You're male by birth, you're a man by choice. You're a female by birth, you're a woman by
choice. You're not a man because you have a truck and you're not a man because you got a bulldog.
You're not a man because you have a job. You're a man,
what defines manhood is maturity. What defines maturity is ability to take
responsibility. Man is not just someone who can read the Bible.
Because nothing is worse than seeing people who read the Bible or who claim spiritual
connection to Christ but you see in their life lack this component of maturity. And
because there is no maturity in their life, their life and their inheritance crumbles.
And they get delivered and I've seen. I've had people in my house stay and live with me
who got delivered, who got prophesied by Prophet T.B Joshua, who had things happen to them.
And then I had to walk into the house and take a pipe from their hands because they almost set my
duplex on fire, because they were smoking drugs. And they had the passion and they had the zeal,
but their life is still on the level of an 11 year old boy
because they never matured and they've never developed that within them to be a man.
God wants, if you're a guy today. God wants you to be a man. A person that is responsible. The
person that has a maturity. One of the marks of a man is that he is able to control his feelings
instead of being ruled by his feelings. One of the marks of a boy, is the boy is like a
wave tossed by the winds. He is tossed by people's opinions. One of the marks of a girl is the fact
that her feelings rule her life. She's not ruling her feelings. Jesus came to one man and one man
was laying on a stretcher and this stretcher was his life. This stretcher carried him everywhere.
This stretcher was his comfort zone. This stretcher was carrying him everywhere and
Jesus came and He touched the man and He said, "I want you to pick up this stretcher and carry it."
Jesus Christ did not come to make boys, into boys in big bodies. He came to touch a person's life
and to make you into a man who picks up the very things used to pick you up and carry that.
Pick up responsibilities. Pick up certain things in your life and carry them. We have men today who
get touched by Jesus and they walk around and they drop everything in their hands. Anything
they take gets dropped and they cannot maintain their blessing. They cannot maintain their freedom
and they cannot maintain their marriage, their finances, their health and their emotions. Every
area. Because their idea of freedom is Jesus will touch me and remove and take all responsibility
for Himself. That is not scriptural. Freedom is not Jesus removing your mat. It's giving
you the power to carry your mat. It's not Jesus going and fixing 20 years of problems you caused
and removing that. It's giving you the power to be free from those demons and fastly and quickly,
come out of those problems. Fix those problems and put your life back in order for the glory of God.
Deliverance gets you out of your mat but Jesus wants to develop maturity in us which
helps us to pick up our mat. Can somebody say, "Amen." You become a man or you become a woman.
It's very important we challenge young people. Sometimes young people come to us and they said,
"You know am I ready to get married?" And after I ask them how old they are, the second question is
usually they always ready now. "But I don't think I have enough money?" Money is not a
determining factor for marriage. There are a lot of couples who get married without money
and there's couples who get married with money. What will determine the success of your future
is not money, it is your maturity. Because you, if you're mature you can go through hell with
your wife living on cheese and crackers and fall in love more with one another, appreciate life,
appreciate God. And you can be immature and float in money and kill one another. What
determines the success of your life is not your even education. Maturity is not four
things. Maturity is not age. It takes time to become mature but time does not make you mature.
Secondly it's not appearance. Yes mature people look mature but not all people who look mature
are mature. Because a guy you can be 21, grow facial hair and you walk around like you're a
macho man. But it takes one small comment and you're gonna cry, cry, and weep. Drop the ball,
walk away from the church, leave the relationship and your license stabs are not changed,
your credit card payments are not paid off. You're an emotional rollercoaster. But you look
mature because you grow facial hair. It's not appearance. It's not achievement. It's possible
to achieve certain things in the gym by developing big muscles. It's possible to even fix cars, build
houses. It's possible to learn certain techniques with voices and to communicate really well.
And certain achievements yes, mature people they achieve things but not all achievers are mature.
And it's not academics. You can go to college and get a degree.
You can have a bachelor's degree and be immature. You can have a master's
degree and not have no sense of what it's like to master your own feelings.
You can have a PhD and when it comes to life, when it comes to emotions. When it comes to
going through the hard things and maintaining positive attitude, to be on the same level
as a person who goes to kindergarten. Because maturity, it is our ability to take responsibility
in life. Please understand God is far more interested in just getting demons out of
our life and just providing us healing. Your life is going to blossom not only
when you remove these things. It's when you focus and you choose to live a life that is mature.