Date: Tuesday, 10th August 2021
Ministering: Reverend Gabriel Esrom
The operation of sin is the strength of Satan. Sin is beautiful to behold. This is why a man of sin is a man of beauty. However, Satan is not powerful when compared to the all powerful God. Satan only employs tricks to trap and enslave men.
God excommunicated Adam from the Garden of Eden when he sinned. This was not because He hated him; it was because He loved him. The Garden of God is a place of dominion and rest. Man needs understanding to operate in this garden.
The Spirit of God, which is His breath, brings formation in the soul of man. The Word works only by the Spirit (John 6:63). Reading the Word without the Spirit of Christ only produces religious knowledge. When the Spirit of God breathes upon the Word, light shines. God guarded the Tree in the midst of the garden by His life. A man partakes of the Tree of Life when he moves by the Word. Partaking of this Tree calls the soul of a man up to the Lord.
Eden was made to take man to God; and it is because God wants to receive man unto Himself. When man sinned, God drove him out of the garden and placed angels to guard the gates of the garden (Gen. 3:24). Where there is a gate, there is a seal. God closed the gate and sealed the garden of Eden when He drove man out.
Satan still employs the same trick he used for Adam in causing him to fall. When he came to man, he wanted to stop the operation that would enable him to fulfill the will of God. Man was meant to journey towards God, but Satan offered to him a life that changed his course. What he would have gotten through obedience to God's instruction was given to him through the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:5). When you eat as God, you become as God.
Eden was the place of the Voice and the place of divine presence. When Adam missed it, he heard the voice of God. The voice of God had always been calling but Adam had a new response to the divine call, because sin had set in (Gen. 3:10). God usually came in the cool of the evening to fellowship with man; to equip him with all he needed in his journey towards God. Man was a kind of god from the beginning; hence, he had the capacity to name all the animals according to how God wanted. Only a god can do such.
Eden is the garden of the Lord and man was not far from it for long. Every man that wants to ascend unto God would still journey there. God intended that man would journey from being a living soul to a quickening spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). God’s coming to man in the garden was not premised on a teacher-student relationship, but a Father-son relationship. God wanted a relationship with man in a setting wherein He would communicate all that is within Him and man would take them without questioning. On the contrary, the enemy did not come for a relationship but to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10). If we do not stay in the context of God's Word, we will miss what God has in store for us.
Eden ceased to be a physical place when man was sent out of it; it became spiritual afterwards. Eden remain closed until Jesus came to fulfill God’s intention for man. We cannot survive without the Word. The presence of the anointing of God upon a man does not guarantee that he is doing the will of God.
In Matthew 7:23, some men did miracles but were not approved by the Lord. There are things that are not acceptable in the sight of God, including things that corrupt, which we must do away with. These things can only be revealed in the light of His Word.
God instructed Abraham to kill his son (Gen. 22:2). God needed to kill what Abraham loved most in order to walk with Him. Moses was also taken through a process. Moses was a trained man of Pharaoh; he had strength. He overpowered and killed an Egyptian on behalf of a Hebrew. The strength of a prince is greater than that of a common man. Therefore, God had to send him out of Egypt to train him. He was sent to his father-in-law where God humbled him to take away his natural strength (Exo. 3:1). Moses did not become a meek man by choice but through dealings.
God is calling us to a place where we will say, "not my will, but yours be done". We should check our love-life. Do you really love God? Or is it fame you seek? Job loved God. He was spent but he made up his mind to stay with God (Job 2:9-10).
Message Ends
Charge by Rev. Kayode Oyegoke
We should maintain a healthy attitude towards the words we are hearing so that we do not bring the Lord's efforts to a waste. There is an attitude we need to have towards hearing. The things that are being spoken into our souls are not mere words; they are going to perform an internal work of transformation. Hearing the sayings of the Lord is for our life. Thus, we must be attentive and take our stand in Him.