The Making Of A Man Of God

Posted on November 15, 2019

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The Making Of A Man Of God

I’ll like to start by telling you that there is a difference between reputation and character. Reputation is what you see on the surface, which is just ten percent of what makes a man while character is what is underneath, what is not seen.  Reputation can only get you so far and if your ministry is going to remain, and the calling and gifts of God upon your life are not going to be messed up, character has to be built. And I say to you, young man and young woman, that there is more to fulfilling a calling and a ministry than gifts.

Joseph was barely 16 years when God began to demonstrate upon his life gifts that not even his father could understand. These wonderful gifts were the same gifts that brought him from the dungeon to Pharaoh. But God had to take him through those 13 years in between the prison and the palace in order to build character in him to make him fulfill the calling God had given to him and to get him to the point where God wanted him to be. There was something more than gifts that God needed Joseph to imbibe for him to prosper and fulfill the calling God had given to him.

4 character elements in the life of any man that God has put His Spirit upon:

1. Self Discipline:  Self-discipline is doing what is right; obeying what the word of God says even when it is not convenient. It may not be convenient, but you obey because that’s what the word of God says. 

2. Core Values: These are the principles by which you live. Joseph’s core value system was the fear of God, to always fear God. He displayed this when he refused to sleep with Potiphar’s wife even when he knew fully well that no one else was there. What are your core-values in this world where everything can be compromised, where people say, “every man has a price?” Wherever you go, when your friends and brethren are not there, ask yourself “what are my core values?”

Something had been deposited in the life of young Joseph when he was 16 years old. And that is why I say to parents of young children that “Whatever it is that will make your child to be able to say no to offers to sin would have been picked up by the age of eight or nine.  If you have not deposited into the life of your child by age of seven or eight, he will pick up his value system from outside the home, from the world. And God will ask you about it.”

How old do you think Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were when they were taken into captivity? They were in their pre-teens. What was inside them that gave them so much confidence that they were able to say “Don’t give us of the dainties of the king’s table.” Who taught them not to defile themselves with the food of Babylon?  Parents, what are you depositing in your child? Or you are too busy chasing Naira and Kobo? Will your child be able to stand when he or she faces the temptation to sin?

Many parents want their children to put on nice dresses but as your children put on nice dresses you must also spend good time in putting core-values in your children. The place where a child first develops his core value system is in the home with Daddy and Mummy.

3. Sense of Identity  is knowing who you are.  Do you know who you are? Who is defining you?  Self image is based on who God says you are and not what others say you are. If you don’t get your child to define his or her life on the basis of who God says he or she is, then they’ll misbehave when they get to school. If a child doesn’t know who he or she is in God, they would begin to do wrong things when they get to school because they never had the right foundation to be able to say, “I am a child of God, what I’m putting on does not define who I am. There is something that is inside me that defines who I am. I am not defined by what the world says!”

4. Emotional Stability: A person that has no emotional stability has no business in the ministry. To be a minister, you must be emotionally stable and consistent. It’s not that I don’t sometimes get hurt but I go to God my father and lay my complaints before Him. We truly have not arrived there yet, there are many who are gifted of God but are making a wreck of it because you can’t build the right character.

Moses was a gifted child, who had an understanding that was far beyond his age about what God said concerning him regarding the deliverance of his people. But he went about it the wrong way when he killed an Egyptian that was beating an Israelite. God took Moses into the wilderness for forty years and this was a period of removing everything that had been put into him by the world. Character needed to be put in place for the gifts of God in Moses to be effectual.  Here was a man who was used to the luxuries of the palace now in the wilderness, running after cattle and sheep. If you were Moses what would be going through your mind, as you spent forty years in the wilderness taking care of sheep?  It took God another forty years to undo and redo Moses.

In the preparation or the making of a man of God, God begins with your character and then works on your calling. Only those who allow their character to be built with their gifts will not make a mess of ministry. Look at the terrain of Christendom today a lot have failed because they had gifts but had no character, and they have brought shame to the name of Jesus Christ.

Romans 12:3 says, “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

The greater the anointing and the gift of God upon your life, the more soberly you should think.  And that’s the difference between a man who is going after reputation and a man who is going after character. If you let pride take you over, you’ll never fulfill the calling of God upon your head. 

The forty years in the wilderness must have seemed unending to Moses but it was in those years that he was able to see the burning bush.  In the place of obscurity, Moses met with God and he began to hear how God wanted to put to use the gifts that were in him from his childhood. More importantly, it was during the forty years wilderness experience that Moses learnt to distinguish the voice of God from the voice of man. It also took the time in the dungeon for Joseph to understand that God has set him to save the lives of many. There was no experience they had that was ever wasted. If it was not that Moses was brought up in the palace, when he appeared before Pharaoh, Pharaoh would have thought he was a mad shepherd suffering from sunstroke. Every experience you have ever gone through in life is not a waste. It has its own significance in preparing you for the future. Don’t run from your past but don’t be trapped by it either, because the blood of Jesus has set you free (Rev. 1:15).

It would have been impossible for Moses to have such passion for his people except for the fact that he himself was born into that same slavery.  And a lot of us lack passion when it comes to saving of souls. You need a passion for the work that God has called you into. Before others catch the vision, it is often born in the heart of one person.  Before one Hebrew slave saw a vision of the Promised Land Moses had already seen it.  But how did he keep the vision alive through the period of character formation?  Hebrews 11:27 says, “By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.” He stayed focused and was sustained by what he saw; not what others said to him. Maybe you are a man running the race and there are people speaking against you, if you stop and begin to answer them, you have already lost that race.

Has God given you a vision and the building of character appears to be holding you back? Sustain that vision and don’t let it die.  Your vision, if it is of God, will sustain you through the worst of times. God will never give you a vision that you can fulfill alone. One person can run fast but two people will run further (Eccl. 4:8-12). Moses had Joshua, Aaron and Hur to help Israel win the battle against Amalek (Exodus 17:8-13), he also had his father-in-law Jethro to help him when administration would have killed him (Exodus 18:13-26). 

Moses changed his life at the age of forty so it’s not too late for anyone.  He didn’t find his destiny until he was eighty but he still got the job done. You can still do it too.

Summary:

  • God works on your character then your calling
  • God never wastes your experience
  • God will give you an emotional investment in the work he has called you unto.

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