Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministries (EGFM)
Programme: Tuesday Prayer Meeting
Date: Tuesday, February 1st, 2022
Ministering: Reverend (Mrs.) Helen Oyegoke
Everlasting life is the life of God Himself. It is the life of the Most Holy (God's realm). For you to have everlasting life, you must know the owner of the life, His knowledge must be unveiled to us. When we see His commandments, we see Him; what He commands is what He does.
The commandment is love and God is love. You will discover that the gospel (from the doctrine around the milk of the word all the way to everlasting life) is love. The doctrine of faith towards God does not work without love. To properly discern those who have been exposed to the teachings of Rev. Kenneth Hagin so well, you’ll have to watch their love walk. They have the judgment of elementary love; they live by those laws and do not joke with it. It trained them so much that you find it very comfortable to stay in their midst. That dispensation was meant to train us for a greater love. "And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;"(Philippians 1:9).
What shows that you are knowing God is that your love is increasing, and not that you are anointed. There is responsibility for love walk in the dispensation of the milk of God’s word; the peak of the milk of the word is faith towards God and love unto all the saints. People who have repentance from dead work, without love walk haven’t completed the obedience in repentance from dead work. We cannot excel in obedience to one instruction and turn a blind eye to the other and please God.
"Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, [16] Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; [17] That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him..." (Ephesians 1:15-17). Love towards all the saints is a prerequisite for having understanding. It is a prerequisite for the opening of the eyes of understanding. When the eyes have been opened and a man learns faith and hope, what crowns it up is charity.
"Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:..."(1 Peter 1:22). One needs to be purified from the world to be able to love his brethren. The world places emphasis on the natural than the spiritual (1 John 2:15). Lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh and pride of life would not make one love the brethren. One can love the world so much that he would want to outdo his brother or compete with his brother. The revelation of Christ purifies us from the love of this world that heals us from competing or having pre-eminence over our brother.
"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." (1 John 2:15) The things that are in the world are the things that pull us. It is not a sin to have these world’s goods, but you will not be able to handle them well if you have not been purified from the love of the world. The doctrine of Christ purifies. In Christ, we learn to place value on things that are not seen.
Christ is the spiritual man, as you obey Christ, you become spiritual. Rev. Kenneth Hagin said that the more spiritual a person becomes, the less emphasis he places on the natural. When a man begins to learn Christ, he begins to relinquish the natural. In Christ, you learn contentment, you learn to de-emphasize the natural. The love of money and what it can do is worldliness, we ought to be mindful of the welfare of others as well.
God is love, that is His person; His life is controlled by the laws of love. God is demanding fervent love from us this season and this calls for us to obey because He is love. The essence of the purification of the heart is for you to love the brethren. Our life must be controlled by the laws of love. "Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:..." (1 Peter 1:22).
God is love, He causes His rain to fall upon the good and the evil. Fervent love is so important because the next allocation depends on it. When you are doing this, you are being born because you are fighting against laws written on your inside. The laws within a man cannot allow him to inherit the life of God. Eternal life is a life that you will inherit when you are emptied of your own life.
The essence of this commandment of loving our enemies is for inheriting everlasting life. Doing this commandment is the work of God, it is actually serving God. God is more interested in you becoming like Him. We count serving God as doing exploits, whereas, God is more interested in us becoming like Him which is the actual service – it is the excellent way.
We must not become a torment to our brethren, assuming the role of a judge. Teachings would communicate the mind of the Lord to us. We must be careful of insulting others of their level of growth spiritually. There is no way we can learn everlasting life, which is the life of a Person who is Love (God), without love. At every level, from the milk of God’s word till we get to God, there is a learning of love.
Love is of God – it is the substance and very essence of God (1 Jn. 4:7a). Everlasting life is the life of God. So, the laws of everlasting life are the laws of love. Love increases as we journey in the faith; when a man has not been exposed to the love at the level of the milk of the word of God, such a person cannot prosper in loving in the meat of the word. When we say we know God, then we imply that we know love because love is of God (1 Jn. 4:7b).
"And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life... " (Jn. 6:40). The Son is the brightness of God's glory, the express image of God's person (Heb. 1:8). When the Son is being revealed, love arrangements are being shown. We are about to learn love properly because we do not know what love really is. The realm of everlasting life is the realm of judgement -the judgment of love.
"And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment…" (Phi. 1:9). The more judgement we have, the more love we have. When we hate our brother, we do not have everlasting life abounding in us.
We must learn not to take the actions and reactions of people to heart because many times, they do not know what they are doing. We are mindful of people's actions because of the lack of judgement. Jesus was able to tell the Father to forgive those who crucified Him on the cross because He had judgement (Luke 23:34). He saw beyond their actions, He saw their ignorance – that they were captives of Satan. Seeing fully well the extent to which Satan has made man dark, man could no longer recognize He who came to save him; instead, they killed their Messiah.
God must heal our sense of expectation of gratitude from men when we do them a favour. The natural saying that "one who is grateful for a favor done is entitled to another" came to enforce our vengeful nature. Unthankfulness is a sign of perilous times (2 Tim. 3:2). It is a bad nature, but God does not want us to relate to the unthankful in a vengeful manner. God wants us to be doers of good. He wants us to do good consistently, because according to His judgement, "...him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." (Jam. 4:17).
To refuse to do good to an unthankful person when one knows he needs it is a sin. Even though the devil would ensure one does not do good to an unthankful person, we must not refrain from doing good, so far we know that the unthankful needs it. We must learn to do good, not because of the expectation of a "thank you" but because it is the right thing to do. This is how to be like our Father. It is a righteous demand to always do good.
Judgement would be coming to us; and the end of all the judgements is love because God is light. If anyone claims to be in light and hates his brother, such is in darkness till now (1 Jn. 2:9).
This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. [6] If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: [7] But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 Jn. 1:5-7). Sins are being cleansed as we walk in the light. This cleansing is not just forgiveness, it is deletion. Darkness is being removed as we walk in light. We walk in light when we receive light. The light is the unveiling of God. The Father is the giver of everlasting life. He is unveiled to us and what we see in Him is what is in God (Jn. 14:9).
"Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. [9] Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?" (Jn. 14:8-9). He that sees the Son is seeing the Father. What is configured in the Son is what the Father gave to Him (Jn. 3:35). The Father gave Him all judgements; so he that seeth the Son will have everlasting life.
Satan is at work to offend our hearts, he raises people and agitations about us to cause us to respond. But in all of this, the instruction of the Lord on a particular matter might just be for us to be quiet. The Lord comes with commandments ahead of time to save us from darkness. We must be receptive and discerning to how the Lord will have us react always. He could tell us not to expose the secrets of another because it will tarnish their image while we are trying to defend ourselves.
What is at stake is Eternal Life. The commandment of Eternal Life is love; and how we love is by keeping quiet and not speaking evil of anyone that speaks ill of us. We must be aware that Eternal Life is at stake; eternal life has commandments.
Eternal life is the reward, everlasting life is the building for that reward. The reward would not be given just like that, it has it's commandments (1 Jn. 5:20). To know Him is to know love. We must obey the revelations of love. We must receive grace to obey the nitty-gritty of the love commandments; we must be taught so that great would be our peace (Isa. 54:13).
Even if our motives for defending ourselves are correct in our sights, we must be bold not to break the law of life when the Lord asks us to be quiet. Many times, it is because of our reputation that we want to respond. Jesus did not care about any reputation, that was why He did not revile back (Phil. 2:7, 1 Pet. 2:23). We must die to our reputation.
When we are not meek, we would misuse the gifts of the spirit. The gifts of the spirit are intended for edification, not destruction (1 Cor. 14:12). The visions God gives are not to destroy whoever they are for, but to save them. Natures that are not dealt with would misuse abilities, thereby hindering others from life.
Our knowledge of God is demonstrated in our love. The evidence of an increase in the knowledge of God is seen when there's an increase in love. Love is a divine nature. God is love, and His revelation is love – He loves even His enemies. We cannot claim to know God when we do not yet love like He does.
We do not know how the Lord wants to lead us. We must come to that level of awareness where our level of death is dealt with. It must be our prayer that the Lord brings us to this realm of love. It must be our prayer to know God. We can be zealous but we need knowledge. There are darknesses that cannot be uncovered in the midst of the brethren. It is the commandments to love our enemies that will expose them.
There is a nature that we share with the adversary – the inability to love our enemies. God does not love the sinner lesser than the saints. He does not have hate in Him; hate cannot be found in Him. Nothing can push Him to hate. We should pray for an impression of this realm beyond human direction, that the Lord should lead us gently with His mighty power till it becomes our abode.
The essence of loving our enemies is to escape what the devil is bringing in times to come. May we find grace this season. Amen.