Whenever God begins to deal with you, the enemy can use the voice of self-preservation to give you reasons to escape the process. He will present arguments that make it seem as though you must find a way out of what God is doing in your life.

You must understand that God’s dealings do not take away your ability to choose. The door may remain open, and you may still have the opportunity to walk away. However, if you want to grow into maturity, you must learn to submit to God’s discipline rather than continually looking for an escape route.

You cannot become everything God intends you to be while rejecting every process through which He seeks to correct, train, and transform you. You may desire to know God deeply, and that desire is good. However, you must understand that knowing God is not something you accomplish merely by your own determination.

The Holy Spirit is the One who reveals God to you. You may fast, pray and spend days seeking Him, yet still find that you have not received the revelation you desired. You may spend hours praying in the Spirit and expect a particular encounter, but that encounter may not happen when or how you anticipated.

This should teach you that knowing God is not about forcing Him to reveal Himself according to your timetable. It is about learning to walk with Him, yielding to His Spirit, and allowing Him to lead you into the depth of His knowledge.

But if you truly desire to know God, you must understand that there are other matters attached to that desire.

Knowing Him can lead you into the experience of His resurrection power; and we all desire that. We want to see His power manifested in out lives. We want to carry His presence, exercise spiritual authority, and become instruments through which His power is revealed.

However, there is another dimension of knowing Him that many believers are not prepared to embrace: participation in His sufferings. The sufferings being discussed here include the discipline of the Holy Spirit, through which God deals with the fallen nature in you.

He exposes the things that must change, confronts the areas in which you have placed confidence in yourself, and removes whatever seeks to compete with His authority in your life.

Sometimes, He allows you to pass through situations you would never have chosen for yourself. These situations may stretch you beyond your natural capacity, challenge your understanding, and expose the limitations of your human strength.

Yet, through the process, God is working to bring you into a deeper knowledge of Himself. You must understand that these dealings have a purpose. They are intended to bring you into alignment with the nature of Christ, who gave Himself willingly rather than resisting the purpose for which He came.

In the same way, when you recognize the hand of God dealing with the fallen nature in you, your response must be one of surrender. Instead of continually defending yourself, justifying your weaknesses, or fighting to preserve your own way, you must learn to yield to Him.

Your willingness to surrender is one of the secrets of growing into higher dimensions of knowing God. This is where many believers stop. They desire the power of God, but when the process begins to challenge their self-confidence, they withdraw. They want the glory, but they are unwilling to embrace the dealings that prepare them to carry that glory.

Unfortunately, many have not been adequately taught to recognize the difference between God’s corrective discipline and the difficulties they encounter for other reasons. Consequently, when God begins to expose their weaknesses and deal with their fallen nature, they assume that something has gone wrong.

They interpret the process as a sign of rejection when it may be an opportunity for correction, maturity and transformation. You must, therefore, learn to discern what God is teaching you through the seasons you experience.

Do not automatically assume that every difficult situation means that God has abandoned you. Neither should you conclude that every hardship is necessarily a direct act of divine discipline.

Rather, remain sensitive to the Holy Spirit, examine your life honestly, and allow Him to show you what needs to change. When He exposes something in you, do not run away from the truth. Allow Him to work in your heart and bring you into greater conformity with His purpose.

God also deals with you according to the areas in which you have placed your confidence. If you are someone who relies heavily on human intelligence, He may take you through experiences that expose the limitations of your understanding. You may have become accustomed to solving problems through reasoning, planning, and making the right decisions.

You may believe that, with enough intelligence and effort, you can control the outcome of almost every situation. But there will be moments when you discover that your wisdom cannot provide the answer you need.

You will encounter circumstances that stretch you beyond what you know how to handle, and you will be brought to the realisation that you are not as self-sufficient as you once imagined.

God knows how to confront the areas in which you have placed excessive confidence in yourself. His purpose is not to destroy you, but to teach you where your true dependence must rest.

Sometimes, you may feel as though you have reached the end of your strength. You may think you cannot endure another moment of the pressure you are experiencing. Yet, in that place of weakness, you may begin to discover a deeper dependence on God than you have ever known.

You must understand that the purpose of such a process is not to leave you broken and helpless without hope. Rather, it is to break the dominance of the outward man so that the life of the inward man can find greater expression through you.

Your natural strength, self-confidence, and self-sufficiency must not remain in control of your spiritual life. The life of God within you must be given room to manifest itself. This is how you begin to move beyond a life in which the treasure within you remains hidden.

This article was excerpted from Apostle Osayi’s message. You can watch it in full here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zngMs4dVSpw&t=28s