Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: Lekki Soul Centre (LSC)
Date: Wednesday, 21st September 2022
Faith is a conversation, and it has been in the Spirit prior to now. We can see in the Old Testament how men engaged it to subdue kingdoms (Heb. 11:33). That faith is still alien to the Church today. Faith is a very high commodity in the spirit. The Scripture talks about Christ being the rock that followed the children of Israel (1 Cor. 10:4). In essence, Christ has been an operation since the Old Testament. God has been using Christ in weaving natures. God has been supplying substances for ascension in measures by breaking through the limitation that made men flesh.
All the items referred to in 2 Peter 1:5-7 are substances of life. They are meant to make us enlightened, to resurrect and awaken our senses for us to participate in a realm of life. They are also meant to help us bring a conversation into our flesh. Every time that conversation is brought to the flesh, one would earn a degree in the realm of the spirit. However, the world will hate you for it (1 John 3:13-14).
A believer is hated by the world when he has been anointed with the walk or conversations of charity. The life of such a person becomes a judgment. The world lifts a standard that men subscribe to through fear. Likewise, charity is an alternate standard in the spirit. When a man has been able to seek and trap the conversation of charity into his flesh, he has successfully subdued a kingdom.
As a result of our walk and manner of life while present in our flesh, a time will come when we will begin to find some reactions from the world that we previously did not find. Conversations like contentment are weapons in the Spirit. The Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth, is the person that syncs us to that realm of life. When the substances spoken of in 2 Peter 1 are fully gathered in a believer, they become a law.
“And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest.” (Heb. 8:11). A neighbour is a person that has been relating with the milk faith (Eph. 1:15). Such a one is who you show and reveal Christ to. By revealing Christ to a neighbour, he becomes a brother then the Father is then revealed to a brother. The state of brotherhood is identified by a law. This is evident in the relationship with the brethren— how natural it is for one to prefer and love the brethren. A brother (Christ company) is one whom the Father can be revealed to, with the intent to bless with ‘His law’. By doing so, a brother is raised to be a ‘people of God’. The differences between a neighbour, brother and a people are conversations that were kept in heaven but are downloaded in some seasons to become ours. There is a transition between having the knowledge of a life and laying down one's life to make that knowledge a law (Mal. 2:6).
We are a people given to knowledge, however, one of the things the Lord is trying to draw our attention to in this season are the experiences that will make His knowledge ours, making it a software in us so that it becomes natural in us. The Christ law (the law of truth) being present in a person separates one from the world and such a one is able to discern the world. Somehow, the world has a smell and every believer that has had a conversation with knowledge can identify it.
A time comes when the knowledge we have been exposed to becomes a kind of love, where we love doctrine (teaching) and can yield to the demands of teaching. When this happens, the life of that believer will become a judgment. The Holy Ghost will be able to use the life of that person to convict others. Charity is a plumb in the Spirit. It is a standard in the Spirit. By charity, the Holy Ghost will use the life and conversation of such a person to judge everyone whose walk is contrary or inferior to charity. The conversations of charity look foolish when we do them, but that conversation is a weapon in the Spirit. It looks weak but it is born out of a strength. It looks foolish but it is first born out of a wisdom.
“Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.” (1 Cor. 3:18). This refers to how a soul should take the fall. The promise that the world gives is how a man would stand out. But in the kingdom, the way up is to go down. That is why it can be easily despised. Faith, hope and charity is a condescension. The life of Jesus was designed against death. 2 Corinthians 8:9 shows how Jesus, though He was rich, yet for our sakes, He became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich. That conversation looks foolish and weak but that was what swallowed up death in victory. The gospel is a teaching that exposes what it is to be made poor because that is the way God can collect wrong natures and disarm a soul. Jesus went through a process through which He fetched grace. His becoming poor was leaving an estate of glory to identify with man, to receive glory.
The gospel is what explains what poverty truly is. It is a life of weakness; a life that looks foolish; the lifestyle of a sheep. When David was being raised, the ‘sheepish’ looking season of his life was the season where his heart was grazed. It was the season a heart of a shepherd was raised in him. In the raising of the heart of a shepherd in men, the Lord would take them through seasons that look poor and easily despised.
There is a shame borne by bearing with the burdens of the gospel of Christ (Heb. 12:2; Rom. 1:16). There is a shame attached to the gospel. There is something about man’s life that explains how such a one goes through poverty to later be made rich, thereby partaking of a grace. The world would see and despise it because they do not relate to it with the sense of faith. When the speakings of faith were denied in the Church by the enemy, there came a limitation upon the Church. It is only at the hearing of faith that life will be interpreted to us.
The reason why men would profit with the gospel of Christ and come to the last veil where they possess the covenant of life and peace is because of a profiting with an aspect of the gospel and conversations that are considered foolish. The Lord is saying to us that there are warfares ahead of us and there are higher enemies to overcome.
What Satan uses to trouble the soul is hope. If the eye of the soul looks into tomorrow and Christ is not totally tattooed in it, there will be fears. In other seasons after Christ has become a reality and an inheritance, and the new man looks into the future and cannot find the Father, then there will be another set of fears. This was one of David’s experiences in the valley of the shadow of death (Psa. 23:4). When a man loves the world to a degree, he becomes unreasonable, having a reprobate mind, because he will be able to receive the corruptible seed or nature.
When everlasting righteousness is being delivered to a Christ company, they are being given the breastplate of judgment so they can judge righteously. When we look at the temptations of Matthew 5, Christ was talking about how we will judge with everlasting righteousness and be perfect even as our Father in Heaven is perfect. Satan is raising sons of disobedience in the kingdom, men who savour the things of man. While doing so, they will come into different birth processes and experiences (John 1:13).
Before everlasting life becomes a law in us, we will need to use the judgment of everlasting righteousness to discern some temptations that God permits because He wants to use those temptations and our response to them to collect death from our souls. If sin and death had been previously collected from our souls, then the temptation would be permitted because we can bear it. This implies that we have the capacity to respond as David did and move from having everlasting life to inheriting it as a law.
So, the everlasting sons, in Philippians 2:15, should be blameless and above rebuke. That means they should respond like the prophetic brethren in the book of Revelation (Rev. 22:9). In the same way, we will go through things that present an opportunity for the accuser not to be able to accuse. The reason he accuses us is that we have not grown to respond as Jesus did.
The Lord being our Shepherd, will lead us through experiences where we would be in the close shade of death. Most of the temptations that Jesus experienced from Jordan to Gethsemane was death. Satan was coming through men. The things we read of were things that Jesus used the judgment of everlasting righteousness to handle. Jesus was not just using gifts; He was using nature and judgment.
“It may be that the LORD will look on mine affliction, and that the LORD will requite me good for his cursing this day.” (2 Sam. 16:12). By “It may be…” in that verse, he was saying that even if the Lord did not look at his affliction or the situation may slay him, the Lord will remain his Lord. This is important because heaven will be opening a season before us where we would be trained to worship Him. We will be like David and Daniel. The Hebrew boys said, “…O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.” Daniel 3:16-17. This implied they knew the God of Israel. What they said came from a portion of a meal they had taken, and it was by that meal they purposed in their heart. So, we cannot successfully handle some temptations without some resolve that we would have made before the hour of the temptation. God feeds us to swear to our own hurt. We do not make up our minds in the face of temptation, the decision should be made in the season of feeding (Jam. 1:2).
Joseph, while in prison, wanted to escape the prison sentence, but that experience needed to have its full course so he could be separated enough to handle the throne. He would have been incomplete if he had left the prison two years before he left. This is the case for some of us too; we want to run from our prison when it has not had its full course.
Our Lord Jesus inherited Eternal Life on the throne, but we have the privilege of inheriting it in the days of our flesh. We are being given judgment to see through cursing and affliction. This is a veil called the darkness. The reason we are being given the true light is so we can see through that veil and desire the good that is behind the veil. Those thoughts, cares, and distractions that discomfort us should not be discomforting to us. When one carries the weight of the spirit, some things will mean nothing to such a person.
“Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the LORD delivers him out of them all.” (Ps. 34:19). They are preparing us to agree with this scripture. The expectation of the righteous shall not be cut short, but we need to read through the book of David in order to know the expectation. The expectation of the righteous is to come into everlasting righteousness. We cannot harness all the resources of the soul to look at the Father. The gaze that shall see the Father is the gaze of him whose eyes are single. The Father will become our sole expectation. When this happens, natural additions will come.
The afflictions are many because there is a count of life to fetch; there is also a life to surrender; although, God in His wisdom can use a particular dealing as “many”. Abraham faced one dealing for 25 years, which was used in preparing him to lay down Isaac. Moses also faced one dealing for 40 years and he was raised as a god to Pharaoh (Exo. 7:1). This was their season of many. So, for many of us, God can also use one dealing to measure out the age of the new man, Christ, to us. This same dealing can be used to give us a measure of everlasting life. But we often find ourselves walking into the snare of focusing on our issues or the things we lack. We regain our joy and peace when we take our eyes off things because we come to realise that there is something more real than those things. Heaven wants us to lay hold on that which is more real. When we do, our troubles and lack will be taken care of. This is a principle in the spirit and it is how we will wrestle with spiritual wickedness in high places.
Jesus did not deliver David from his afflictions the way He also did not deliver the patriarchs of faith in Hebrew 11 from their afflictions. There is a wrong wisdom at work in us that wants us to be delivered from our afflictions in a way we would like. The man that has this judgement is the man God wants to teach the wisdom of salvation because we often wrestle with the Lord regarding how we want to be saved. We have the knowledge of the ‘what’ concerning Christ and everlasting life (what salvation is) and have no issue with it. But we have an issue with the ‘how’, which is the wisdom of salvation. For instance, we have an issue with the curriculum called longsuffering, meanwhile, the season of longsuffering is the season of prosperity for the soul.
God did not take the patriarchs in Hebrew 11 out of the situations they were in. Rather, God delivered them from their afflictions by measuring out age to them. He gave them light and made them immune to afflictions because the source of their afflictions was death. So, there is a storage of life we will have that can take us beyond the reach of death. If the Lord delivers us the way we want Him to, spirits will know that we have not been properly delivered because we would still have their goods with us. There is only one way for us to be delivered, and that is the way Jesus was delivered. His last three-and-half years were for the program of deliverance, yet He was always keeping appointments with Satan who showed up through men.
Daniel was allowed into the furnace that was heated up seven times, and God showed up the way He wanted to because it is in the season of such dealings that God makes His ways known (Psa. 103:7). That is when He closes the gulf between heaven and the earth and communicates His ways and thoughts to a soul for deliverance (Isa. 55:8-9). When we have God’s ways and thoughts, then we will be able to relate to afflictions the way David and Jesus did. There is nothing God will do that cannot be traced to His word. God does nothing without and beyond His word. So, the deliverance we are trusting God for is in His word. When we listen to ministrations, we are actually receiving deliverance.
We cannot be delivered outside of being preached to. Thus, if we are going to overcome a higher evil spirit, we will need to receive preaching and live by them. We are delivered from evil spirits by living on every word of God (Matt. 4:4). By living on words, we are being separated and made wiser than evil spirits. We can know the way they think. The way they think is the negative version of the thoughts of Christ and we need to know it. If we do not know it, we will latch on to their thoughts and be led by them. Every temptation brings offense and bitterness – both at the Lord and at those in authority. The sum total of our feeding is to help us overcome these things, as Job was able to.
Everlasting righteousness is meant to help us discern good and evil in afflictions. Evil comes via afflictions, and any response outside what is written concerning it guarantees our failure. God did not take out this situation in Joseph’s sojourn and He will not take us out of ours. Rather, He will use it to comfort us with truth that He has not previously comforted us with (2 Cor. 1:3-4). We are in a season where God the Father will be comforting us with His truth, light and nature, if only we allow our temptation to run its cycle.
“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). The Corinthian church was going through troubles when Paul wrote this to them. The Lord expected them to use the wisdom of becoming weak again. The wisdom and power of God (which is Christ) can only be accessed by being foolish and weak (1 Cor. 1:24-25). However, there is a higher edition of foolishness and weakness. Our eyes should be on the good, that is, we should focus on the things that have been preached to us because they are our deliverance. There is no warfare we cannot win if our eyes are on these words. Jesus overcame the devil because His eyes were on the things that were written.
“While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Cor. 4:18). Paul said this, being an everlasting man. He had a conversation that was in heaven (Phil. 3:20). He was already empowered by Eternal power. So, the reason for everlasting life is to look for that which is unseen – the Eternal. We are looking for what men do not look for. The dealings Paul went through were to help him cease being a man: to take him from amongst men and raise him into a high priest.
In the Old and New Testaments, God used afflictions and contradictions to raise people. So, God is not banking on our ability to interpret all that we are going through. He just wants us to access our sheepish nature and keep following Him as Jesus did. There were some things Jesus may not have figured out, but He kept following God. Sometimes it may look like ministers and preachers that say these things do not have their fair share of warfare but they do. They just choose not to look at them because if they do, they will lose the battle. Instead, they look at what the scripture is saying regarding them. If you do not know what scripture says regarding a warfare you are faced with, instead of looking at it, seek counsel.
God wants to equip us to a place where unanswered prayers cannot threaten us because He is bigger than the answers to our prayers and our judgment of unanswered prayers is death. When we are going to overcome this death is when we have gathered the substances similar to what Daniel gathered (Dan. 3:17-18). We must be able to say that if God does not change our situation, we will still follow Him until we have Eternal Life. With this kind of wisdom, we can break the backbone of an evil spirit because evil spirits understand all kinds of responses; but they do not understand this.
Shimei was a blessing to David (2 Sam. 16:13). There was a good David came into because of Shimei. There is a good that is waiting for us if we can handle what the enemy is using to speak to us. If we can put our eyes on that which is not seen, then our souls will be preserved. The Father is our preservation. We will overcome the shortcomings of the seven churches if only we can have our eyes on that which is good. When our souls journey to God’s prepared habitation for it, then we will realize that our afflictions do not exist. When we come to this realization, we would have fulfilled obedience. Then God will avenge disobedience.
“And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.” (2 Cor. 10:6). This scripture is one of the greatest comforts in the New Testament. God will avenge disobedience relating to both the first and second death, but the ball is in our court. The Father has shown us how to manage afflictions in the life of Jesus. There is nothing we go through that Jesus did not go through. Immediately a temptation or affliction shows up, we should already know that we can bear it (1 Cor. 10:13). Heaven approved it and that was why it appeared. It will be a long haul and we will have to learn patience in a way we would rather not, but we will end up being the wiser for it. We just need to figure out how Jesus handled it and let our eyes be on that.
David did nothing about Shimei till he died. He left him to Solomon, who gave him a decree he had to obey to be alive. However, Shimei disobeyed and was killed (1 Kings 2:36-46). This may seem like a foolish way to handle the issue but it was wisdom in the spirit because David did nothing about it. Many of our headaches are because we cannot bring change to a situation, whereas bringing change to a situation is the Father’s business, not ours. What we should be concerned about is how to use all the resources of our souls to look for the Father.
Parents bear the burdens of a child’s needs without the child being aware of what he needs. So, it is not a childlike nature to bear our own burdens ourselves. We need to disown this non-childlike nature concerning our natural and spiritual expectations. Jesus was able to sleep in a boat while it stormed (Mark 4:36-38). He had an understanding that God was going to take care of Him because He was on the course of purpose and not outside the leading of the Spirit.
Whatever we are going through, we can sleep like babies if we can take our eyes off ourselves and the situations but keep our eyes on the promise. Our eyes were created to be placed on the promise. That was the secret of the Hebrews 11 saints. There were promises that God gave to them. In the season of everlasting life, they related with the things that were not seen by faith. They took their eyes off their situations and won their warfare.
Victory is also certain for us because we cannot be more concerned about victory than the Father is. When we understand this, we will rest and do more thanksgiving than praying for our issues because it is firstly God’s need before it is ours. We should not bear what the Lord is meant to bear so that we would be light enough to ascend and interact with meetings. We will be light enough to run the race that has been set before us. God is helping us witness to the certainty of this path even though everything else speaks to the contrary. God wants us to agree with Him that everything else is not real no matter how real they are to our human frame. We have to choose to be on the Lord’s side and believe His report. We are choosing to believe what the truth has said and what God has stated as His promise, despite the contradiction.
Blessings!
Summary
1. All the items referred to in 2 Peter 1:5-7 are substances of life. They are meant to make us enlightened for us to participate in a realm of life. They are also meant to help us bring a conversation into our flesh. When these substances are fully gathered in a believer, they become a law.
2. One of the things the Lord is trying to draw our attention to in this season are the experiences that will make His knowledge ours, making it a software in us so that it becomes natural in us.
3. Before everlasting life becomes a law in us, we will need to use the judgment of everlasting righteousness to discern some temptations that God permits, because He wants to use those temptations and our response to them, to collect death from our souls.
4. We cannot successfully handle some temptations without some resolve that we would have made before the hour of the temptation. God feeds us to swear to our own hurt. We do not make up our minds in the face of temptation, the decision should be made in the season of feeding (James 1:2).
5. The gaze that shall see the Father is the gaze of him whose eyes are single. We regain our joy and peace when we take our eyes off things because we come to realize that there is something more real than His things. Heaven wants us to lay hold on that which is more real.
6. We cannot be delivered outside of being preached to. Thus, if we are going to overcome a higher evil spirit, we will need to receive preaching and live by them. We are delivered from evil spirits by living on every word of God (Matt. 4:4). By living on words, we are being separated and made wiser than evil spirits.
7. Everlasting righteousness is meant to help us discern good and evil in afflictions. Evil comes via afflictions, and any response outside what is written concerning it guarantees our failure. We are in a season where God the Father will be comforting us with His truth, light and nature, if only we allow our temptation to run its cycle.
8. When our souls journey to God’s prepared habitation for it, then we will realize that our afflictions do not exist. When we come to this realization, we would have fulfilled obedience. Then God will avenge disobedience. (2 Cor. 10:6)
9. Parents bear the burdens of a child’s needs without the child being aware of what he needs. So, it is not a childlike nature to bear our own burdens ourselves. Whatever we are going through, we can sleep like babies if we can take our eyes off ourselves and the situation, and keep our eyes on the promise. Our eyes were created to be placed on the promise.
10. Victory is also certain for us because we cannot be more concerned about victory than the Father is. When we understand this, we will rest and do more thanksgiving than praying for our issues because it is firstly God’s need before it is ours. We should not bear what the Lord is meant to bear so that we would be light enough to run the race that has been set before us.