Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: School of the Spirit (SOS)
Date: Thursday, 16th June 2022
Minister: Rev. (Mrs) Helen Oyegoke
We cannot use the raw light of God to live for now, because it would be too bright for us. We cannot presently comprehend the raw light of God. Thus, the light of God is brought to us in bits: line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little (Isa 28:10). The essence of light is for us to walk in it. Light is supposed to illuminate our souls and give us direction for journeying. A man cannot arrive at the perfect day without consistent and continual increasing light (Prov. 4:18). The perfect day speaks of the season when we arrive at the presence of God and at His right hand.
The just man is on a journey to a destination and he needs light or understanding to make progress. We are all on a journey and the New Birth is the beginning of that journey. Without the New Birth, a man cannot be enrolled on this journey. The New Birth is not an end in itself, it is only the beginning of the journey. For everyone who has enrolled on this journey, it is mandatory for us to get to the end of the journey. This journey cannot take place except we have spiritual understanding.
The word of God is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Ps. 119:105). This path is the path of a just man. The just man comes to the path when his spirit is quickened from the dead. Afterwards, light begins to shine and, as the just man makes use of the light in obedience, he will be making progress in his journey towards the destination.
The Lord wants to speak to us about raising, development, building or growth. The mandate of God upon man is that he should come to where He is. To come to where God is, is to be like Him. We approach God by acquiring an image that is different from the one we had before the New Birth. In the gospel, change of nature is the same as spiritual growth.
Ephesians 2:1-3 says that we shared a certain nature with others due to a conversation or a walk that is according to the prince of the power of the air. This prince has mastery of wisdom in culturing wrong natures. Satan did not just kill the spirit of man in the garden, he also introduced a conversation or lifestyle to him. This conversation is what caused a nature of wrath to be cultured in man.
The Apostle Paul included himself as one of those who walked in the past conversation, despite his blameless record as touching the law (Eph. 2:3). As far as the righteousness of the law was concerned, Paul was blameless (Phip. 3:5-6). No wonder Scriptures tell us that the law could not take away sins (Heb. 10:11). Despite being blameless by the law, Paul’s sins remained in his soul, and he still had the nature of wrath.
The commandment or righteousness of the law could not deal with the lust of the flesh. At New Birth, the spirit of a man becomes born again with a nature of righteousness and holiness, but his soul still has the nature of the old man (Eph. 4:24). The soul is the part of man that expresses or carries his personality or nature. It is the soul that God requires to grow, change, or be developed. Work must be done in the soul because it still has the imprint of the old man in it, even after the New Birth.
The Church that Jesus wants to marry is a Church that is made up of souls that have matured, grown, changed and taken up another nature or image. The Church is a conglomeration of souls whose spirits are born again. Jesus can only marry those souls that have changed nature as a result of spiritual journey. The soul is the part of man that gets conformed to the image of the Son of God, has to do or obey what God is bringing and that will inherit God.
Just as the soul is the one who obeys, it is also the one who refuses to obey God’s ways. The desire of God is to raise man’s soul to a place where it will become a spirit. It is the soul that scriptures oftentimes refer to as flesh (Gen. 6:3). However, the soul can be made spiritual, divine and ultimately, it can be glorified with Eternal Life. So we need to ascend or grow up spiritually, and this is only possible as we obey commandments. We journey by obedience but we cannot obey if understanding does not come to us.
The original intention of God for man is that he becomes His image and His likeness. Adam was not made in the exact image and likeness of God at the beginning. The image of God is not a living soul; He is a quickening spirit. The last Adam was made a quickening spirit (1Cor. 15:45). It is interesting to know that a man can be made quickening spirit. Our Lord Jesus was the last Adam, and he was not born as a quickening spirit but was made so. God is a quickening spirit; hence, God can be made.
Our God is a great God who makes other gods and He succeeded to do so in His Son. God succeeded to accomplish what He originally intended in a man. This ambition of God looks too good to be true. God wants to make men like Him. This even reveals the person of God to us. God is so magnanimous and His heart is large. Therefore, He will not stop at anything to bring man to His estate. No wonder God is always doing everything to enlarge our hearts. God is so large-hearted that He wants to pour everything He has into man. This is love and God made everything for His love and to give Him pleasure. Man was made to bring God pleasure, and the pleasure is that God wants to look at man and see Himself.
We need to be serious with what the Father is saying. This achievement is all that matters in the entirety of man and is the reason every human being is brought to the earth. The adversary has painted all manners of reasons for living on earth and, by doing so, men have become ignorant of the purpose of God. This is why a man pities himself when he is unable to attain some worldly status that the enemy has elevated. However, a man has only failed when he does not arrive at the image of God, but has lots of vain achievements on earth. This does not mean that we should not be engaged in an earthly occupation, but we should bear in mind that by doing so, we have not become anything in the sight of God.
It is very difficult for men to accept that the reason for our existence on earth is to attain God’s image. This is because we met and have been brought up by that rat race on earth. Believers and unbelievers alike strive for the attainment of these worldly standards, and we burn our energy to attain them. Parents do not only live their lives for worldly goals but also transfer that drive to their children. It is important to understand that a man who is in pursuit of God’s image cannot be irrelevant on earth. Jesus was not irrelevant on earth because He was the solution to the earth, even though He did not build physical mansions here.
We cannot seek God and become irrelevant on earth. Jesus said that every other thing we need on earth will be added when we seek first the Kingdom of God (Matt. 6:33). Satan has blinded us from the pursuit of the Kingdom, thereby making us live for the things that should be added. The Kingdom is more than what a man will eat on earth. The reason we live for other things that should come as addition is because we are ignorant of God’s love, God’s gift and the reason we were made originally. An enemy did that work to make man pursue vanity, live and die for vanity.
Some people commit suicide when they are unable to achieve the earthly status that their peers are attaining. The rate of suicide in most advanced countries is very high because many are not living for the reason for which they were created. This leads them to take thoughts that often push them into suicide. Many of the people in those countries have things going well for them outwardly, but they are void of substances that should make them up. A man is not meant to be void of substances of God, otherwise he would not be different from a beast.
The true life of a man is not finding expression if he is not emerging or coming into the image of God. We should therefore pay good attention to this pursuit much more than we do to our earthly career. Attaining God’s image is higher than attaining the peak of your earthly career because that peak is still vain and it will pass away. Fallen spirits or demons do not respect such attainments. A demon has no respect for a professor who lacks the substances of God in his soul. Instead, they find men with natural brightness useful to them because they lack the image of God.
Of all the men that came to be baptized by John, it was only one man (Jesus) that heaven openly declared as a Son. This was because Jesus was doing things of pleasure. The pleasure He was giving to the Father was not because He was a man of high earthly status. Jesus was only a crude carpenter but heaven opened over Him at Jordan, and the Father declared, “…this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). This was God declaring the kind of man that He is looking for. We should wonder what Jesus was doing that made God to be well pleased with Him. He was simply growing in stature and increasing in grace.
Jesus gave Himself to spiritual growth. He was hearing constantly from heaven and was obeying the things that He heard (Acts 1:1). Jesus had not performed a miracle when this declaration was made; He was only growing in grace. Jesus was not just receiving the knowledge of truth, He was also doing or obeying them. God is a maker; He can make God out of a man, no matter how lowly his estate is. All that the man is required to do is to align with the things that God is revealing. Those things come by light.
The things of God are gracious substances that can raise a man. When we became born again, we do not yet have the things of God in our souls. Jesus inherited the things of God; He was not born with them (John 16:15). He was also born a little lower than angels, just like Adam was, yet He became so much better than the angels. The instruments of transition were the things He received.
Jesus did not bring pleasure to God without doing obedience (Heb. 5:8). The beginning of pleasure is when a man begins to learn the doctrine of Christ. Learning and obeying Christ is the beginning of bringing pleasure to God. A man cannot become Christ without receiving His gracious substances or laws.
God is a spirit, and there are things that make Him up. Angels are spirits but not spirits in the class of God. There is a way spirits behave, and when a man is becoming spiritual, there are things that he no longer does. Some of the things that a carnal man is at home with must not be found with a spiritual man.
A man’s level of spirituality can be determined by how he responds to offences. When a man is becoming spiritual, his responses will be different from those of a carnal man. This is because there are laws in him that no longer respond to offences. A Christian can be so built that he gets to a place where he does not respond to offences.
We should constantly pray to be filled with wisdom and spiritual understanding (Col. 1:9). This is the wisdom that weaved Christ to be who He is. This wisdom comes by revelation. There is a posture we must have for the things of inheritance to come to us, and that is the posture of being tender. When we are not tender, the things that pertains to the inheritance will not visit our thoughts.
When the laws of God come to us, there is already a resident law in us that attacks them. This is what causes warfare in our souls. A wrong nature cannot be ejected out of us except the laws of another nature is introduced to us and we engage them by obedience. The resident laws of the wrong nature that we have are at war with us because they are backed up with a power, but we must yield our members to the revealed laws of God for that wrong nature to go.
A wrong law can be operative in a man who is born again, is tongue talking or even preaches. A preacher must engage and yield to God’s law to be made free from wrong laws. There is graduation in yielding (Rom. 6:19). It is as we progress from one level of yielding to another that nature is being formed in us. Just as we yielded to unrighteousness, we should also yield to the righteousness of God.
When we yield to the laws of Christ or the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, we will be made free from the laws of sin and death (Rom. 8:2). When God’s instruction comes to us, we are set in a warfare of choice, to either obey or not. We are not wrestling against flesh and blood, but against principalities, power, rulers of the darkness of this world (Eph. 6:12). This is a warfare of thoughts.
A spiritual man is one who can easily forgive another man of offences and also forget. To be able to forgive and forget is a spiritual law and a sign that a man has life. When we cannot forgive our brothers and sisters, God cannot command the blessing of everlasting life amongst us. Satan fights us so that we do not forgive and forget the wrongs that are done to us, because he knows that, by doing so, God will not be able to command everlasting life to come to us.
The Father does not only give, He also chastises. The Father scourges every son that he would receive (Heb. 12:6). The Father wants to receive us and make us partake of His holiness, but He is separated from many of the things that we are joined to (Heb. 12:10).
The declaration upon Jesus at Jordan is a sign that He had been walking in wisdom and spiritual understanding which made Him to please the Father well (Col. 1:10). A man cannot live for God’s pleasure if he is not filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom. When we obey the things that are revealed, we bring pleasure to the Father. There is a measure of pleasure that Jesus generated to the Father before He arrived at Jordan and that increased the revelations of righteousness that He was to obey. The season wherein we are increasing in the knowledge of God is the season of everlasting life.
There are laws that make a spiritual man. A spiritual man does not respond to wrongs done to him. Fallen spirits are the ones who say things to us that will make us stop our journey. So when God is instructing us not to respond to wrongs done to us by our brother, He is training us against the distractions of fallen spirits. There is a way a man who is filled with understanding behaves and most things do not weigh too much in his heart. When a man is built up spiritually, there is no loss that can make him sink. He can feel bad for certain things, but he cannot sink because he has an understanding that his life does not consist in the abundance of things that he possesses.
It is understanding that enables a man to share his things with his brother. A spirituality that does not make a man to cheerfully give to others is not true spirituality (Eph. 4:28). This is contrary to the philosophy of man that encourages a man to work only so that he can take care of himself. On the contrary, the scripture says that the reason a man should work hard is so that he can have to give (Eph. 4:28). 1 John 3:17 instructs us to give to our brothers the moment we recognize his need instead of waiting until they come to ask for help.
When one recognises that the most important thing on earth is for him to be built, one will not take some pressures of this world seriously. That understanding of the hope at the end of the journey that heaven has engaged you in makes you trivialise things that trouble the hearts of men. Things like lack of money that Satan brings against us are to distract us from journeying in the spirit. We must seek to press into the Kingdom of God, even in the face of contradicting natural situations.
To seek the kingdom of God is to seek to become the image of God. We must place a high premium, not on our natural circumstances, but on spiritual growth. There is a level we come to in God that the things that used to distract us will cease to do so.
It is until we are raised as a spiritual man that we can begin to call for everlasting substances which will be used to craft the image of God in us. What made our Lord Jesus the Everlasting Father are substances. Those substances come by revelation. The revelation of the Son of God is the giving of everlasting substances.
Judgments are everlasting substances that will be strange and foolish to a man who has not received the substances of a spiritual man. The gain of Christ is that the things we appreciate changes and the value we place on natural things changes. Our gaze will be shifted and our value system changed, when we are learning Christ. It is when our value system changes that the knowledge of the Son of God can be given to us.
These substances are used to raise us as the image of God so that we can be qualified for quickening. Our destination is to become quickening spirits. We are firstly raised to an everlasting stature so that we may be quickened afterwards.
Blessings!
Summary
1. The just man is on a journey to a destination and he needs light or understanding to make progress. A man cannot arrive at the perfect day without consistent and continual increasing light (Prov. 4:18).
2. The Church that Jesus wants to marry is a Church that is made up of souls that have matured, grown, changed and taken up another nature or image.
3. The original intention of God for man is that he becomes His image and His likeness. The image of God is not a living soul; He is a quickening spirit. The true life of a man is not finding expression if he is not emerging or coming into the image of God.
4. Jesus did not bring pleasure to God without doing obedience (Heb. 5:8). The beginning of pleasure is when a man begins to learn the doctrine of Christ
5. A man’s level of spirituality can be determined by how he responds to offences. A Christian can be so built that he gets to a place where he does not respond to offences.
6. There is graduation in yielding (Rom. 6:19). It is as we progress from one level of yielding to another that nature is being formed in us.
7. The Father does not only give, He also chastises. The Father scourges every son that he would receive (Heb. 12:6).
8. We should constantly pray to be filled with wisdom and spiritual understanding (Col. 1:9). A man cannot live for God’s pleasure if he is not filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom.
9. When one recognises that the most important thing on earth is for him to be built, one will not take some pressures of this world seriously.
10. Our destination is to become quickening spirits. We are firstly raised to an everlasting stature so that we may be quickened afterwards.