Possessing Your Vessel 2
(week 40/07)
Olubi Johnson
In our last article we saw that to possess our vessel means to clean out the sin nature from our souls and bodies, using the divine nature from our born-again, recreated spirits.
It is crucial to do this now because we are in the end-time: 3rd.day and iniquity is abounding:
Matthew 24:12(NKJV): And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.
This means the sin-nature in the air is increasing daily and so stirring up the sin nature in the souls and bodies of men, making them wax worse and worse, practicing abominable sins without any fear of God. Notice that the increase in iniquity or lawlessness and the love growing cold are gradual processes. We see this daily in the news in increase in greed, covetousness, homosexuality, sexual immorality, terrorism, murder, pride and such like:
2 Timothy 3:1-5(NIV): But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God- 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power.
Now, the danger for the born-again Christian is this: if they do not totally clean out (and keep cleaned out by a diligent prayer life and walk in the spirit) the sin-nature in the soul and body, Satan, through his power in the air, will always find some thing in them to stir up and so force them not to be able to do the will of God causing their love of and for God to gradually wax or grow cold.
Ephesians 2:1-3(NIV): As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.
So they will simply have a form of godliness (external religious activity) but not the power to be godly or behave like God who is love:
1 Corinthians 13:1-3(NIV): If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
If this state of affairs is allowed to continue and not corrected by the cleansing out of the sin nature in the soul and body, it will lead to either premature physical death or in some extreme cases spiritual death (Revelation 20.14), which means the person will go to hell:
1 Corinthians 5:4-5(NIV): When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5 hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.
Romans 8:13, John 15:6(NKJV): For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; 6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.
It is for this reason that the total possessing of your vessel is not an option in this end-time or 3rd. day.
Next week, we will see how to possess our vessels.
