Infinite Fellowship Ministries

Growing In Christ – Levels Of Inconvenience: Sermon By Minister Dennis Muthuri

As you grow in Christ, you will experience discomfort. You will feel stretched in all aspects of your life.

There are certain depths where the Holy Spirit undoes what you know to elevate you. It is a process of making new wineskins from our hearts and it involves a lot of stretching.

For our light, momentary affliction (this slight distress of the passing hour) is ever more and more abundantly preparing and producing and achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory [beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease!].

2 Corinthians 4:17 (AMPC)

The key thing God is looking for is the image of Christ. God can’t afford to send you out to minister incomplete and without Christ in you.

To adapt fast, we need to align to the work God is doing in us. What are you looking for in the area of life that is currently experiencing some level of inconvenience? The end goal is GLORY. Be aligned to what God wants to achieve in the end.

Your character and day to day life count more than your gifts.

Each gate of society has its own metrics. For some gates, the key thing they look for in people is integrity. For others, it is long suffering with others.

Inconvenience by definition means not suited to one’s comfort, need and purpose. It’s a conflict of what you deem comfortable and what God deems comfortable or necessary in your life in a particular season.

Our attitude needs to change when we experience trials. Pray to understand why a discomfort or inconvenience is happening so that you may glorify God through it.

Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief.

Isaiah 53:10a (KJV)

If it never costs you anything, it won’t be a priority for you to keep it.

God is breaking you so that He can put a price on what He has invested in you. There’s a price you have paid to come this far.

God has vested too much in you. When you backslide, it affects many not just yourself.

Whenever the Lord touches someone, there is a suffering that takes place for the person touched e.g. Jacob. He breaks you to re-align you to divine counsel.

When God touches you, something in you must break. God is Spirit. To be touched by a Holy God will alter you. In the same way an antibiotic works at times making a person feel unwell is the same way the Lord does when He touches you.

God is interested in aligning you not hurting you just for the sake of it.

It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn Your statutes.

Psalm 119:71 (AMP)

You can’t suffer inconvenience when you are in God. Yes, God appears to disrupt things but it is for your alignment. It’s for your good.

A reed [as a measuring rod] was then given to me, [shaped] like a staff, and I was told: Rise up and measure the sanctuary of God and the altar [of incense], and [number] those who worship there.

 Revelations 11:1 (AMPC)

It is when you agree to flow with God that you will perceive well. Like a reed, you will bend where God bends you.

The more afflicted you are, the more of an interest God has in you.

Like a child who discovers how to run but needs boundaries to know where not to run, God restricts us so we can be wise.

The bronze altar at the outer courts of the Tabernacle was the place of burning sacrifice. It had horns that symbolized grace. The brazen lever was for washing.

God needs to minister to you before you minister to other people.

Living a lifestyle of the cross is an everyday affair. It is putting to death what is of you and not of God. There are rotten things in you that need to go. This is why we need the cross. Our part is to approach God.

Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.

 Isaiah 1:18 (AMPC)

Golgotha is a place of reckoning where you reason with the Lord as He washes your sins. We reason with God so we get to His level of understanding.

Whoever does not persevere and carry his own cross and come after (follow) Me cannot be My disciple. 

Luke 14:27 (AMPC)

When one is fully broken by God, he can make pleadings with God to change the destinies of others like Abraham did with Lot.

I have set watchmen upon your walls, O Jerusalem, who will never hold their peace day or night, you who [are His servants and by your prayers] put the Lord in remembrance [of His promises], keep not silence, And give Him no rest until He establishes Jerusalem and makes her a praise in the earth.

Isaiah 62:6-7 (AMPC)

You need to be crushed with inconvenience and limitations to release the fragrance of God.

The reason why God is stretching you is so your mental capacity (of who you thought you are and your perception of others) can change.

Process and afflictions broaden your heart for people. Just as it was for Christ, affliction will help you understand what others go through.

Then the King will say to those at His right hand, Come, you blessed of My Father [you favored of God and appointed to eternal salvation], inherit (receive as your own) the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you brought Me together with yourselves and welcomed and entertained and lodged Me, I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you visited Me with help and ministering care, I was in prison and you came to see Me. Then the just and upright will answer Him, Lord, when did we see You hungry and gave You food, or thirsty and gave You something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger and welcomed and entertained You, or naked and clothed You? And when did we see You sick or in prison and came to visit You? And the King will reply to them, Truly I tell you, in so far as you did it for one of the least [in the estimation of men] of these My brethren, you did it for Me.

Matthew 25:34-40 (AMP)

When in suffering, we need to ask God why and not just for instant relief of the pressure applied. The depth of your questions to the Lord will reveal your understanding of His capacity in light of the circumstances you are going through.

Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane had a very mature transaction with the Father. He knew that He would die, which is why He said ‘the hour has come’.

Mature saints should not be surprised when suffering comes. They, like sons of Issachar, should be able to predict them when they come.

Consider it wholly joyful, my brethren, whenever you are enveloped in or encounter trials of any sort or fall into various temptations. Be assured and understand that the trial and proving of your faith bring out endurance and steadfastness and patience. But let endurance and steadfastness and patience have full play and do a thorough work, so that you may be [people] perfectly and fully developed [with no defects], lacking in nothing. If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God [Who gives] to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly, without reproaching or faultfinding, and it will be given him. 

James 1:2-5 (AMPC)

Process and inconvenience will reveal you in the end. Those who bear witness to it, like the Centurion at Jesus’ crucifixion, will acknowledge Christ in you.