Minister: Pst. Laide Olaniyan
(Rom. 15:1) – “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.” This was speaking against the backdrop of Romans 14 which was talking about the weak and strong in faith. One of the greatest burdens a man who is learning Christ ought to undertake is the burden of not pleasing himself. In life, even in the corporate world, they say the reward of hard work is more work, so also in the spirit, more burden and more sacrifice is placed upon those who are stronger and more spiritual.
In 1 Cor 6:1-3, an issue broke out, and there was debate between brethren, defrauding brethren – “Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?”
It is an aberration and an insult to your recreated person that those who do not have the light of truth should be judging your affairs. Look at where he says we are going to; he says we shall judge angels. So if you can’t decide matters of this life, what laws would you use to judge angels? You can’t judge the simple matters of this life, and tell right from wrong. You allow people who have no reputation for life, no pedigree in the life of God to decide; meaning that your judgements are wrong, you come to wrong conclusions about manners of this life, which is contrary to your ordination; an aversion of what you are destined to do. Because you would never even get close to angels if you have not prospered with wisdom for this life.
The ordination is that at a point, we will be so raised by truth. The quality of life in Jesus is better than what the angels hold. That God can say to all angels, ‘Let all angels worship Him. That doesn’t mean we have gotten to that place, it is an ordination but it is a work that they will do in us. Paul was saying we have an ordination to judge angels, but there is a way we must excel in the matters of this life
(1 Cor. 6:5-8) – “I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.” Paul was saying: ‘Is there not a wise one amongst you; is there not one spiritual?’. If you have one who is spiritual, he would know the right judgement in this matter, which is that the wiser and stronger one would be able to take wrong, allow himself to be defrauded for the sake of something more heavenly.
God always places a higher responsibility on those who are more spiritual. Not as a badge of status but those who are more inclined to pleasing Him. This is why you take a matter to God, He won’t talk about your brother but about you; you are the one inclined to hear God, and if your brother is also inclined to hear God, God will talk to him about himself too, and not you. Everyone of us will not mature at the same time, there will always be people who are weaker than us. While you think you are the weakest, some are just being awoken from the dead in their spirit. There will always be people who are weaker than you. But that estate is relative because how long a man remains in an estate is not defined by Chronos but how inclined his heart is to God. Bearing the infirmity of the weak is using the infirmity of the weak to grow.
A child is obsessed about his rights. We grew up with rights, but growing up, our rights are being taken from us. You grew up in hope that you’ll have right to decide but you discover that adulthood is a place of sacrifice, where you practically do not have anything for yourself. You live for others.
(Rom. 15:1) Brethren would always have infirmities. What indicates that one is stronger is that one is able to bear or use it as a resource to grow or increase in nature. And that only comes by understanding an economy called Christ. If we are mindful of ourselves alone, we won’t think of edification. ‘I am cheated’, ‘I am hurt’, is because you are focused on “I”. It is because the focus of your understanding was focused around you and not on Jesus, on the body or the counsel of God. If your sight shifts from you to the Lord, you will discover that what the brother or sister who is weaker does or does not do or the implication of their action or inaction is light in the scale of things. That singular shift in judgement shows that you are stronger. An ability to stand and accommodate it shows you are stronger; it is understanding.
(Rom 15:2) – “Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification.” The scripture did not say you should do anything your brother likes. There is a goal; to please your neighbour for his good. You should be edification-minded. Pleasing your neighbour is, when it pertains to your liberty, or when you can see that exercising your liberty can affect the building up of your neighbour, you don’t exercise that liberty. That is what it means to please your neighbour for his good. For his good means for his up-building.
One of the responsibilities that faith imposes upon us as believers is to be able to accommodate the burden of growth of our brethren. Growth is demanding. Growth has its price but we need to have bowels that are large enough and can accommodate the growth of our neighbours. Why? One of the things that growth does is the redefinition of things in love. And it takes a lot of tolerance to accommodate growth.
One of the things that happens to us ignorantly is that when light dawns on us, we begin to judge other people by our standards and hold them people accountable to the standard that God is holding us to, forgetting that it is you God gave it to. And everyone around you may not be held to that standard. You have to be true to the standard God has shown you and be merciful to everyone else until such a time when God in His mercy brings them to a place where He shows them the light He has shown you. We would be unwise if we try to hold everyone accountable to the light God has shown us when God might not have opened their eyes to that same light. That’s one of the burdens of growth; you’ll endure contradictions. Sometimes, people will label you as being unnecessarily hard on yourself. Not because you don’t understand their liberties but because God is placing a burden upon you that you have no right to share with them.
Infirmities of the weak come in many shades. Growing up into Christ is not just about the excitement but also about the contradictions. It is easier when a number of people are living by the same standard. Sometimes, God may allow some other persons have liberty for a particular instruction he has given you because of the state of their soul and what they can bear; but for you, He is weaning you from the weight that it has on your soul; it’s not just abstainence, He is giving you power over it. Sometimes, you may not understand the reason for your instruction, understand what God is doing by it or have the liberty to explain the reason for it. (1 Cor. 10:23) – “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.” The rule that a spiritual person lives by is: ‘ does it edify?’ He checks if it builds him up or if it builds his brother up. If you ask that question before every one of your actions, the outcome of your actions will change. Build up is not according to our own mind or thinking, it is does it work the work of Christ in a person?
I can think a thing is good for. A person but it doesn’t work Christ. (James 1:20) – “for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” If I am going to work a work that will build up my brother, wrath or flesh can’t do it. It has to work righteousness, and only Spirit can work edification. The only way Christ can be raised is to be spiritually minded; to mind spiritual things. A man that is seeking edification knows it can only happen within the auspices of the Spirit, and must use the law of the Spirit of life to live . Otherwise, no matter how good, moral or thorough a thing looks by the flesh or in the natural, if it is not birthed spiritually, it can never build up but create something false, it will create another. It is something we must know as believers.
In growing in the house of God, if we don’t understand these things, we won’t be able to minister edification to one another. You wont be able to supply that which allows you to grow and that which allows your brother or neighbour to grow. There are certain training that are not useful unto edification. They may be useful on earth but they don’t raise you up to God. For it to become beneficial, the Holy Ghost must purify it. Someone rightly said that any virtue that is not wrought by the word of God, and through the administration of the Spirit, God doesn’t trust it. God doesn’t trust that you are naturally patient or quiet because it was not wrought by the Holy Ghost subjecting you If you learnt forbearance in business outside the instruction of God for example, you will have a kind of forbearance but not the one that can raise you up to God. God has to purify it to make you wholesome. God can’t build on anything not wrought by the Spirit. That’s why you can’t raise a saint with fleshy wisdom.
(Rom. 15:3-4) – “For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me. For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.” Whatsoever was written aforetime was written for our learning. All things written in scriptures is for our learning. So we should learn the scriptures, and through learning, we should become a learned one. We should attain unto learning. It’s possible to learn scriptures and still be ignorant and unlearned. You can read the spirit. Hagin said to the church in prophecy that the army of the last days would not just be people who learn the word but they must learn the spirit. Meaning that, it is good to be study of the word but much more, it is important to be a student of the spirit. To be truly learned, a person must be schooled in the spirit of the word. The disciples didn’t know letters but they were learned. They were unlearned by the standard of the Pharisees but they were very learned is the spirit. Scripture is given that you should come to learning. True learning aligns you with the true hope.
(Rom. 5:1-4) – “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope:” Knowing is a product of learning. Patience worketh Experience which can’t be bought in the market. Hope is a work, a learning. It is the school of the spirit where they baptize you through tribulations and pressures. What makes you glory in the midst of pressure is that you have learnt something. Your first encounter in tribulations is that your feathers are ruffled; a lot of wisdom of the flesh wants to play out, a lot of options and tendencies to escape until your bones are shifted like Jacob. We need to get to the place where all your energy is expired where we put all our eggs in God’s basket. You come into a season of peace where you know that you can wait on God, and you are no longer be in haste to finish your season. Some of us know it is the season of God but we are in haste to get out. When God enrols you in the school of patience, it is tribulation and pressure. When you pray that God teaches you patience, you are asking for pressure because He will expire haste (James 1:4). At first, tribulation may look like fire, but a time will come where you like the fire, and the smell of smoke. It makes you understand the ways of God, because it is not just one tribulation that they will bring, they will bring another, and another, until you have learned the manner of God, you are not unruffled by the pressure. You can take it patiently.
(1 Peter 2:18 -20) – “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” You have learned how to chest pressure and take it with patience; this is the School of the Spirit. We will get to a place where we rejoice at pressure and tribulation; only experience can work this. That they subject you to pressure and you take it with patience. That experience works hope, which is the hope of salvation. This is the pathway of sons that they are leading in the way of salvation. The School is a school of the spirit, where the Lord takes you through, to expire and expunge natures inside of you. By the time you come to the place of hope, you are getting to the corridors of peace. That man that has been exercised is at peace with God. You won’t have the shed love if you have not gone through tribulations and patience. God needs to enroll many of us in the school of patience where they would expire haste. Haste is a darkness. You must not go by haste. They must expire haste.
What they say you’ll learn in scripture is not keys of prosperity or secrets of dominating the world (Rom. 15:3-4). (1 Peter 2:21) – “For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:” What we learn from Christ is how Christ didn’t live for Himself. He didn’t live to please himself but suffered to leave us an example to follow in his steps. Can the reproach of the brethren fall upon you? That is one of the things they schooled Moses in Hebrews 11:24-26, he saw the reproach as a wealth. Your scars are part of your wealth. You are a poor man in the spirit if you don’t have a badge of reproach. He left the palace to go and be with the people of God. He had respect unto the covenant. The reproach and contradictions you are going through, you don’t know that Angels are praying for it because they know it is a pathway to glory, but they were not given that privilege. Moses was willing to forsake everything without taking another thought; he didn’t look back. He became a sheep herder and was content.
God wants to deliver and save us from the mind that God will change your story. You’ll go until you are at peace with that estate because you have broken through into a wealth of grace through that experience, knowing that you are the most blessed person on earth. Somewhere, we are still longing for the day we would be free from the economy of the spirit to live life like we want. But we have not fulfilled the tutelage of the Spirit to make us rest in hope. A man that can rest there can rest in God; he is not afraid of what God can make of his life, because he knows that God’s careful hand is weaving the best (Ps. 16). When they escort us like that, we now see what true blessings are.
(Matt. 5:1-3) – “And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: and he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their’s is the kingdom of heaven.” Favoured is one who is poor in the spirit, one who realizes his need for God. Poor in spirit is not poor financially. A man can be poor financially and be very rich. A man who is rich, says like the church in Laodicea, he has need of nothing. A man who is poor is one who recognizes his need in the spirit. He is a blessed man that his eyes is opened to see his actual needs. When God is opening your eyes to the things that you need, you don’t know that He putting blessing upon you.
(Matt. 5:4) – “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
(Zec.12:10) – “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.” It takes a man whose eyes of understanding have been opened to see the treasure in the crucified Jesus to mourn for Him. Mourning is not about shouting and crying out loud. Yes, there are prayers of agonies; Hannah prayed, no one heard anything but scripture recorded that she groaned (1 Sam. 1:13). The Spirit also intercedes for us with groanings that cannot be uttered (Rom. 8:26). True prayer is God prevailing over you. Where your will dies and you come in alignment with the spirit. It is one who God has prevailed over and conquered within and without that can be an express passage of His will.
A mourner is mourning for Him. His eyes are opened and he has been able to see like Paul saw, able to count everything dung for the Excellency of the knowledge of Him. He is in travail to apprehend for that which he’s been apprehend. A mourner is in the night season, a soul in the sanctuary, who is going through the economy of Christ in hope of apprehension. That soul is a blessed man. You begin to see the things that God calls blessing. They are things that the world despises but Jesus calls such a one the blessed. The soul coming into that season is highly privileged. (Matt. 5:4) Comfort is understanding; to be cleansed and delivered. Before every comfort, there is a mourning. (2 Cor. 1:4) – “who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” Tribulation occasioned a mourning, a travail. And that travail is not just freedom from that situation but finding Him in the midst of it; that is actually escape. The way of escape is to find the person and then you’ll be able to bear it. (1 Cor 10:13) – “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” You will see His wisdom and then be able to find comfort in the situation you want to escape. They have ministered comfort to you.
Tongues and Interpretation
It is in the wisdom of the Spirit that is in the crushing, even in your crushing, that things are pressed out.
For I show you even the way that it is done, even in the vine, for to press out, even the wine that is pleasing has to go through the process of crushing, has to go through the process of pressure.
The pressure is for the extraction of that which is pleasing. You see, grapes can go bad without achieving that which they are ordained for.
It is for wine, for pleasure.
Without the crushing, without the pressing, without the extraction, even that wine will not flow out.
So I show you a pattern of how I can use your heart in that place you call agony, in that place you call mourning, in that place you call pain.
I can bring out beauty, for I am the one who brings beauty out of ashes. And how do you get ashes except a thing be burnt down?
For I do not delight in your suffering.
What I delight in is the obedience of your heart to allow me to work out the beauty that only I can bring forth, the pleasure that only I can generate.
It is in your obedience, in your yielding, knowing that I cannot ruin your life.
My plans are always good, my thoughts are always good. It may not yet appear so, it may not look like so, but that which is in my heart is for you to partake of my holiness.
Thus my subjection, my chastening, my scourging, is to receive you even as sons.
I will press life out. I want to drink of your pleasing wine, says the Spirit.
(Rom. 15:5-6) – “Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is the breakthrough that is awaiting us. We would be like-minded one towards another according to Christ Jesus. Where my relating to you would be like Jesus will relate with you, and everybody would be Christ relating with another Christ. That is needed to come to a place where we can come to worship God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is that basket that is woven that God can approach unto.
Last week, I was saying that God called the children of Israel out to worship. But between Egypt and worship, there was wilderness. Wilderness was a season of purifying. They needed that experience to be able to call upon God, to purify them. All of the baptisms they were going through was to be able to come to the place where they could please God well. They would have become servants and prophets. Moses wished that all of them were prophets. Prophets as in that they are able to respond to God in a particular frequency. To be able to do worship, they needed that stature which is an offshoot of an experience coming forth in the wilderness. All that God did to the church in the wilderness and experience of all Israel is a prophetic wisdom to see the kind of people that should emerge from the law and the prophet. A wisdom to raise a people that can actually do worship.
We would worship amiss if we do not grow in stature. (John 4:22-24) – “Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” There is a class of worshippers that God is still looking for. Thank God for manifestation but that’s not worship. True worship is the fragrance of a life that is perfectly tuned to He that is true. He’s a witness of Him that is true. They’ve raised a prophetic stature of the book from that soul. That soul is a worshipper and God is seeking that order of worship. We’ve not started that order in our service. The men of that class have not arisen. Why? It would take the revelation of He that is true to produce that. God is still seeking and waiting. God is still raising His church. It’s been the dream of God from time.
We don’t know what worship is. It is great honour for the worshipper, not just the worshipped. Our generation doesn’t know how to respond in worship. There is somewhere in worship that God is looking at, that truth must chart the way to, for us to arrive at. It is an honour to worship God. A great privilege!
No one has worshipped God like Jesus. No one has been able to give worship to God like Jesus. No one has been able to. (John 4:23-24) God is looking for something. There is a kind of worship that has not been harvested in a long while. That’s one of the essence of the book of Revelation. He needed that stature to now be able to give that worship to God, that’s why the angel said to worship God, in Rev 19:10.
Tongues and Interpretation
For mysteries, for to know mysteries, for to know things locked up, for to know things secret, for indeed I have brought a blessing to your ears.
Blessed are your ears, blessed are your ears, for you will hear these things.
You will hear these things, for indeed I have granted even my servant the honor of searching out, even things locked up.
For the things revealed are for you and for your children’s children.
I will begin to bring you even into corridors of hidden wisdom. Wisdom locked up, locked up for many generations.
I will bring the key, I will bring the access, for the opening up of secrets, secret things,, mysteries, treasures locked up, locked up treasures
for you will begin to find, you will begin to find.
For I am granting access, even in this time I am granting access.
I have granted even my servant, I have given my servant honor for to search out, honor for to open, honor for to see, honor for to undo, honor even for to break, break open things sealed.
For indeed blessing has come to your ears, for you will hear these things, these secrets.
For indeed my Spirit is willing for to open these things, for no man knoweth the things of God, save the spirit.
And indeed you will know these things by the revelation that I will grant.
That revelation is an access, is a key to the opening up of mysteries. Opening up of mysteries.
Oh, greater days lie ahead of you, for indeed I will open up many mysteries, many secrets.
Rejoice, for indeed it is your time of access,
Saith the Spirit of the Lord.