The Believer's Victory Over Sin by Apostle Randy Muse

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The Believer's Victory Over Sin

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Date: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 2:24 AM

My wife and family are now living in Saint George, Utah, which I am sure is much closer to you. God has been making A LOT of humbling changes in my life. I must also say that He has been dealing with my character SEVERELY. I heard one man say that he saw cigarette smoking as a small stain on his garment, but as he got closer to the Lord, that small stain became BIGGER AND BIGGER. God has been revealing to me the seriousness of the stains of my garment that need to be cleansed, even though in the past they have seemed like small issues, and some of them I was not aware of at all.

I just wrote recently to my spiritual father, Apostle Emil and told him how God has been correcting me through him, through the Holy Spirit directly, through my wife, through the books I've been reading to "encourage myself in the Lord", and through one particular elder in the Church I am now attending. Apostle Emil is still my spiritual father, so I am tithing up to him, but I am helping the local church with offerings. I am building a web site for our current church also, as a blessing to the Pastor.

I took a $20k per year cut in pay to move out here, but God has a purpose in my family being here at this time. I don't fully know all the details, but through many confirmations, even of my Apostle Emil, God spoke and said my family and I are to be here for a season.

I am working on a book, or I should say a book is working on me, that the Lord has me writing. I will attach the intro chapter to the end of this message. I am still focusing on the gift of Apostle in my training, but God is focusing me in a greater dimension at this time. The two main points He is putting in my heart are emphasizing character and maintaining the hope of righteousness. When God begins to correct you, sometimes you can become overly burdened by your flesh and of course the enemy tries to come in and add condemnation to the whole situation. There have been times that God has dealt so strongly with my sins that I felt I didn't even deserver to live. But just at that moment, God began to show me in my spirit backsliders and Christians who were going through the same things and He began to give me "hope" for them so that they can believe that they can still be made right in their character and move on and grow in Christ.

The Word of God says we are saved by hope. The hope which we possess more than anything is to be conformed to the fully matured image and the completed character of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we lose the hope of righteousness and put more faith in our sin than in God's ability to change us, it is then that we begin to lose hope or the vision of righteousness we seek to obtain, and thus we perish or cast of restraint and self control. I am a firm believer that God puts us through MOST of the stuff we face not for us only, but ultimately for the salvation of others, so that we can offer them the same hope after we have gone through it and have overcome. As a baby Christian, I never expected so much trouble and hardship in all my life. The price we have to pay for our high calling in Christ becomes more and more apparent every day, but every day I become more and more determined to fulfill the work God has called me to and equipped me to do.

The devil never ceases to steal my faith in my apostleship and to get me to doubt who I am in Christ Jesus, but with the severity of the scars I now possess inwardly, I now have more hope, a greater determination to obey God and succeed, and greater faith in my prayer life than I have ever had before. My prayers are being answered more quickly than they ever have before in my life.

God has to wrestle with and wound Jacob in order to transform him into being Israel. You have to face ALL the negative aspects of your character if you ever want to walk in all of God's righteousness. It is the Father's knife that cuts inwardly that causes you to bleed inside. The vinedresser has to prune the tree in order for it to fully mature and develop all the fruit and usefulness God created it to possess. I can now honestly say that I have a limp in my walk now. It is not the limp of lameness though, it is the limp of sonship being developed in the Christian's life. It is the limp of submission that causes God to say that this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

God corrected me with my own wickedness and my own backslidings, the areas of my Christian walk I did not maintain as I should have. Sometimes we lose the fear of the Lord in certain areas of our walk and treat the holy things of God too lightly. Let me tell you, I am not taking those areas of my life that needed correction lightly ANY MORE!!! I received such harsh discipline because of the areas of my heart that had forsaken the way. But God gently reminds me, after He sternly rebukes, that He is correcting us so strongly because He cares so much for us and doesn't want us to miss out on any part of our inheritance both in this lifetime, and in the one to come.

I have prayed before and I still pray for sufferings to come to my life. The more I suffer, the more I pray for sufferings. Not for foolish devilish attacks! I pray for any and all sufferings NECESSARY for me to be conformed into the image and likeness of Christ. I hunger and thirst for righteousness to such a degree that if I must suffer even beyond the hardest sufferings I have already faced, I pray for sufferings even more. At the end of my suffering I qualify to partake of the Glory, which is the harvest of truly righteous and holy living. All my Christian life I have wanted nothing more than to live holy and to live like Christ, fully pleasing to my Heavenly Father. But in order to obtain greater degree of righteousness living and in order to walk in greater resurrection power, we must face a more painful death at the cross, a deeper crucifying of our flesh and our own selfish sinful desires.

Many people in the Body of Christ do not possess all that God has for them, not because they don't know enough, not because they don't pray enough, but because they are not willing to suffer enough. If the Captain of our Salvation had who knew no sin had to suffer to become perfected and matured in His character in order to be fully complete in His calling as High Priest, how much more do we who are sinful need to suffer the loss of our own sinful desires so that we may share in Christ's resurrection and share in His perfected and matured character in our individual callings as well? He was appointed to the Office of High Priest through His sufferings, how can we expect to be fully appointed and fully possess our office in any other way?

Jesus was a partaker of the heavenly calling and was faithful to the one who appointed Him to the point of death. In order for us to fulfill the ministry and the heavenly calling we have been appointed to fulfill by God, we too must have the exact same obedience to the one who has appointed us, even to the point of death!!! God accepted no less obedience from Jesus than to the point of death, and He still accepts no less obedience from us who are called His sons. Death to a true Christian means that only Christ can reign in me more!!! We must die in order to truly live while at the same time destroying the works of our enemy! Sometimes it is like fighting the enemy from our death bed and achieving our greatest victories, like Christ, at our seemingly greatest hour of weakness. The Christian who can grasp the truths, the hope, and the victory I have presented to you in this letter will never live defeated. The Word of God says that no weapon formed against you will accomplish its intended purpose. Goliath came at David with a sword that David took from him and cut off his head, symbolizing the absolute destruction of the authority the whole Philistine army possessed. If we can grasp that any weapon that Satan attacks us with will only be used by the Lord to behead his position of authority over our lives and the lives of others, we would have greater faith in our struggles and greater joy in our suffering and even rejoice more once the battle is won KNOWING THAT IT WAS THE LORD'S BATTLE ALL ALONG!!!

The battle for my ministry is the Lord's, the battle for my marriage is the Lord's, the battle for my own character is the Lord's, the battle for my children is the Lord's!!! My victory in any area of my life does not depend on me, but rather on what the Lord can do in and through me!!! No matter how bad it is, no matter how much change I may need in my life to get to where I need to go and be who I am supposed to be, I can rejoice knowing that the BATTLE IS THE LORD'S! I have learned to never underestimate God's ability to change the situation or myself in any given circumstance, whether it be a battle for something I need in the natural or for something I need in my spirit to become more like Christ!!! I have learned even more not to focus on temporal things that are subject to change by God's command, but rather focus on the One Who NEVER CHANGES!!! He never changes from victory to defeat! He never changes from rich to poor! He never changes from all powerful to powerless!

I am working on another web site for the ministry gift the Lord has entrusted to me at this time. I started out as "SGP Club (Sharing Gospel Power)", then God changed the name of the ministry He entrusted to me to "Blood of Jesus Ministries", but now He is getting ready to launch my gift and calling into another dimension, and the transformation has already begun. God changed Jacob and then changed his name. It is sometimes the same in ministry. The Apostle Emil once founded "Risen Son Ministries", but now they are "San Pedro Family Worship Center". Right now they are getting ready to move the church to a more central location in the South Bay Area of Southern California, where more cities will be surrounding their location. I don't know if God will change the name of the ministry again, but we have to always be willing to adapt to change and not demand that even our own ministries stay the same.

It sure is good to hear from you again. I feel honored to have the teachings entrusted to me by the Lord hosted on your web site. Every once in a while I hear from someone who saw them on the web site. Even Emil was looking up apostles on the web and found the writings you host.