Minister: Pst Tunji Adegoke
Tongues and Interpretation 1
Saith the Lord, I am the Lord your salvation, and I have the answers with me
I have the answer to wilderness.
Saith the Lord, the things that discourage you don’t discourage me
They don’t discourage me!
For the ashes you see, I can bring beauty out of it
Even that mourning in you; I can bring the oil of joy out of it
For I have it at my disposal
Even the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness
I have it at my disposal
I am not living on borrowed life; I have it in abundance, and I also want you to have the life.
Not to use it as though you are borrowing it, but I want you to have it and have it abundantly, and to that end I bring grace to teach you
I bring grace to teach you from being a desert to a blossoming garden of trees of righteousness
Garden of trees of righteousness
For yet saith the Lord, you would indeed blossom, and I will judge that thing that makes you wild.
I will judge that thing that makes you wild
I will show you the picture, not just a photocopy but the real, express image of how I have ordained family to be.
It’s in a person, and I will exalt him through my servants, and you will look to him, and you will live
The confidence of the serpent, I am abolishing it.
I will exalt my own answer even to the bruising of his heels
You will live; just look at the pattern I am showing you.
It is possible.
He is possible.
Not just as an honored guest in your home, but as a King in your home
He is possible!
I will exalt him
I will exalt Yeshua, the Lord of your salvation.
Tongues and Interpretation 2
You see, the gulf between you and that pattern was worked by the things you ate.
It was worked by the things you were nourished with, by the things you so delightfully ate, but I will bring you a meal now that will cause that gap to close.
You will feed your way back even from unrighteous thoughts, even from the way of wickedness.
You will feed your way back
For it is time to return, saith the Lord
It is time to return
Don’t look at the captivity and be overwhelmed by that one that calls himself mighty
Don’t look at one that calls himself mighty, for I am the Almighty
I am the Almighty One, and I will take away captivity from the mighty, even his lawful captives
I am the Almighty; He has no hold on you, He has no claim on you
I will feed you back into my own captivity
I will imprison you in my will, even into my own captivity
To that end I sent mine Angel even to join forces for to see that that meal is served
Even that which you need to eat to find your way back
I have sent mine Angel to see that that feast prospers
Eat well, eat your way back
It’s the key to go back. It’s the answer to return; it’s the secret to return
You will eat into meekness, for the adversary has no answer to meekness
It repulses him, it confounds him, it leaves him discomfited
He doesn’t understand meekness
I will feed you to meekness, for this is how families should be
Meek Fathers! Meek Mothers! Meek Children! Meek Household!
Meek! These are the ones that can stay in the way
I will feed you the way
Message Begins..
(Isa. 34:16, Isa. 35:1-10) The word blossom speaks of flowers; when they begin to bloom and show their petals, all their hidden beauty starts to show. Every blossoming flower starts as a bud. It goes through the changes that brought it to blossoming, meaning nobody starts out blossoming. Therefore, blossoming is not the beginning; it is what we should aim for.
The idea of family is older than sin and death in the earth. Therefore, to excel in family life, we need to lay hold on the force that existed before Satan came into the world of men. Satan came to steal things. A thief does not come where there are no valuable things. Satan stole our concept of family. For some of us, we would need to watch where we seek counsel from as regards family. Somewhere, we still have some very traditional and cultural beliefs concerning the home, but we ought to seek the Lord Himself concerning the home.
Before there was any issue, there was family. Family was created to answer an issue. After God created everything, he believed everything was very good, but inside the good, he saw something that was not good (Gen. 2:18), and that’s why he is God. He has everlasting eyes to see.
That we suffered from our family does not mean family is bad. Our challenges or experiences do not give us the right to redefine how family should be, nor would it change God’s view on family. The last line of defense in all things God is the church; if we are confused about what God values, the world will have no answer. Our family is not about us; we are upholding an age-old standard, and the fact that we experienced challenges that pained us in no way invalidates the truth of God’s word concerning family.
God set the solitary in families. He started it because he did not want us to be alone. The whole idea of creation happened during a family discussion (Gen. 1:26). Family is a gift. Two will always be better than one. The issue of family and its origin is not rooted in any present definition of what Satan has given to all of humanity. Family is God’s seed for population. When God said, “Be fruitful and multiply”, the multiplicity of man is rooted in family.
When Adam saw Eve, something leaped from inside him. The best two in this world are husband and wife because they mirror Christ and the church. Family is the solution to the problem of the earth. Let’s not take the idea of family lightly. It is very important in the heart of the Lord. Looking at Adam and Eve, they did not immediately give birth. There is a sense in which we can think children are the most important. It is very easy to be distracted by that, especially for mothers. It is a misplacement of priorities when we take the children more important than our spouses.
Family is for salvation. We can use our family for many things other than what God gave family for. Why did God take Adam out of singlehood? Or why did he set the solitary in a family? Because he saw an incapacity in the one and decided to make them join together with another.
Not everyone will marry, but everyone should be a member of a family. We are currently seeing people disenchanted with marriage, not seeing the need for marriage. The reason why some are also forbidding people to marry is that spirits know there is something two will achieve. Many of the men God singled out for his purpose in Scripture were family men – Abraham, Noah, for example. Likewise, anyone who will be a minister of God must be a strong family man, and if you are not successful with your family, you cannot be a minister. All the instructions for a minister are all about family life, meaning there is a training you will not get until you are in a family.
(1 Tim. 4:3) What Satan is after with forbidding marriage is to exclude a generation from the training that family life should work in the soul. The desire to be alone or not be part of a family is devilish. Some of us were put into a family and/or household because we are going to have a family of our own, and it should follow a particular pattern; if we don’t see it, we’ll just do family the way everybody is doing it.
There is a wisdom we must not fetch from running a family that many use but won’t fulfill the purpose of God for family because it will not allow the Spirit of God to prosper in the home. There is a way our homes can be arranged, and the Spirit of God will not prosper, not because you are doing evil, but because you are not aligned with the pattern he has in mind. If you don’t know this, you will use your family for anything. People are using family for personal reasons, and that’s why it would break down. You can also use your children for personal reasons. This is what God delivered Abraham from. He thought Isaac was about him, but He was about God’s agenda, so God asked him to kill him. If you do not know God, you will idolise your children.
Some people have tied their future to the life of their children. You are misusing that child and wrongly exposing them to the arrangement of Satan when you do that. Likewise, we can misuse our spouse. Somewhere, we can worry about whether our child will take care of us, but if they are well raised, the Lord knows how to instruct them on what to do; tying your future to that child is faithlessness, and whatever is not of faith is sin.
There is a very diabolical arrangement against family because Satan also wants his own family. If God wants to dwell amidst men, Satan also is striving to dwell amidst men. He likes to copy God. In the family, every couple is a team. They should not be in competition with each other. Satan pits couples against each other because he knows the two together are dangerous to him. Competing with your spouse is competing with yourself. Satan will sell your individuality to you above the covenant you have enacted, not knowing that when you enacted that covenant, you sold away that individuality even down to your body. Many times, he will even accuse your spouse in your heart; we must fight it. Our togetherness is a threat to Satan. It threatens his very foundation.
Satan is also very much interested in our children; it’s why he pits spouses against each other. He wants to catch our children young. As parents, we must realise we can’t be everywhere, so we must commend our children to God. We must arrange our house so the spirit of God can follow our children where we can’t. Mothers must honor the arrangement of the Lord in the home so we can have power over our heads and open up our homes to the Lord (1 Cor. 11:10). In doing this, our children will not stray. The enemy knows that if he does not affect this arrangement, he cannot get the children. He could not get Noah, so he went for Ham and got him, and from there Canaan – Nimrod came. Sin was revived because the family structure was compromised. We must ask ourselves: how is the arrangement of our homes hindering or prospering the entrance of God unto our children?
The arrangement of order in the home is not because one is inferior to the other; it is an arrangement for the blessing. The woman is not inferior to the man, nor the man to the woman. The setting is for order, not because of inferiority. The lie Satan sells is that if you are under, you are inferior. The woman is under to open up her home to angels: “For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels” (1 Cor. 11:10). If men could do this, they would put men there for this.
The woman is responsible for the atmosphere of the home. She can open her home to angels, and she can also close it to angels. The man is responsible for the atmosphere over his wife, so he should do well to not offend her. It is a foolish man who will not play his own part to help her align for the angels. There is a way a husband will align that alignment for his wife, and the home will not be difficult.
For the man, being a head or lord over your house, as we’ve been taught by our Daddy Pastor Emeka Egwuchukwu, is the type of Lordship pattern that Jesus shows. A lot of responsibility lies upon the man to keep the atmosphere of his wife, which in turn is how he keeps the atmosphere of his home. God’s arrangement of the home is an order for spiritual intervention. When the intervention is missing, the first people to suffer are the children. Warfare in the home is natural. Even Muslim-to-Muslim marriage comes under the attack of Satan because getting married alone is an offense to Satan, because he wants everything that has to do with God, including marriage, to be removed from the earth.
The order of marriage is to ask for her hand from her father or from a representative of her father’s family and pay her dowry, not to pick her and get her pregnant and put her in your home.
One thing we are finding now is that even in Christian homes, their children don’t want to marry. The question is, what did they see? It is Satan, and he intends to get at them so he can build his own. Some girls had no good example of a home and decided not to marry. Satan is a star reader somewhere. He can read movements of what the Lord might be doing, as he did with Jesus. In Jesus’ time, he killed all children his age. Thank God for the dedication the parents had to the arrangement and instructions of the Lord. Do not let Satan tell you that you are not a team in your family. God must give us wisdom to yield to the thoughts of God concerning our home. Sometimes he will try to make you face different directions, but don’t agree, not just for your sake but also for the sake of your children.
Every marriage leads to a family. Traditionally, in this part of our world, family is father, mother, and children, but if you don’t have children, you are no less a family because it is two that is better than one. It is two: husband and wife make that two. Children are only a plus.
The Church is a conglomerate of families. A strong family makes a strong church, and weak families make a weak church. When families are weak, the pastor will be resolving marital issues instead of facing matters of spiritual development. A strong couple is responsible for ten thousand. When a husband is bickering with his wife, for example, they cannot put their ten thousand to flight. A successful family is not about making your own life okay; it is about making the church okay. If you are having issues, it will affect the local assembly, and you will trouble everybody.
As a couple grows in oneness, you begin to increase. No family chases ten thousand in the beginning; we all grow into it. We must aspire to blossom so we can chase our ten thousand. The way your house is arranged matters; it contributes greatly to the progress of God’s agenda on earth. God honors good marriages. There is a special reward for people who hold their marriages even under duress.
In marriage, the spouse of another always looks better. Satan will always accuse your spouse to you and, knowing we are not perfect, he uses our darkness against our covenant. He magnifies the darkness of our spouse to the end that he can divide and rule.
For the unmarried, your decision to marry must be between you and God first and not with the person you hope to marry. What the world teaches is to approach the lady and look to sample her, either date or fornicate with her, but what the Lord teaches us is to go to her manufacturer, the Lord, and settle with him and generate enough faith to take that step because you will always need faith. After you have prayed and gotten all the confirmations you need, and you’ve gotten the go-ahead from your pastor, the sum of all your persuasion is still just 50%. This is because her own will is involved. On the side of the sister, you also go to his manufacturer and settle it with him. This is really important because you are about to enact a covenant that has an enemy who will use their darkness against this covenant. This is mainly what leads to divorce, where they were once persuaded and are no longer persuaded. What persuaded them was not from the Lord.
Here, we don’t date; we court. We don’t experiment. Be persuaded of who you want to marry because of the compulsory process of welding in marriage. Get your convictions right about the one you want to marry. We don’t marry because I like you; we marry by faith. We also do not marry because of money or beauty. Liking alone is very flippant; it can easily turn to detesting the person. Money, beauty, and all the standards the world pushes won’t survive winter. Faith is very important in marriage.
All of us have darkness, and many times we can’t stand each other’s darkness because our darkness is incompatible with the darkness of the other. What we ought to be doing is both parties letting go of their own darkness. There are things we ought to have dealt with while under our parents or while still single; the Lord will use marriage to deal with them. What many want to do is use marriage to please themselves, but the purpose of marriage is for salvation. This is not to say that in marriage you will not smile or enjoy it, but the primary reason is for salvation. Nobody marries perfect. Your darkness will speak in your marriage, and blessed are you if your spouse has enough sense to go to the manufacturer on the issue.
Courtship before marriage is not for taking pictures and saying “I love you” when it hasn’t been tested yet. Love is predicated on knowledge of the person. You cannot love who you don’t know; this is why God’s love is perfect because he knows you well. Saying you love your spouse will be tested when you experience their darkness.
There is a family in heaven, on earth, and in hell, and depending on the operating system you are using in your home, it will determine the kind of family you will generate. In marriage, you need to learn to forgive and to ask for forgiveness. Your love must be based on understanding
When choosing a partner, you can marry who you like, but do not base your choice solely on this, and if it is not rooted in faith, Satan will come for it. Like is a feeling and can go; we ought to live by faith, not by feelings. Marriage is not exempt from the commandment of living by faith. When courting, you discuss and wait upon the Lord concerning the number of children to have, any secrets, etc. In courtship, everyone has a colored past, and we should not allow that to ruin a covenant. The covenant must be greater than the past sin because we all have sin.
In courtship also, especially for sisters, the first thing you check is whether the man is submitted to someone. The best leader is the one who has followed God. Sisters, you must watch and pray. Watch how he treats pastors before you decide to come under him, because God will honor your coming under even if you choose the wrong person. Do not marry someone who is lame in the spirit; wait for him to heal because he needs to carry you and run the race with you. Even after following due process, it does not invalidate the welding that needs to happen in marriage. You can marry the will of God and still go through trials. In marriage, welding is done with fire; this is how you become one. There will be fire that you both will go through; sometimes this fire can extend for a long time, but hold on through it. Fire is meant to bring you closer to the Lord.
The devil hates the covenant of marriage, and God is not a truce breaker. He does all to honour the things that have his name aback of it. God does not need two to make a covenant; He only needs one to give him room. He seeks a man, not two. We should have staying power. Marriage is to train you not to live for yourself. Everyone is born selfish. If a child was not taken through the school of denial, marriage will train you. Marriage is not for children; it’s full-time work. Marriage will teach you how not to have your own way.
In the program of salvation, they will use her or him to save you. They will use your spouse to call out some things that need to go. We are all works in progress and should be getting better and better in marriage. Adultery in marriage is not first and foremost the act, but it starts with a dishonouring or misuse of the covenant. Marriage will make your life okay, but it will also dig out your garbage. This is why every discomfort in marriage will not warrant an intervention; you just need to knuckle down and do what the Lord is telling you to do.
Marriage is to prepare us to be the Lord’s bride. Jesus is the head, and we are all, in a sense, ‘female’.
We have a generation so averse to stress. Marriage and family are stressful. Children: until they leave your house, your life is no longer your own. We have a generation that wants to keep their life and prosecute family. We see Jesus give up his own estate to have family; he took a demotion for us, till now Jesus is not living for himself. We must not look to getting our own way all the time. This is flesh and shows we are still children.
Marriage is a full-time job. It is work. Marriage is not for children, nor is it for rest. Your rest is in Jesus, not in marriage. Marriage will teach you to be comfortable doing someone else’s bidding. It teaches you to not have your own way. Issues in marriage stem from two people wanting to have their own way. This leads to couples sometimes seeing themselves as rivals. Being cutthroat is what Satan wants to lead all of us to. If a man seeks to always have his own way, there will be demons in the home. Sometimes, you learn to compromise just to keep the relationship.
The training of a man is in learning not to have your own way in marriage. We see this in the patterned man Jesus. If Jesus tried to always have his own way, he would have no disciples. He doesn’t force his way on us. He gave up all his privileges such that the only privileges he has are the ones we give him. He won’t take more than we give him; he persuades but won’t force us. This is why a husband should not force his wife to submit. Submission is not useful to the husband, but is useful to the wife because it trains her to obey God.
Every man wants to be submitted to; he wants to be Lord. It is a tendency that God put in man because He is God, but the type of Lordship we see men desiring is the one put by Satan.
The husband and wife are a team. God does not see them as separate. The one who is wise is the one who keeps God on the scene. We must keep this knowledge of being a team so that when Satan attacks your togetherness, you know it’s an attack against your home. Sometimes one person might actively go against that togetherness, but one of you must have the wisdom to keep God on the scene so that he can manage the situation so it does not degenerate into a loss that Satan is looking for.
We should not compare our marriages to those who have been married longer than ours. As you grow spiritually, submission grows. Submission is not useful to the man, but to the woman, and if you love her, you will want her to submit because she must learn to honor her Father, who put her in the covenant, so that your home will have angels (1 Cor. 11:10). As the woman grows, she comes to realise that submission is not really about the man, but about submitting in the fear of the Lord. She has come to see the wisdom of submission. Submission should also not override commandments. We need commandments because without them, we won’t know what to do.
Submission is in degrees. Romance in marriage is good and important, but it has its place. Love must be deliberate. Submission is between her and her God, and the man who is being submitted to should learn to not take the glory of it but give it back to the Lord.
The instructions the Lord gives in dealing with our spouses are more about changing us. (Eph. 5:25) The Lord is waiting, hoping someone will open the door by obedience for him to come in. When we are not obeying God, the adversary is the one actively helping us to disobey, but we ought to keep him out by our obedience. Even though painful, we bring God on the scene, and because he is on the scene, that situation will change. This is because love does not fail.
Love for the husband is giving up himself for her. He shouldn’t insist on his own rights in the home. A man is the head of his family and has the highest authority in the home. As he grows, the woman will get to see it, but he is not permitted to extract submission from his wife that she is not giving; else it becomes subjugation. Likewise, the wife is not permitted to extract love from her husband. If you want your wife to submit more, trust God for her development, because if she submits more than her development, it is not real or genuine. If you try to force it, you will offend life, and it will not be unto the Lord, but unto you. The husband is to present her as a chaste virgin to her Lord, not to himself. He should only take what she gives; this is how Jesus handles us.
Everything you need is inside your spouse. Women must learn to not compare their husbands with other men or imaginary characters from movies. It takes a while to deliver a woman from the ideals of a man that she has, which many times is not the best thing for the woman. God knows everything we will need to arrive at salvation and puts it in our spouse; that’s what makes God a good father. We are not permitted to extract love from our spouse through the arm of flesh; that is, love from your spouse that God has not permitted them to give to you.
While every woman desires to be loved in marriage, you must have developed a very healthy relationship with Jesus before you marry so that Jesus can fill any gaps we experience in our marriages. People look to marry so it can complete them, but marriage wasn’t ordained for that. It is for two people to complement each other for the purpose of God. We are complete in God. If we don’t find our completeness in God, in the days of trials, we won’t lean on him when we should. Also, you don’t lean on God at the expense of your spouse.
There is no such thing as a spirit husband. Spirits don’t marry. It is only here on earth that we have the chance to marry; once we leave this body, the only marriage in heaven is that of the marriage supper of the Lamb. Marriage on earth is to give you an ambition to be the Lord’s bride, and the degree of your development and relationship with Jesus will determine whether you will be a bride or not.
We must handle marriage to the extent that our spouse will want to remain married forever. Why many have no desire to be part of the bridal company is because of their perception of marriage. Can your marriage be used to change that narrative in their minds? Marriage is to exemplify an everlasting relationship that all of us should come into in the world to come. Jesus’ desire is that we will all measure up to the stature of his bride.
(Eph. 5:25-28) Family is for sanctification. Sanctification here might be cutting onions, helping with the baby, not necessarily teaching her the Word. It means there is a way you will love your wife as a man that you will sanctify and cleanse her. There is a way your wife wants you to sanctify her that might be different from how Jesus will want you to sanctify her.
Husbands and wives must be able to come to a place of detecting religious spirits that mimic sanctification. It is good to have a partner that prays, but it is not only by prayer that you hold a home. You can pray a lot, yet your home is scattering. It might mean that it is not the sanctification the Lord is looking for. However, this is not to say not to pray again, because a prayerless person will have problems.
One can be successful as a single person, but be a failure as a spiritual person in marriage because the parameters for success in both estates are different. Many times, we import what we did as a single person into marriage and then wonder why we are carnal. Some things can be okay for a single person but won’t work for marriage, and not quickly crossing into the spirituality for marriage is how we end up losing our children. If you have a praying grace when single, as a woman, it becomes subject to the person you are under. In a situation where it appears you pray more than your husband, it shouldn’t elevate you and make you despise your husband.
A wife is not a single sister. You can’t be a single sister in marriage. They don’t go together. Same for the husband. The key to sexual purity as a single person is abstinence in thoughts, words, and deeds, but in marriage, the key to sexual purity is not abstinence, and anything that makes you abstain is the devil. To make the switch is difficult; it takes a while for the Lord to convince the lady that she is now a wife and that this holiness is no longer required. In marriage, anything that tells you that holiness is separating yourself sexually from your husband is the devil.
Many of us grew up not seeing affection. Something has told us that is holiness; it is not; it is Satan.
(1 Cor. 7:2-5AMP) (Eph. 5:25-30 AMP) Jesus used the giving up of himself to sanctify the church; likewise, the husband, anytime you give up yourself, prefer her; beyond praying and devotion is how you sanctify her. The man ought not to have his life; his life should be his wife. He should elevate his wife. There is a reward for those who live that way here. Husbands should love their wife as their own bodies because she is your body. Husband and wife are not owners of their own bodies; the husband owns his wife’s body and vice versa. This is how you please God as a man.
The woman represents help, and the man represents assignment in God’s view. Help is not inferior even though subservient to the assignment. This should bring an end to the gender argument. God is neither male nor female. He doesn’t favour one gender over another. Sin always looks to divide and rule, but how God sees us is that we are one. God doesn’t deal with the man apart from his wife. He has her in mind when He thinks of you.
Wives must grow to learn how to adapt themselves to their own husbands. The man should not demand this; rather, the woman, as she grows spiritually, will see the need to adapt to her own husband. In the family, even the children should adapt themselves to the instructions of their parents. They grow up not having too many problems adapting themselves to their husband. When the woman is the head of the home, it is disorderly. The family is not in order until the wife starts adapting herself to her own husband.
Many times, what separates couples is one refusing to adapt and the other standing on his own rights. Many men still have their mother’s taste buds. You should leave that taste bud and adapt to your wife’s cooking, for example. The devil has no interest in your home being held together. The man is only held by arrangement; don’t take this to heart so much that it becomes detrimental to you.
Husbands will not always get it right, and the woman should stand her ground respectfully and prayerfully. The desire of every husband for his wife is that she stands before God holy and faultless. The woman should not allow pain from marriage to stop you from noticing, regarding, and honoring your husband. Obeying these things by both the husband and the wife is not for them alone, but for the presence they hope to keep in their homes. The presence of God in our homes should grow to a point that our homes become heavenly (Eph. 3:14). This is the kind of home the Lord can send troubled people to, and their problems cease. Some people will come to your home demon-infested, but at your door the demons can come in because of your arrangement. These are the kinds of homes we should want to have. In this kind of home, the children can grow up successfully, and the Holy Ghost can freely instruct the children.
Your family must grow from earth to heaven, meaning the conversation, lifestyle, and the level of the doctrine of the word of righteousness as a culture must run the home. Children must know that charity is a lifestyle. They must know that they should represent Jesus everywhere they are.
Marriage is not an end but only the beginning. For some people, marriage is a bus stop, but to us it is a door to the highway of holiness. Our marriages should launch us to the highway of holiness. It should be a heaven on earth. Our homes should be where the Bible is loved and taught, and the master’s will is sought.
THE END.