You Were Created With Capacity To Last And Do More by Rev. Christie Bature: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Designed for endurance, not fragility

God did not design humanity for collapse, He designed humanity for continuity. Before we ever learn to build lasting relationships, we were created with the capacity to endure, to persevere, and to remain.

Proof: you were built to endure before you were born

Every sexual encounter releases millions of sperm cells racing to fertilize one egg. Before you knew yourself as an entity you were already powerful, strong, determined, you had speed. That can-do spirit was inside you from the moment of conception.

No doctor has the capacity to introduce the spark of life, except God. Even with IVF, doctors finish every process they know and then wait, because only God can say "let that baby be." That is why many IVFs fail.

Marriage was designed to last

Marriage was designed to last, but the people who come into it introduce the elements of failure, not the institution itself. When you go against the design of something, you destroy it, the way drumsticks made for a drum will destroy a keyboard.

Marriage is not a place to stand up for your rights. When we insist on our rights instead, the marriage collapses, and we blame "it" instead of taking responsibility for what we brought into it.

Don't restrict this only to marriage. Family relationships demand the same commitment and sacrifice. Some families have one member who is a source of anguish and shame because they refuse to live for anyone but themselves.

What endurance builds

From that internal durability God put in you flows the ability to build things that last: faith, character, covenant, and relationships.

Papa Kenneth Hagin found on his deathbed as a teenager that there was something in him that endures into eternity, and built a ministry his son still carries on today through Rhema Bible Institutes worldwide.

Catch a vision and determine you will never leave this earth without making your mark. A vision carries in itself the seed to fulfill it.

Scripture behind the design

• Genesis 2:7, from dust on the ground to a living being, human life carries the breath of God, a sustaining divine imprint.
• Genesis 6:3, God set a 120 year limit on human lifespan when wickedness increased on the earth. Before that, men like Methuselah lived 969 years, the original design was for man to live forever with God.
• Isaiah 40:31, those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, mount up with wings like eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint.
• Psalm 8:5-6, man was made a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honor.

Learning not to panic

One night her son, ill for days, felt cold on one side of his body and hot on the other. Panic, not faith, drove her to rush him to hospital, running a police checkpoint on the way. The doctor later explained it was normal in children running a fever. My people perish for lack of knowledge, I didn't know that.

On a turbulent flight, a frightened stranger grabbed her for comfort because she looked calm. "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." If the plane crashed she would be with Christ, if it landed she would walk out either way. God has taken from her the fear of death.