preserves morality, excellence, and godliness within society

The Architecture Problem: Why Churches Are Not Producing

The presence of many churches in a territory without corresponding societal transformation is not a problem of presence — it is a problem of architecture. The current model of ministry for many churches is not producing quality spiritual products.

A study on the decline of the church in the West reveals that no fewer than 5,000 churches have closed. Mega-cathedrals are being sold and converted into warehouses. In America, roughly 40% of people still believe in Jesus but no longer attend church because the formula that was used to raise them is not producing results.

1 Corinthians 3:1-10 — Paul addresses believers he could not speak to as spiritual but as carnal, even as babes. Among them were envying, strife, and divisions. He describes two ministers — himself and Apollos — and then introduces the key term in verse 10:

"According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth."

Wise master builder. That description can either apply to a man of God or it cannot, depending on his compliance with the formula.

Jesus left the church a formula — an architecture — by which, if deployed in raising men, it will raise men of stature and power. Every time a minister fails to raise a certain texture of spiritual quality, it is because there was a deviation from that architecture. What makes a man a wise master builder is not oratory. It is compliance with the architecture Jesus left.

The condition to serve tables in Acts 6 was to be full of wisdom and of the Holy Ghost. That was the requirement to be in the welfare department. In many churches today, that is the requirement to be a general overseer — yet it was only enough to serve meals. That gap reveals something is wrong with the architecture.

Every member God gives a pastor is a mirror — revealing the excellency of the work or the fact that something must be revisited. Widespread imbalance, doctrinal deficiency, and lopsidedness in spiritual understanding are not accidents. They are the product of a deviated architecture.

God's Formula for Building Men

From a spiritual standpoint, every man starts as an unbeliever. The starting point of everyone's journey is alienation from the life of Christ as a result of the sin nature. The transition from unbeliever to believer has one name: salvation.

It is not longevity in church, not singing spiritual songs, not casual belief. There is an exact information that must be believed about Jesus:

• Believing he was a good man does not save.
• Believing he was a prophet is true but does not save.
• The gospel of salvation is a declaration of the Father's love, revealed and demonstrated through the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus — with man and creation as the object of that love.

John 3:16 — whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have zoe — not merely life everlasting, but God's own life, the highest form. John 3:17 — God did not send his Son to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved. Romans 10:8-10 — with the heart man believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Upon declaring the lordship of Jesus at the new birth, three gifts are received immediately:

1. Forgiveness of sins — Ephesians 1:7
2. The gift of righteousness — the very nature of God; the capacity to stand in the Father's presence without guilt, inferiority, or condemnation
3. Zoe — the life of God

Once these are received, the person is now a believer. However, there is a more specific name: an infant or a babe. Time is not an element of growth. A believer can remain a babe for twenty years — promoted as a babe, ordained as a babe, given a branch as a babe.

The Three Ministries That Escort Transformation

Once a person is saved, three ministries must be introduced. If they are not encountered, the journey of decline begins — even within the kingdom.

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1. The ministry of the Holy Spirit — John 16:13: "When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth."
2. The ministry of prayer and the word — together. There is nowhere in scripture where the liberty to choose either prayer or the word is granted. The apostolic model: Acts 2:42 — they continued in the apostles' doctrine and in prayer. Acts 6:4 — "We will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word." Matthew 4:1-4 — Jesus fasted and prayed, but when Satan came to tempt him, he did not say "I prayed." He said, "It is written." The moment prayer or the word is chosen alone, the path to imbalance has begun.
3. The ministry of the teaching priest — Jeremiah 3:15: "And I will give you pastors according to my heart, and they will feed you with knowledge and understanding." Of these three ministries, the Holy Ghost is responsible for his own and will do it well. The teaching priest must be responsible for his. The believer's own contribution is the labor in prayer and the word — no one can do that for them.

Two believers can be born again on the same day, and one may grow exponentially because they found a good church — not because they were more capable, but because they were exposed to these three ministries.

The Journey: Salvation → Transformation → Empowerment

Once these three ministries are activated, transformation begins. Without them, transformation cannot happen.

Transformation is the process by which a believer becomes like Christ in experience and functions like Christ in experience.

There are three levels within transformation:

1. Enlightenment — Ephesians 1:16-20: Paul prays that the eyes of understanding would be enlightened, flooded with light, that the believer may know. It starts from knowledge.
2. Renewal — renewal cannot happen until superior information comes. In the presence of abundant light, the editing process begins.
3. Christlikeness — the inner work producing heart condition, spiritual understanding, conformity to the image and character of Christ in experience, maturity in words, and spiritual maturity.

Transformation is the hardest process in the believer's journey. Salvation is instant. Empowerment is instant. Transformation takes a long time, depending on the level of yieldedness. Paul writes in Galatians 4:19: "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you." That formation of Christ is what we call transformation.

When a believer exhausts the transformative curriculum for a realm, they collide with the empowerment connected to that realm. Then they rise to another level, begin the transformative process again, receive the empowerment, and rise again. That is how growth happens.

The moment a believer becomes empowered, their name changes: from a believer to a witness. A witness is a validator of a claim. At the point of empowerment, God can entrust that person and say, "Go — I have a program for this territory, and I am trusting you."

Three Levels of Authority in the Kingdom

1. Authority over things — money, physical possessions. This is only a test. The parable of the talents illustrates this: the servants were tested with things, but when they proved faithful, the reward was not more things — it was a kingdom.
2. Authority over kingdoms
3. Stewardship of God's program — the highest level of authority. God entrusts a mandate for a territory and places a person as the face of that mandate.

How the Process Gets Reversed

The sequence God designed is: Salvation → Transformation → Empowerment.

What happens in many churches: Salvation → Anointing.

The result is leaders who carry oil without wisdom, oil without character. What most people do not know about the anointing is that it is an amplifier. It amplifies the state of transformation — or it amplifies limitations.

Jesus' model of discipleship to impartation was three and a half years of formation leading to one day of Pentecost. When there is no growth and people rush to seek impartation, the process has been reversed. The dimension of anointing they need most is not the one that produces signs — it is the one that does an inner work producing Christlike character.

The Fullness of God: The Wise Master Builder's Course Content

Ephesians 4:8-14 — When Christ led captivity captive, he gave gifts to the church — apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers — to the end that every believer would come into the fullness of the stature of the measure of Christ, no longer tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.

The fullness of God = the nature of God + the wisdom of God + the power of God.

This is the course content in ministry. If any of the three is omitted, something other than what God designed will be produced.

1. The Nature of Christ

   The first assignment is to produce a people of character who can manifest the nature of Christ in experience — fruit of the recreated human spirit, conformity to the image of Christ, death to the flesh.

   Consecration has two dimensions: abstinence from and devotion unto. Many teachings focus on abstinence alone, fulfilling only one side. John 21:15 — "Simon Peter, lovest thou me?" That devotion is the engine of consecration.

   When the nature of Christ is built in men and nothing else is added, the result is sincere, consecrated people who are almost useless to society. Young people who reject faith often do so because they watched parents who were morally upright but could not pay school fees, did not understand principles of influence, and had no wisdom. The children rejected God through the lens of their parents' powerlessness.

2. The Wisdom of Christ

   When the wisdom of Christ is accessed, the builder's dimension is attained. The capacity to build things, build men, ascend to influence, and live a meaningful life emerges.

   But wisdom without character produces professionals who are crooks — people who know how to make things happen but do not know how to say no. Great in business, but indistinguishable in character from unbelievers.

3. The Power of Christ

   For every dimension of anointing, there is a corresponding attack — not on men, but on the anointing itself. If the calling is Elijah's anointing, there is a Jezebel system that follows. If the destiny is Samson's, there is a Delilah system. Every name in scripture is not merely a historical person — it is a spiritual pathway describing a kind of believer and the warfare that attaches to that kind.

   Power without nature produces ministers who can raise the sick from wheelchairs but cannot say no to a bribe. The anointing is present, but the nature was never built.

The man of God who produces believers with nature, wisdom, and power — according to scripture — is called a wise master builder.

The reason people receive ministry at one church and leave for another is often this: the first church had power alone. Wisdom is what retains. When power is given without wisdom, people receive the power and go to where there is wisdom.

The Glory of God as a Report Card

Leviticus 9:6 — "This is what the Lord commanded that ye should do, and the glory of the Lord shall appear unto you." God is a God of patterns. The glory of God is a report card — it shows that a person has walked in keeping with his patterns.

• When the glory of God shows up in finances, it means the pattern connected to finances has been kept.
• When miracles, signs, and wonders manifest, there is a pattern that ushers in that dimension of glory.
• When influence is present, that too is a dimension of glory with a corresponding pattern.

Every dimension of God's glory has a pattern. The glory is not sought by seeking the glory. Exodus 33:18 — Moses said, "Show me your ways," then: "Show me your glory." It is his ways that lead to his glory.

There are two ways to access everything needed:

1. Looking unto Jesus through the word
2. Following them who through faith have obtained the promise — Hebrews 6:12