Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: Believers' Convention 2022 (Day 6 Morning Session)
Date: Friday, 12th August 2022
We should not be overly excited about the theme of this year’s Convention and lose sight of what God is saying. The theme, “Who is like God?” is calling for a warfare. This theme was not conceived by human understanding. The time of trouble is not a time to be laid back. God is sounding a trumpet which is telling us that there is trouble and it is important for us to take heed. This is a time to begin to read in between the lines; we do not need speed when we are on the wrong path because that will take us further away from the destination. Therefore, this time calls for sober reflections and questions.
This theme is the beginning of a season and until the trouble ends, the challenge remains. “Who is like God?” is a challenge, not merely a theme. This kind of challenge is to humble us to learn. Israel had the law and circumcision and because of that, they customized God. It took God to humble them by giving them Jesus who they could not discover because He did not come the way they expected. They knew the Messiah would come, but they did not know how and because of that, they sinned against Christ and God.
We cannot be relating with the Ancient of Days and be time conscious because God operates outside of time. When there is trouble outside, it is time to run inside. God is saying that He will be our joy because the Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost (Rom. 14:17). God is making a declaration that there is none like Him.
There were few times in the scriptures where God had to arise to praise Himself. God sometimes allows Himself to be proud because He is God. He is high and lofty (Isa. 57:15) and the only One who can praise Himself. He gave us the Holy Ghost to help us to identify Him. A Being had to come from the third heavens to unveil the Father to man. He is mighty and is far above our imagination. If our intellect could capture God, every one of us would have to be professors to know Him.
God made it so that He will shut the mouth of the wise through foolish things (1 Cor. 1:27). God is mighty and strong and the essence of creation is to reveal Himself. God made man in His image and likeness (Gen. 1:26-27) but withheld content from him so that he will always come back to Him (God). Man is regarded as a vessel because he is designed to hold content. This is why man will always have to come back to God.
God made man with a hollow and when He took out a rib from the man to make the woman, another hollow was created (Gen. 2:21). Therefore, a man has a hollow for God and a hollow for a wife. God gave Eve to Adam to fill a hollow and slow him down, so he would not move faster than he ought to. There are things that are locked up in man that will only show up when the time comes.
The vision is for an appointed time, though it tarries, wait for it (Hab. 2:3). God intended that man will still have to come back because we all have a hollow. That lack is where the hunger will start so that we can find our way back to God. God made us vessels so that we will seek Him to be filled and He is the One who will fill us.
God is both a name and a content. Most of the names that God was called in the Old Testament were circumstantial and named after the actions that God did. Such names were borne out of an event. If not for those events, what would He have been called? Our challenge is that we are limited by our inability to break beyond our experiences. Experience is not the greatest teacher, rather, it is our limitation. Our experiences, particularly about God, limit us from moving forward with Him. God is beyond our encounters, experiences and the things that He told us He is. He only told us that He is such things because He knows what we can accommodate.
Moses came to God about the sufferings of the children of Israel. God revealed Himself to Moses as ‘I am that I am’ (Exo. 3:14) when He was to bring the people out from Egypt. It was Moses’ responsibility to find out who ‘I Am’ is from the beginning. This name did not become fully accomplished until the children of Israel got to Egypt.
God Almighty is not a deliverer unlike the Lord, I Am (Exo. 6:3-6). If God had stepped into Egypt as the Almighty, the full-breasted one that provides, He would not have delivered them. Therefore, He had to come in another garment in order to deliver them from Egypt. God had to change His name because there was trouble (Exo. 6:6).
Beyond His names, God also has content. His content was not known to anyone under the old covenant. Eternal Life is what is in God. He only shared this life with His Son, Jesus Christ, but shared His other names with His other children. This is what distinguishes Jesus from the other prophets – He knew the content of God while they knew the names of God. When God raised the Son, He asked all those who had names, that is the angels, to worship Him (Heb. 1:6).
After Jesus had inherited content, that content gave birth to a name that is above every other name (Philipp. 2:9). The content (Eternal Life) that Jesus has is what God wants to transfer to us. Thus, when there is trouble outside, we must have content within to withstand the trouble. God is not only a name, He also has content. This doctrine is dispensing content to us and no one will graduate on this path without content.
The content in God is Eternal Life and this life has calibrations, including different courses that will deliver the life at the end. If we pursue other things, we are losing content. It is possible to only know names that came out of other people’s experiences if we lack content. If one pursues religion and other things, such a person is losing content. It is not enough to know the names of God borne out of other people’s experiences.
In the garden, the voice of God walked and was teaching Adam the life (Gen. 3:8). The voice of God walking in the garden was Christ. Jesus had to eat honey and butter to be able to make choices (Isa. 7:15). When Adam was being given honey and butter in the cool of the evening, he was distracted. Thus, when the season of choice-making came, he had not eaten enough butter and honey, therefore, he made the wrong choice. There is trouble and God wants us to continue feeding because the journey is far. This is so that when the commandments come and we are asked, ‘who is like God’, we will have enough content to answer it.
When David was leading the sheep in the wilderness and protected them from the bear and the lion (1 Sam. 17:34-36), he was not practicing for Goliath. However, when Goliath showed up, all others who had not been fed saw him as strong and mighty, unlike David who recognised him as an uncircumcised Philistine, because he had been fed (1 Sam. 17:26).
David knew about the living God. At the time that he was dealing with the bears and lions, he did so by revelation. In such times of revelation, he must have been dealing with the living God (1 Sam. 17:37). By the time David met Goliath, he brought back things from the content revealed to him.
Under the New Testament, we see that the image of God is Christ. We should not use anything that we have not proven; we should go back to revisit the things that we have learnt, so that we can own it and speak authoritatively about everlasting life and Eternal Life. We are to fight the good fight of faith (1 Tim. 6:12). One can have head knowledge of revelation but not be able to use it. David was honest to say that he had not proven the armour given to him (1 Sam 17:39). In the same way, we should be sincere about things we do not know.
David gave up the armour because he had not proven it but resorted to the stones because of the revelations that he had. It was revelations (stones) that killed Goliath. Moses asked to see God and was directed to the cleft of a rock (Exo. 33:22). If a stone was not hewn out of the mountain, there will be no cleft. Christ was the stone who created the cleft for Moses to see God; He is the stone that was hewn out of a rock. That rock that followed them in the wilderness was Christ, which eventually became Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 10:4).
Jonah was sent on an assignment but he fled because of what he knew (Jon. 1:1-3). We must not go back the same way we came to this Convention. We must ensure to gather content from this Convention because there are things that will ask us, “who is like God?” and we must be able to answer. Peter denied Jesus in the face of a circumstance (Lk. 22:54-62). That same Peter, after tarrying to be filled with content, was bold to choose to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).
It is content that brings joy. From now on, we should hear things that will give us joy. Joy is different from happiness. Happiness is based on happenings while joy is a result of proximity towards God. Joy remains constant because it is based on a knowledge that cannot fail. Joy is God and God is joy. What God is going to reward us with is joy (Matt. 25:23). Joy removes fear, apprehension, doubt, envy and works of the flesh; it is a fruit of the Spirit and brings confidence.
Darkness is gathering in the coming year especially because the election is going to be a tussle between light and darkness. Therefore, this is not the time to play church, we must focus on content so that a cloud may be formed upon us.
We must set out time to pray for Nigeria, regarding the upcoming elections. The body of Christ is represented here, so we should intensify prayers. Our intercession is greater than clubs, guns and other physical weapons. Prayer is powerful! The weapons of our warfare are not carnal (2 Cor. 10:4). As such,we can avail powers against Satan’s strategies. One weapon we are given as Christians to handle the situations in the government is prayer.
“I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men…” (1 Timothy 2:1). We make intercessions and supplications but we do not do enough giving of thanks because of the impression and weight of bad governance. We are mostly focused on praying without being intentional about thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a strong (important) duty that we must do.
“For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” (1 Tim. 2:2). We should be committed to prayers for those in authority as we are committed to the ministry. There are men in authority and God knows how to remove men. We would pray all manner of prayers and give thanks, for God is able to make amends in the lives of kings. Satan catches them and bribes them spiritually to propagate their own agenda.
We will pray this prayer for the upcoming elections and the machinery will be strong this time around. We should not give up on Nigeria. We must be on the Lord’s side. It is good to love a candidate whatsoever but do not make him a god. We as christians should separate ourselves from our political desires. Do not make anybody the answer. Even when we find a candidate that has some sanity, trust and pray that God will possess him to be good and do the will of God.
There are things on the seat of government such that, immediately one sits there, one’s thoughts can change. The people in power face a lot of things from persons trying to use evil divinations on them. All manner of strange spirits visit those in authority. Therefore, we must pray for them and give thanks for them, so that Nigeria may be better.
Jesus was invited to a wedding in Cana of Galilee where the wine ran out and the mother of Jesus told the servants to do whatever Jesus asked them to do (John 2:1-5) I begin to hear in my heart that all that we all need at this time is to do commandments. If the servants never obeyed, we would not know that it is possible to turn water to wine.
As they obeyed, water became wine, sweeter than the wine from the fruit. This is because the initial wine that was served was borne out of the natural fruit, but this new wine was born out of obedience. Water will come out of Nigeria to heal the political landscape. God will do things in Nigeria that will astound us.
Blessings!