The Principle of Sowing and Reaping of Everlasting Life Part 2 (LSC)

Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)

 

Programme: Lekki Soul Centre (LSC)

 

Date: Wednesday, 14th September2022

 

 

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Gal. 6:7). The principle here is an important one that we should imbibe in our daily activities because he that observes the wind would not sow (Ecc. 11:4). The wind are things that are contrary to us (Matt. 7:24-27). There are winds that come to challenge what we have been built with. Being built on a rock does not stop the wind from coming. The wind are things that happen with seasons. Just as there are seasons in the natural, there are also seasons in the spirit that God has set. In the natural, the rainy season begins with a storm that is accompanied by wind. Satan used this wind against Job. Spirits are wind and that is why they can easily use the natural wind to carry out their enterprise. Although there is a prince of the power of the air, it would take one to be a wind before being able to use the air. Winds are forces that can move the air. However, there cannot be wind without air. As seen in Daniel 7:2-3, the wind is able to strive on the sea. Sea describes nations and the striving of the wind on the sea brings about the beast. The winds and sea are prophetic symbols. Spirits use winds because they are also windy in nature. The great sea represents nations of people, and the four great beasts are four great kingdoms that came up from nations or the sea.

 

Nations and kingdoms rising against one another is as a result of the striving of the wind upon the sea. The beast signifies kingdoms. Beast can be a person or a kingdom. If the beast is a kingdom, then a beast is needed as a person to rule the kingdom. Nebuchadnezzar was not ordinary; he was a beast. Wind, in striving upon nations, raises beasts who will be in charge of beastly systems. Winds of fallen spirits blow and it affects economic situations, including the Christians who, out of zeal and good intentions, desire to make a nation better.

 

There is no nation on earth that does not have winds troubling it. Rulers are also raised by these fallen spirits. Nebuchadnezzar was not an ordinary king; he was raised and supported by watchers. It then took another watcher from heaven to make a decree to cut him down otherwise, he would have remained. As believers, our strength is in the place of prayer.

 

“And the LORD said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.” (Gen. 6:3). The spirit of God strives with man but in seasons. To strive with man is to raise a prophet. A prophet or apostle is not sent without a wind— such a one is tied to a spirit because they are fellow holders of things. When you are truly sent, you will be tied to a spirit.  Spirits are windy and as a result, they keep changing. The same way wind strives on the sea, the spirit of God strives upon man to raise him. It is this striving that raised Noah, bringing about a season. Upon every striving, there is always a change in season.

 

“He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.” (Eccl. 11:4). These winds are things that are contrary and are accompanied by seasons that are able to shake up the natural. However, these winds do not last. They do not always strive. If a man observes the wind when it is striving, such a one will not commit himself and give what he ought to give.  

The trouble with many believers and the church is that they get troubled by wind. This wind can also come with doctrine. Every wind of doctrine in Eph 4:14 refers to teachings that lead to the painting of a picture of what life should be like for believers, making us see a hope and expectation that is not of God. Thus, when these winds blow, they are accompanied by doctrines, words, or paintings. With consistent teaching and hearing, one begins to see, conceptualize the hope of the doctrine.

 

Doctrine is not just when the minister teaches. Spirits teach with everything: by observation, by raising lawless people around one. David in Psalm 73:2-3 almost slipped, upon seeing the prosperity of the wicked. The wicked are prospered by wind. The way an evil spirit can touch a body to cause an ailment, so also can spirit touch a body to remove the same. The false prophet in Revelation could do signs and wonders, and had the ability to deceive the elect because that is what has been done in the Church. These spirits have the ability to perform healing.

 

Men that will stand in this season have to be those who do not observe the wind. Trees that will break the wind are trees of righteousness and plantings of the Lord (Isa. 61:3). They are men who would not regard or observe the wind. They would not regard the things that other men see and regard. It may seem impossible for such to happen but with the speakings over us, we are being equipped. It looks casual and ineffective but the words we are hearing are the things that are able to handle spirits.

 

The words we are exposed to would give us sight. The only reason a man would not observe the wind is that he sees something better than the wind. To observe is to allow the conditions created by the wind to control one’s journey, actions and commitment to God. The wind blowing does not necessarily mean something destructive. A wind can blow and the nation becomes prosperous, like it was in Sodom. It will only take trees to see God's program and know how to fight those winds, but grasses would not see it. We should be aware that not all forms of prosperity are from God. A man that cannot sow his money would not be able to sow his life.

 

Without mercy, we can never know how serving God is. Service to God is in grades. There is the service for Eternal Life. Christ is a promise and there is a service that would earn one Christ. Everlasting life is also a promise and there is the service that can earn one everlasting life. Eternal Life is the ultimate promise. You cannot serve Eternal Life when you have not served Christ and everlasting life. 

 

There are services that will earn you the promise called Christ (Eph. 3:17). It is not the day we got born again that we got all of Christ. One needs doctrine. The doctrine of Christ is what you need to be able to serve Christ. To serve Christ is to do the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). This law is what we need to serve Christ so He can dwell in our hearts richly (Col. 3:16). Anyone who serves Christ with a sincere heart will be encountered. This encounter could be in the form of hunger for more of God. Then He will begin to show that individual how to serve. Believers serve for Christ to dwell in their hearts. After the service for Christ, one proceeds unto the service of everlasting life.

 

It is the same way Christ dwells in our hearts that everlasting life ought to dwell in us (Col. 3:4). It is only a Christ that can be made everlasting, meaning, there is a way a man who had become Christ would serve so that he can be made everlasting. You cannot serve God and mammon together because both place a demand on our lives (Matt. 6:24). There is a spirit called mammon and spirits in the same pedigree as mammon are basically in charge of life. They want a man’s life, to give him a life. Nothing is free. The natural life we have is a seed that should not be eaten; it should be sown.

 

There is a connection between money and life, and this became possible because man fell. The value of a man should not be measured according to things. Man is supposed to be more precious than gold (Isa. 13:12). The fall made men weak to the point of being valued by their worth. A man’s soul is more valuable than the whole world put together (Mark 8:36). Satan is after the soul because he knows that the soul is more valuable than the entire world. God never sees a man and values him with the things that He created. How God sees men is stated in Psalms 8:4, but man regards external things that seem to give them worth. This is due to an eye that devalued us. This eye is from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But God sees man differently, even the devalued man.

 

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16). God places value upon man. There is a capacity that man has that other beings do not have. There is that which God bequeathed to man. Man is elastic; he can be stretched from the present to eternity. However, angels are made “so”; they cannot be stretched or changed. If they change, they become bad (Jude 1:6). Man can change estate from being a sinner man, a miry clay, to Christ; until he sits on the throne. God knows what he put in man. God has a technology that can turn a seemingly insignificant man (according to Satan) into a very precious being. God sees man as something He can raise and change.

 

“That in the ages to come He might shew the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 2:7). God wants to pour all of Himself into man -- everything about Eternal Life -- because man has the capacity to take all. There is something God wants to work out of us (Gen. 1:26). We must cooperate with God to be made. We have a life, and this life is what mammon wants us to give up or exchange by painting something elsewhich is life, as a hope. That life can be sown, or it can be used to serve flesh or spirits (Gal. 6:8).

 

"He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return." (Luke 19:12). Noble is what makes for one who is kingly. Nobility is royalty. Jesus is a noble man. The kingdom being from a far country refers to the fact that Christ’s kingdom is not of this earth; His kingdom is in the spirit. One who lacks nobility will not see the kingdom. "But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins." (2 Pet. 1:9). An individual cannot receive beyond what he sees. That is why one’s eyes of understanding are enlightened so that one can see a life above his realm.

 

Christ already had subjects, and so He was a king; but He went on till He received everlasting life from a far country. Everlasting life is a dominion of a far country. Dominion is life. There is no dominion without life. Christ is a dominion. He has servants and He has subjects. When He left, the subjects said “this man will not reign over us” (Luke 19:14). Meanwhile, He was going to collect a greater reign. Then He called His servants, who were different from subjects. He gave them ten pounds. He instructed them to transact till He came(Luke 19:13). That pound was life – Christ life. He couldn’t give subjects pounds because they did not have the capacity to transact with it. To transit from being a subject to a servant, you have to sow your life. When you become a servant, you cannot do whatever you want; you serve Him willingly.

 

When Jesus was praying in John 17:1-5, He asked for a higher glory from the Father. This was after giving the initial glory that God committed unto Him to the people. This is similar to the parable. We are meant to trade and transact with the life of Christ. This transaction is also called sowing. Jesus is coming back; but this is not limited to His physical coming. There will be the physical returning of the Lord but there is a returning we do not take cognizance of (Luke 19:15). This returning of the Lord that believers do not take cognizance of is one that happens in a process of time. 

 

We can serve for Christ, everlasting life and Eternal Life. What determines the level of service is the parchment of life given. So, to sow to Christ is to serve. What we live for is what we gain. We gain Christ by living for Christ and we gain God by living for God.

 

“Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds. And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.” (Luke 19:16-17). All the servants were given Christ. The first one traded with Christ to the point that he gained ten-Christs. Ten is the fullness of a measure. It is the cap to cross to the next. So, the first servant used the life of Christ and transacted with it till he gained mastery of Christ. It can only take one who has gained mastery with Christ to be able to see afar off. The mastery of Christ will bring one to charity. Charity is not a small place. You would need to get to brotherly kindness to get to charity.

 

“And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.” (2 Peter 1:5-7). We all fall on different portions of this spectrum. We have to do Christ till charity. A church that is full of Christ-beings is a heavenly church. Such a church will deal with Satan. When truth churches are developing, Satan fights them vehemently because he knows that they will make him lose his stand in the air. Any church that gets to Christ will see afar off and be able to receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken. It is not every believer that has the capacity to receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken. It is only a Christ company that can.

 

Satan knows that when a company of Christs journey to charity, their eyes will be opened. The essence of charity is to open one’s eyes, which enables such a one to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, length, depth and height of God (Eph. 3:18). The reward of Christ is sight. When Christ life has been developed in a man, he will be able to see God. A Christ man is pure in heart (Matt 5:8).

 

The first servant attained unto charity. What makes us good servants is that we use Christ's life till it becomes our life (Luke 19:17). However, we have to do well with Christ for us to be well done (Rom. 2:7). So, the first servant was good because he received the life of Christ, continued in it, transacted with it, until he came to the peak of it. No one is good except God. A good servant is one that has used the life of Christ well, to the point where it has become the life of such.

 

“And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.” (Luke 19:17). The ‘very little’ that the servant was faithful with was actually big. We know this because many people have not been faithful with it. What makes one good is faithfulness with the life of Christ. Christ is the little life; but there is a great life. Authority is life. So, the servant had life that was equivalent to authority over ten cities. This does not mean we are to look for cities to govern. The city is not talking about a place on earth. Rather, it is describing the level of dominion of the life. That level of dominion equals ten, meaning he had come into full authority. The master was already a king because he was noble (Luke 19:12). He then went to a far country to receive dominion. The servants, having served, were being called to come into a greater life – the greater dominion the king came into, which is everlasting life.

 

We are looking for a city with foundations, whose builder and maker is God (Heb. 11:10). That city is the life which God is. That is the kingdom. Men were looking out for Jesus’ kingdom expression. The disciples expected that the kingdom would immediately appear but Jesus was telling them through the parable that His kingdom is not firstly an outward expression, but a spiritual life.

 

When God was in eternity as God, there was no city He was reigning over but He was the King Eternal. He was reigning over eternity, immortality and invisibility without any creation (1 Tim. 1:17). Reign is life and it is not fundamentally over people. However, there is no way a man will reign in life that creation will not gravitate towards him. 

 

The ten cities which the first servant had authority over are an allegory to describe a level of life (because life is authority) and that life is everlasting life. If we sow to the spirit (Christ), we will by the spirit (Christ) reap everlasting life (Gal. 6:9). But if we sow Christ to the flesh, we will reap corruption faster. It is possible to sow Christ to the flesh. We can use Christ for ourselves because there will come a time when we will be required to lay down our lives, that is, the Christ we have as life (Col. 3:4). We journey to lay Christ-life down for another one, just as Jesus showed us an example. Jesus laid down what He came into.

 

“And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed unto Me…” (Luke 22:29). The Father appointed everlasting life unto Jesus. This everlasting life is actually the everlasting kingdom. The noble man was also sowing; he was laying down his life. He was a servant of the Father. He was not using the life he acquired for himself. So, it is possible to use Christ for oneself. It is possible to sit at meat when one is supposed to serve.

 

When we begin to see everlasting life, some hidden things will start to open up. We do not love the Lord the way we ought to. Loving the Lord is not in being devoted to prayers or the word. Rather, it is in our ability to stand when His standards are raised, like Jesus did to Peter (John 21:15). So, loving the Lord is loving Him for Him and not for the things He can do for us.

 

“So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed My lambs.” (John 21:15). Feeding His lambs here is not limited to preaching alone; it also involves dying (2 Cor. 4:12). There is no true shepherd that can give life without laying down his life. Peter claimed to love Jesus but Jesus was raising a standard that he had to lay down his life for the lambs and the sheep. The death that Peter would die to glorify God was not just physical martyrdom (John 21:19, it was a life that he had to lay down for the lambs and the sheep. That laid down life is the manner of death or life that glorifies God. It is only when we are cast as a seed into the earth that God will take the glory. He takes glory through what He will raise out of us-- trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord (Isa. 61:3). This is what will glorify God.

 

The Christ life we have should be used to glorify God. And we do this by laying it down to serve God with it. When we serve with this life, what we will eventually become will bring glory to God. But when we refuse the things that are brought to us, it means we are denying God of glory. It means we do not want God to take His glory; but He must take His glory. The husbandman is waiting to take glory (Jas. 5:7). He has sown something on earth and He must take glory out of it. This earth which are men must bring forth for Him. God will be glorified, even in our lives.

 

After the Lord commended those who used the life He gave, there was another that came, who knew the master (meaning he was a servant, not a subject). However, the knowledge he had about the master was not a good one (Matt. 25:19-24). He had the kind of knowledge that Judas had about Jesus. In other words, He was not changing while others were changing. So, he could not transact with the life.

 

The Lord also sows but He sows to reap. He does not reap where He did not sow. So, our Lord is neither hard nor austere (Luke 19:21, Matt. 25:24). He does not demand anything that He has not given. It was the master that gave the pounds but the servant who did not trade with the pound accused the master of not sowing. This is a wicked servant (Luke 19:20-22). He hid the pound that was given him in a napkin (Luke 19:20) which is tantamount to sowing to the flesh. That life should have been sown to the earth of his heart for it to multiply.

 

Our hearts need to be stirred up again to make commitments to the Lord, that we will not stop until we lay hold on Eternal Life; that we will not stop at just Christ, but we will go on to obey Christ and do the works demanded there; and we will press on to everlasting life and do the works therein as well. This is a fresh commitment we would need to make. This commitment is the reason for this teaching.

 

We are in a season where a whole lot is being given to us and we need to make agreements. These agreements are the way to prepare our hearts to cooperate with the Lord. This is because the Lord will not be able to do much if we are not willing. It is only when we are willing and obedient that we will be able to eat the fruit of the land (Isa. 1:19). Our hearts are being stirred so that we will be willing. Jesus said unto His disciples, “I appoint unto you a kingdom” (Luke 22:29). One day, He will the same to us. This kingdom is everlasting life and He will appoint us a reign in this kingdom.

 

Blessings!

 

 

Summary

 

1. The wind are things that are contrary to us (Matt. 7:24-27). There are winds that come to challenge what we have been built with. Being built on a rock does not stop the wind from coming.

2. Spirits are wind and that is why they can easily use the natural wind to carry out their enterprise. Although there is a prince of the power of the air, it would take one to be a wind before being able to use the air. 

3. The spirit of God strives with man but in seasons. To strive with man is to raise a prophet. A prophet or apostle is not sent without a wind— such a one is tied to a spirit because they are fellow holders of things.  It is this striving that raised Noah, bringing about a season. Upon every striving, there is always a change in season.

4. (Eccl. 11:4). These winds are things that are contrary and are accompanied by seasons that are able to shake up the natural. However, these winds do not last. They do not always strive. If a man observes the wind when it is striving, such a one will not commit himself and give what he ought to give. 

5. Every wind of doctrine in Eph 4:14 refers to teachings that lead to the painting of a picture of what life should be like for believers, making us see a hope and expectation that is not of God. Men that will stand in this season have to be those who do not observe the wind. Trees that will break the wind are trees of righteousness and plantings of the Lord (Isa. 61:3). 

6. The only reason a man would not observe the wind is that he sees something better than the wind. To observe is to allow the conditions created by the wind to control one’s journey, actions and commitment to God.

7. Service to God is in grades. There is the service for Eternal Life. Christ is a promise and there is a service that would earn one Christ. Everlasting life is also a promise and there is the service that can earn one everlasting life. Eternal Life is the ultimate promise.

8. You cannot serve God and mammon together because both place a demand on our lives (Matt. 6:24). There is a spirit called mammon and spirits in the same pedigree as mammon are basically in charge of life. They want a man’s life, to give him a life. The natural life we have is a seed that should not be eaten; it should be sown.

9. Everlasting life is a dominion of a far country. There is no dominion without life. In the parable in Luke 19, He called His servants, who were different from subjects and gave them pounds (Christ life). He instructed them to transact till He came. He couldn’t give subjects pounds because they did not have the capacity to transact with it. To transit from being a subject to a servant, you have to sow your life.

10. What makes us good servants is that we use Christ life till it becomes our life (Luke 19:17). However, we have to do well with Christ for us to be well done (Rom. 2:7). What makes one good is faithfulness with the life of Christ. The servants, having served, were being called to come into a greater life –, the greater dominion the king came into, which is everlasting life.

11. There will come a time when we will be required to lay down our lives, that is, the Christ we have as life (Col. 3:4). We journey to lay Christ-life down for another one, just as Jesus showed us an example. Jesus laid down what He came into.

12. It is only when we are cast as a seed into the earth that God will take the glory. He takes glory through what He will raise out of us -- trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord (Isa. 61:3). The husbandman is waiting to take glory (Jam. 5:7). He has sown something on earth and He must take glory out of it.