Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: Writing the Vision (May Edition)
Date: Saturday, 21st May 2022
Speaker 1: Pastor Kenneth Eyanahonre
Every time God paints things to us, it is to bring us to a place where we can understand the way He understands. We have understood the term 'fellowship' and used it at different levels. However, if God has begun to emphasise the word ‘fellowship’, it means that He wants us to come to terms with a certain level of reality. Your stand in a particular season is expressly tied to fellowship. This means where you are standing in the spirit is a result of your fellowship.
A man who has grown in the place of fellowship is a man who has found grace to access God’s thoughts. God’s thoughts cannot be reasoned out with the natural mind. God’s resources are managed by His thoughts. When God gives us His thoughts, we would be able to manage His resources. When God speaks about coming into Him, He speaks of coming into the vastness or wealth of resources that He owns. These resources are His things which are embedded in His thoughts.
Fellowship is God’s program to bring us to a place where we can hold on to His realities. Through fellowship, God wants to bring us into His glory. There is a very strong connection between fellowship and God’s glory. There is a way glory is defined in the New Testament. This is why we need God's help to understand glory and also allow the Spirit of glory to rest on us. As we allow the Spirit of glory to rest, we will begin to understand the things that God is speaking to us.
In our journeying to Christ, we have been taught faith, hope and charity (1 Cor. 13:13). These are different layers of the embodiment of His glory at the level of Christ. However, there is a certain realm of glory that 'excelleth' (2 Corin. 3:10) – the realm of glory which God called His Son into. This is why God wants to bring us into the fellowship of His Son. The Son of God operates in a realm where God's glory is exceeding. However, a man who will partake of the privilege to fellowship with the Son of God must first be given the understanding of God's thoughts.
“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. [8] If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:5). The priestly garment is for beauty and glory. When God decks the High Priest and gives Him apparels of glory, it is for His priestly ministry of addressing sins in the people. The realm of fellowship is a realm where God wants to deal with sins that will hinder us from operating in the realm of glory. The reason God gave His Son the stature of glory is not for Himself alone; it is so that He can begin to cleanse our sins and call us into fellowship.
There is a call of fellowship upon us. The activities of salvation are the things that enable us to come into God's thoughts. When the high priest stood with filthy garments, God had to remove them (Zech. 3:3-5). Filthiness is not what we define in our terms. If we define it according to our terms, then we would still be caught up in the cloak of that filthiness. God sees and stays in a place of absolute glory, and that place is the privileged position He has given His Son.
"If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye ; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified." (1 Peter 4:14) The Spirit of glory does not just help us to handle our immediate challenges or contradictions. His main assignment is to direct us to the highest point of participation with God's thoughts. The essence of the work of "cleansing in the blood of Jesus" is to bring us to the point of fellowship.
Cleansing is not just external; it is not just for our conscience to be eased. When we commit acts of sin and are condemned, we tend to ask for forgiveness and God forgives; but we have lost a measure of fellowship in that process. We can continuously be pardoned for our sins but have no level of fellowship. This means we must continuously experience cleansing for us to come into fellowship. What makes us go in and out of fellowship is sin. God wants us to abide. As such, God must give us thoughts that would make us abide. If we do not have abiding thoughts, then we would keep rising and falling. The ability to sustain fellowship is by keeping God's thoughts.
To be in fellowship with the Lord is not just to confess that the Father is our Father; it is by thoughts. Our hearts must be trained to hold God's thoughts; this is what God wants to achieve in fellowship. Fellowship is to train us to hold God's thoughts, then cleansing becomes a definite work. We become distant from the level of conversation that makes sin encroach into our souls. When God is speaking to us by amplifying fellowship, it is because He wants to do a work of cleansing that can make us stay in fellowship with Him. We cannot enter into the participation of fellowship if we are not granted entrance. This means we must have access to the place of cleansing.
God wants to give us hunger. Hunger is one of the things God begins to give us to move us into another realm from the present place we find ourselves. When hunger is on the increase, it makes us see into God's realm. God wants to keep working on our levels of hunger as we journey into fellowship. When hunger is present, it can become a footstool to call for the next allocation of God’s thoughts that will stay/abide.
If we do not have hunger, we would always fall out of fellowship. Therefore, God wants to strengthen hunger. He would use words to open up our hearts and allow the activities of the Spirit to give us hunger, but we must not waste the hunger. The essence of hunger is to eventually deliver to us God's thoughts. God wants us to house His thoughts; He wants to give us the capacity to carry and own His thoughts. The first response we need in the season of fellowship is to protect our hunger. To come into a greater level of hunger, however, there must be a greater activity of faith in our hearts. We need to open up ourselves to a greater activity of the spirit of faith.
To come into a greater level of fellowship, we need to come into a greater activity of hunger. The speakings of God this season are to activate hunger in our hearts. There is no doubt that we are not yet at the level of His thoughts, we should however open up our hearts so that the Lord can draw us into His level of thoughts. The Lord uses specific words to stir hunger in us and draw us to a higher fellowship. Although we may not be able to participate in the realm of fellowship that is being painted by the words being spoken to us by God, we must however continue to believe those words until we are drawn into their heights.
Hunger moves us from our present level to where God wants us to be. The bits and pieces of knowledge we have are what God will use to build and move us into that level of fellowship. Hence, we should continue and keep pressing because the little knowledge we have will eventually bring us into full fellowship with God.
Blessings!
Summary
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A man who has grown in the place of fellowship is a man who has found grace to access God’s thoughts.
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When God speaks about coming into Him, He speaks of coming into the vastness or wealth of resources that He owns. These resources are His things which are embedded in His thoughts.
-
Fellowship is God’s program to bring us to a place where we can hold on to His realities. Through fellowship, God wants to bring us into His glory.
-
The Son of God operates in a realm where God's glory is exceeding. However, a man who will partake of the privilege to fellowship with the Son of God must first be given the understanding of God's thoughts.
-
The reason God gave His Son the stature of glory is not for Himself alone; it is so that He can begin to cleanse our sins and call us into fellowship.
-
(1 Peter 4:14) The Spirit of glory does not just help us to handle our immediate challenges or contradictions. His main assignment is to direct us to the highest point of participation with God's thoughts.
-
To come into a greater level of fellowship, we need to come into a greater activity of hunger. Hunger moves us from our present level to where God wants us to be.