The New and Living Way Church, Ikorodu.
Meeting: Sithrah
Message 1: The Total Redemption of Man
Message 2: Coming Into Understanding in Light
Date: 11th September, 2021
Minister: Pastor Laide Olaniyan & Pastor Mike Ogunoye
Bro Happy (Exhortation)
(Genesis 2:26) The reason why God created man is so that man should be after the likeness of God and he should like what God likes. The issue of likeness had not been accomplished even though God created man in His image. John 4 says God is a spirit, so God created a spirit being. However, this spirit being has not come into the likeness of God; likeness had not been achieved.
(1 Thessalonian 5:23) Every man is three-in-one. God breath into man and he became a living soul. The issue of likeness is just a prophecy. God needs a living soul to carry out that prophecy. God cannot use image to achieve the prophecy alone. The garden of Eden is a garden of God. Anything that God formed is God Himself. What the Lord wants to achieve is that man should come after their likeness. When a man is dressing the garden and keeping it, he’ll come into the likeness of God.
(Genesis 5:15) “Surely die” means man won’t come after the likeness of God again, and this is what Satan wants. God created man in His image and after His likeness. That means man is supposed to be after His likeness. That is why God kept them in the garden. Satan targeted this life.
(Genesis 3:1-6) Immediately Satan came, he changed the thought of the woman even though she knew what God said before. The thought concerning dressing and keeping, Satan changed it, he changed the thought. If Satan doesn’t change the thought of man, he (man) won’t stop serving God.
(Genesis 3:6-7) They didn’t take any thought for their lives initially. Satan bastardized the thought of God from man. Man now began to take thoughts even though he was naked and didn’t see it as an issue. Satan has sowed something, another kind of life.
1st Tongues and Interpretation
I come to open your eyes to see the great havoc that was wrought from the beginning.
This old serpent is set on a journey of blinding many souls to cut them off from the hope of their calling
He wants to change your sight and that which you should run after
But I will keep coming to open your eyes for man was designed to see God
I’m casting down the veil
I’m tearing down the veil
I’m tearing it apart
For many will see the hope of their calling
Many will see the reason why they’re created
I’m casting apart wrong visions and sight
Many will see the hope of their calling
(Genesis 3:8) They hid themselves from the focus of their creation which is likeness. Satan sowed something. After the fall of man, the Lord God sent Jesus Christ to bring this hope back to man. (Romans 8:28-29) The reason why Jesus was sent is for man to come back to the likeness of God. This is the destiny of every human being. After you conform back to the image of God, you will like what the Son likes.
Message Begins…(Pastor Mike Ogunoye)
(John 3:16) This verse of scripture is telling us what God wants for man. The reason He gave His only begotten Son is so that anyone who believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. That means if we refuse Jesus, we will perish. Instead of perishing, God has ordained that we will have everlasting life.
(John 10:10) Two people are coming here: the thief who wants to steal, to kill and to destroy, and Jesus. Everyone knows there’s a thief but what he came to steal is not very clear. What he came to steal is what Jesus came to supply. Jesus came for the purpose of one thing; his mission is clear. He did not come to give us landed properties, money etc., rather He came to give everlasting life.
John 10:10 played itself out in the garden of Eden. God created Adam and breathed into him the breath of life. That man in the garden had life, God still put a tree of life in front of him so that he can have life more abundantly. In that garden was also another tree: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil planted by the thief, who came to steal, kill and destroy life in Adam (man).
(Genesis 1) God gave man dominion over the things He created at a level. We’d see from scriptures that the dominion was over animals. Adam’s dominion was limited to that scope because of the kind of life he had. That was the dominion his life could command, but God wanted more for Adam. God intended that this will be his starting point but not his ending point. Adam was meant to transit from a kind of life to another life until he gets to a point where the thief cannot steal from him again. That is the meaning of have it more abundantly. There is a life level we will have that will be more than the intelligence of the thief that steals, kills and destroys. He won’t be able to steal from us just the same way he cannot steal from God.
On getting to chapter 2, we see Adam never exercised that dominion until life entered his soul, meaning that dominion was tied to the life that Adam had in his soul. So when you lose that life, your dominion will be negotiable. Immediately he ate of the wrong tree and died, that dominion was negotiated.
(Hebrews 2:7-8) The man we see today, a mosquito can kill him. With Adam, this was not so. The present man is lacking in life. Adam had a high life that put animals under him and they responded to him. How Adam named animals does not mean he gave them names (i.e the names we now call them). Infact, this is not how God names also. God looks at laws and then gives a name that can best interpret that law.
(Matthew 1:21) When Jesus was to be born and the angel appeared to Mary, he said his name shall be called Jesus for He shall save His people from their sins: meaning that the Spirit coming from heaven was designed to save people from their sin. So, because of the nature of that Spirit, they had to give Him a name that can spell out that operation. So Adam naming animals means he was able to see into all the laws that made them and set their boundaries. What was working there was life. He did not need to go to school to study biology, it was the life in him that was at work.
The life man lost in the beginning is what Jesus has come to restore but to also give something higher, something better. He wants to give life more abundantly – this is everlasting life.
The ministry of the thief is going to reach its zenith when it is able to destroy man. He starts at stealing, proceeds to kill and then finally to destroy. It does not want to see life. This destruction is what John 3:16 calls perishing. There are two beings interested in our life: God & Satan. When God looks at us, He thinks of us in terms of abundant life and Satan in terms of perishing. He does not slumber until he has brought man to a state of perishing.
There is a difference between a thief and a robber. Thieves are not armed, robbers are. The weapon of a thief is their wisdom. All the thieves we have in the world today have a master who is “The Thief.” Somewhere, it was easy for me to agree with scripture when it says the thief comes to steal but how does he kill and destroy? He does it by wisdom. This means man will be destroyed and will not know what happened to him because the entire operation is wrapped up in wisdom. If the thief steals, kills and destroys by wisdom, then Jesus will also supply life and life more abundantly by wisdom.
(1 Thessalonians 5:23) Man is tripartite – spirit, soul and body i.e man is a spirit, has a soul and lives in a body. When the spirit departs from the body, the body dies. What God created in Genesis 1 is the spirit of man. What God formed in Genesis 2 is the body of the man and what God breathed into man is the soul of man. The reason we don’t see three entities is because of their alignment. The spirit wears the soul and the soul the body. The middleman is the soul. Because God is a Spirit, when He wants to lead a man, He leads through the spirit of man.
The spirit of man and the body of man don’t speak the same language. The body was taken from the carnal aspect of the earth and the spirit of man from the spiritual part of the earth. God had to give an interpreter which is the soul. When God speaks to the spirit of man, the spirit then speaks to the soul, the soul then instructs the body. Man was designed to live from his spirit but when Adam ate of the wrong tree, the spirit of man died. It turned its back on God and became alive to the devil. That order that God put in place that the spirit will lead the soul, even Satan cannot overturn it. What Satan can do is to corrupt it. Now, the dead spirit gets instruction from Satan and teaches the soul how to turn. The soul of man is heavy but the spirit is light. The spirit is quick to turn either way but the soul has mass and doesn’t turn easily. God did this because He anticipated what Satan would do. As the soul turns gradually, it also instructs the body to turn. The body also has its own weight but is usually instructed by the soul.
There are times you can tell when a body is dying from looking at the body because of how much the soul has turned towards death/Satan. What Satan wants is for the soul and body to turn fully. This state is called perishing/destruction. A man can be alive and has died. The state called perishing is when a man does not have what it takes to respond to God anymore. This is Satan’s desire for man. Every labour of the enemy towards us is in light of this vision. Before we finished turning completely, God sent Jesus to come and arrest our perishing. We were all on our way to perishing. In doing this, they took away the Adamic spirit and gave us another spirit – Christ. The work of this spirit (Christ) is to teach the soul to turn. However, Satan is still also there teaching the soul to turn as well. This is why we find that as Christians after becoming born again, we still commit sin.
There are some wrong doctrines about being born again that makes things hard for Christians. Words like you must know the definite time and day when you were born again…there is actually no basis for this in scripture. Some might have great encounters while some might not. It doesn’t make the other more born again than the other. Whether you smile or cry has no import. The new birth experience happens beyond the reach of our five senses. It is the regeneration of our spirit not regeneration of emotions.
When we find ourselves still going back to wrong habits and lifestyles, another altar call is not the solution and that is why the soul is added to the church to be taught. The soul is heavier than new year resolutions. The spirit (Christ) waits on the soul to turn. What abundant life is, is when the 3 of them (spirit, soul and body) turn back to God.
We need power. What brought man to his current state is a power and another power is needed to turn him back to God. This power is not a new year’s resolution or determination. What brought the spirit to face God is a power. The power we need is in the church.
When Satan wanted to kill Adam, why didn’t he kill his body but instead went for his spirit? Because he knew that is not where Adam was. He knew the body is Adam’s house but the real Adam is inside. He killed Adam in his spirit and then, started killing him in the soul gradually. God also will not start with the body even though God can raise the body, heal the sick, the crippled etc. God travelled to where Satan first went. The real death does not kill from outside, it kills from within.
The church is a powerhouse that makes the soul turn. It is easier to raise the dead than to make a soul turn. There was a time in one of Reinhard Bonnke’s crusades, he healed a blind man but when it came to getting him to give his life to Christ, he refused. With healings and miracles, it is even possible to get a man to turn just for a while out of excitement but we later see the man turn back. The reason it doesn’t last is because there is no power inside of it to make him have a lasting turn. Sometimes we even try to scare people with hell just to get them to turn but that is not enough to stop them from doing what they do. Some will even tell you heaven will be boring that they are okay with hell. The man devising all these things on the inside is the soul. Some even know what they are doing is wrong but knowing is not enough to stop them because they don’t have power to stop. This is because sin exists by a power higher than man.
As men, we also need a corresponding power higher than that power and it won’t be found anywhere outside the church. (Romans 1:16) The power of God in this verse is the gospel of Christ. Gospel is “God’s spell”; so, when Christ is spelt out, power is made available unto salvation. There are other powers such as power for healing and to raise the dead etc, and this is good as believers to covet but there is another power that turns the soul – the power of God – and we get it by hearing the gospel of Christ.
The reason why we have resentment, bitterness etc or why we can’t hold ourselves when we are angry is because we are lacking in power. This is why we are added to church and the pastor keeps preaching. Sometimes, this preaching doesn’t even look like it is addressing the problem you have. Previously, preaching only makes us recover for a while due to fear of hell but then we return to our sins while some believers will say God loves us even though we are sinning because they are resigned to the fact that they cannot be free from sin. You see things like fornication, selfishness etc. are the fruits of a tree but the root of that tree is a particular wisdom which is the wisdom of the thief.
There is Truth and there are facts. Preaching that a man will go to hell if he keeps fornicating is a fact and not Truth. Some preachers attempt to deal with the habits itself e.g focusing just on lying, or fornication etc and you’d find that in an entire year he has dealt with just 2 fruits. This can be frustrating because people are not really changing. What Jesus does is deal with the root. At every hearing of the preaching of the gospel of Christ, an axe is laid to the root. Eventually, you’d find that things are falling. The gospel is not to teach men how to be rich or how to break generational curse because we don’t even know what generational curse is. The real generational curse is that nobody in my lineage has laid hold on everlasting life; that none has become like Jesus. That is the real curse and limitation.
A man facing God fully: spirit, soul and body – this is salvation. (1 Corinthians 1:24) We need the power of God to turn our souls. The world is getting worse by the day so we need this power. When they say someone is a powerful Christian, it is not in our ability to raise all the cripples at Ojuelegba but in our ability to exercise temperance when being provoked, that is power. The secret of God’s power is not that He can part the Red Sea but rather, that He can outlast us in patience. Those things He has on the inside is what makes Him do what He does. It is an inward configuration. It is what will bring us to a place where we cannot lie, where our value system is altered. It takes power not to repay evil with evil.
A lot of us like evangelism, and those things are good. We should be witnesses in our schools, workplace etc. but if we go out now, 99% of the people we are going to meet have been in church before but didn’t stay in church. The reason is because they saw Christians who didn’t have power but when God loads a Christian with so much power and so much weight because of the gospel of Christ, your lifestyle will change and that is when you will our influence on others will be powerful. Jesus spoke of the Pharisees that cross lands and seas to convert someone, then convert the person again through their lifestyle into twice the son of hell.
When the disciples were afraid in the midst of the storm that rocked their boats and Jesus was asleep in that same boat because there was no storm in his soul – that is power. Patience is power.
2nd Tongues and Interpretation
I bring healing to heart
I turn heart
Turning of heart
Healing of heart
Message Continues…
As you begin to hear Christ being preached and being taught, you’ll discover that a whole new you is emerging because power that turns your soul has been made available. This is how we will keep cooperating with the Lord until John 3:16 is fulfilled in our lives. God took power and compressed it into words and He delivers it to souls by reason of preaching and teaching. By the time that whole dispensation is exhausted, you’ll realise that you would have become Christ and gathered enough weight.
The reason for most of our hastiness is because we are too light, but when God loads us with power (weight) you’d find that you are slow but you are sure. God has so much weight within. He doesn’t move because men expect Him to move but the day He moves, we’d find that we cannot unmove Him.
Pastor Laide
(Ephesians 2:1) None of us fully understood what happened to us at new birth. Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians began to make this church understand what happened to them at new birth. This is so they can come into active fellowship with God. There is a measure of agreement with God in our hearts that makes the process of turning (like Pastor Mike showed us) very effective, else we will keep fighting with God.
Some of us gave our life to Christ because of the situation of things in our family or because of one witch in our family e.t.c. In retrospect, if we hadn’t suffered in my family, maybe I would not have given my life to Christ. The reason why we came into faith is not the reason why God brought us. The things that happened to us, it’s not that God orchestrated them but they were useful servants to bring us to the point where we can begin to hear Truth. God wanted to deliver us, not from household problems or exam failure etc. but from a walk we had in the course of this world. Something was directing our walk: the prince of the power of the air that worketh in the children of disobedience. We all had that work in us and some of us up till now still have that work in us.
We were walking in sins and tresspasses, according to a dictate of a being. There was a spirit that was leading us in the path of death. It is not a physical death. Satan has painted death as beautiful. A man is dying and we say he’s a celebrity or he’s balling. He has made death not look like death. The power of death is rooted in a wisdom such that men don’t want to leave it because death looks like life.
When Satan is going after our life, he doesn’t mind giving us the things of this world. Satan in the bargain of things knows that everything here is nonsense because he knows that God’s hands made them and they would perish (Hebrews 1:11-13). The thing that doesn’t perish is within man, that is what Satan wants and that is why scripture says what shall it profit a man to lose his soul…(Mark 8:36). In the soul of man, there is something within it that is worth more than everything here and Satan knows it. The celebrities and men of affluence that men look up to most times have abundance of things here but are devoid of light and life. These so called ‘influencers’ are high servants of these evil spirits because they churn out a way of life. Something came upon them to entrench a way for people to walk in and so people look up to them and want to be like them. Here’s the truth: these celebrities are dead. They don’t have the life that makes men alive to God.
A dead man can be walking as seen in the parable of the prodigal son: “my son that was dead is alive” (Luke 15:24). He suddenly awakened and realised a need for God. Every single time we awaken to God, we come alive and everytime we turn away from God we die. (Ephesians 4:17) In this passage, Paul was talking to believers that it is a walk that makes us die. To walk is not using our two legs to walk, but it is an obedience. Whether we like it or not, we are all obeying something. No man is independent. If we are not fully in for God, you’re in for something else.
That thing we are afraid of is actually a way of life. Satan made it look hard and rigorous to discourage our hearts. Strait is the way that leads to everlasting life, meaning it is not convenient and it looks demanding (Matthew 7:14). Only few find this way to Life. The road looks strict because we are flesh, but once we get into it, we’d see that it is actually liberty.
A spirit led us and taught us how to die, how to kill ourselves. He taught us a life outside of God to the point that we now love death. (John 3:17-19) Men did not just walk in darkness but have now loved darkness such that when Jesus tells us to let darkness go, we say no. A man that is perishing is one who has loved darkness. Satan doesn’t want us to just do evil, he wants us to voluntarily choose it and love it as our life. Such a man can look into the face of God and say to hell with you.
That we do wrong and still cry is a sign that God is working in us, but Satan wants us to come to a place where we will do wrong and won’t even flinch about it. Satan wants to kill this generation but heaven will harvest us. He wants to kill this generation right from its youth.
While we are happy that our generation is being free from witchcraft, there is another brand of witchcraft that is being wrought: a rebellious generation (1 Samuel 15:23), one that can’t be controlled. Civilization doesn’t cure it, it just morphs into another thing. Some of us have used some darkness to the point where love has begun to be generated but that love has not been perfected. Just as scriptures say perfect love casteth out fear (1 John 4:18), there’s also a love on the other side such that when the man has reached perfect love for darkness, he becomes irreconcilable to God. This is what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. God went to check their sins to see how bad it had become. He saw the level of darkness in Sodom and Gomorrah was worse than the cry that had gotten to His ears. God gave up on Sodom and Gomorrah. They had perished while alive. The burning of fire is just a seal that the wrath of their contamination will not spread. God can give up on a man while he is alive. This is where Satan wants to drive man to.
When the truth is coming, we mustn’t harden our hearts. (Acts 26:18; John 3:18) This turning is a turning from darkness to light. It is a power that holds souls in darkness. (Hebrews 3:15-16) The Lord wants to break the root of unbelief. Unbelief is not just ‘not believing in Jesus as Lord’, it is a power that makes you refuse light; not just to not hear light but to hear it and refuse it. (Romans 1:16) Believing is powerful. It is not ordinary. It is not just that I accept you as Lord and Saviour. (John 1:12) Believing is coming in agreement with God about what God is saying (John 3:33). It unlocks power to become sons of God. A person can hear what God is saying and refuse to agree with God about what God is saying. The first breakthrough is coming to terms with what God has said; accepting that you are wrong and that God is right. This is the gospel they heard in the wilderness but they perished because of unbelief (Hebrews 4:2). They heard the word; they knew it was true but hardened their heart. It is a wisdom that teaches a man to refuse God. It tells you God wants to collect your life. It will tell you that all the pleasure you have ever tasted or ever anticipated will be gone in a flash if you take this life.
These spirits are wicked, they will give you a piece of cake for your life. They are capable of reducing a man to a morsel of bread (Proverbs 6:26). Men these days are very light. Back then, a teacher was more respected than a man who got his money by trickery. They’ll say a good name is worth more than gold. If you were dubious, society would alienate and disregard you. Today the opposite is the case. Men are getting lighter than vanity. Ladies will do anything for money and men as well because there are no more values.
Even though some men were not born again back then, there was a level of light in the soul that had not turned to darkness completely. That light survived a little but Satan brought a stronger darkness that hyped vain men. It was like a tornado swept up that light because somewhere it wasn’t founded on Christ but on the morals of a community. Men now live for money, fame, what to eat and the opinion of men. This life is very light because there was a time the celebrities then were RKelly, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson e.t.c. Where are they today?
We need to wake up from something. There is a slumber that Satan cast like a spell upon men to love darkness. All these celebrities have now been used and replaced. Satan takes the best of life and snuffs it out. The unfortunate thing is many of these people started out in church but because they did not find the light, they left. However, darkness is deeper than this. This is just an example we can relate with.
The condemnation is that men loved darkness rather than light. One sign that a man is dying is that he hides his darkness/deeds from light. He hides from brethren and from the Lord. Immediately darkness comes, the first thing is it takes you away from light. The response will be that you don’t want to go to light.
(Genesis 3:8) Where was Adam and Eve hiding when God came out? They hid from God and the Bible didn’t record that they came out when God beckoned for them. There was a realm of presence that they didn’t get back to. There are levels to God’s presence. The presence in the camp is higher than the one in Egypt and the presence in outer court is higher than that in the camp.
Sin never leaves you the same and that is why we must run from it. There is an alteration. (Romans 6:19) God wants us to serve righteousness but also that we get to the point where we are now lovers. (2 Thessalonians 2:8-10) Satan also has powers, so if it is power that you are looking for, you don’t really need Jesus. Satan is going to come with all deceivable of unrighteousness, I fear this one because it means the full deception of unrighteousness will be unleashed. We have not seen deception yet (2 Corinthians 11:3).
The same trickery of Satan is still in play as with Eve. He will bring all deceivableness of unrighteousness but as of yet, God has not permitted him to bring them. By the time the full load of deception comes, it is possible that the very elect will be deceived (Matthew 24:24). Men will be persuaded concerning unrighteousness because they received not the love of truth. It is possible to walk in truth and not yet be a lover of truth. (2 John 1:4) Walking in the truth is a good start but the Lord must take us beyond that point where we are ready to die for truth because what will save us is not just walking in truth but the love of truth. If we are not lovers of truth, Satan knows.
Some of us on the inside of our heart, we look at the path of Christianity and just despise it. That is a work of darkness. Paul said the way which he once disdained is now what he preaches. That is turning!
One of the things I have discovered in marriage is that you can’t love two people, also, you can’t serve two masters. Whatever you love, you are serving it. Love is service. If you love pornography, that is your master. The way God configured our heart is in such a way that we can only love one thing. You can’t love the two together because when you get to the valley of decision, you will choose one that you truly love. What we love, we serve. When God said let them go to the wilderness to serve me, He meant let them go to the wilderness to learn to love me. Everything we love must be because God is turning His eyes towards it or giving instructions concerning it and we hate it if He turns His eyes away. This is not to say we hate our jobs or other things but it just means the reason we have affinity for it is because God has interest in it. This is how God wants us to be. If you don’t want light to collect the darkness that it is shining on, then you’re a lover of darkness.
If they want to make us live, they will collect our death from us. Jesus didn’t come to make our life more difficult, He came to free us from the difficulty that is in life. Unbelief is that which makes us turn our back on God when the light of Truth comes. What God wants is that when light confronts our darkness, we surrender. At every revelation of light, He knows we can’t help ourselves but when light comes, if we surrender, He can step in and take the darkness from us. However, when light comes, what is the posture of your heart?
THE END