Meeting: Sunday Service
Date: 9th November 2025
Message: The Circumcision of the Foreskin of the Heart Part 4
Minister: Pastor Laide Olaniyan
(1 Pet 1:22) – “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:”
Many do not believe they can come to a place of fervent love for the brethren but God will empower us to a place where our heart has been purified then we can love fervently. The difference between a carnal person loving with an impure heart and that of a man with a pure heart is that there is a height of love his love cannot get to because of the impurities still present in the heart. This is why you’ll find for example some people can only tolerate or bear another’s burden to a certain limit then they reach their breaking limit. That breaking limit is due to infirmities still present.
(1 Cor. 13) Charity or love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. We are the ones who cannot yet because of impurities in our hearts but as we keep obeying Truth, our heart is cleansed more and more till we can love at this height. A church got there and so can we (1 Pet. 1:22). None of us start here but everyone of us can get to this height in love – unfeigned love of the brethren. This is a holy ambition that should be in everyone’s hearts.
Unfeigned love of the brethren is coming to a place where we can receive our brethren wholeheartedly, all we see is Jesus. We are not seeing each other’s flaws because we have come to understand that we are both a recipient of God’s mercy. Most times when we look at people, we see them from the lens of their flaws but a work of cleansing that would be done in us is to see our own flaws and inadequacies more than we see other peoples and if Jesus can bear with us, we would begin to also bear with others. We must not be so focused on correcting others. We can leave that to Jesus who will heal all of us. He knows all of our soul’s deficiencies, ours is to love one another and mean it with the whole of our heart. This is a work that will be done in our hearts.
(2 Cor. 7:1) – “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” – Flesh is filthy. There is the filth of the flesh and the filth of the spirit. They want to remove filth from us however we have called and seen that filth as glory.
Satan calls filth of the flesh glory (1 Pet. 1:24). The promise of flesh is the glory of man. That is why we never see flesh as something troublesome. A person can use flesh to come into glory (in this world). Don’t live for the promise of flesh. It is not enduring. It is not abiding.
(1 Cor. 9:25) – “And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”
The glory of flesh can look like an achievement but it is but a corruptible crown. The same way we’ve laboured for earthly attainment, we need to labour much more to be written in heaven. The glory that God wants us to see is salvation. The promise that flesh gives is to blind people from the glory of God.
God has no problem with earthly attainment but He wants it to come from a heart that has been purified, a reliance on an economy of grace and by the spirit. When it is not grace propelled and spirit moved, there are many things to glory in the flesh.
Flesh always demands dedication from men to get its glory. Salvation is the true glory that swallows up all the glory of flesh. Flesh is supposed to see the salvation of God and come to it. The journey of flesh into salvation is its redemption/change. If the glory of man is still visible, flesh cannot see salvation. God must cast it down (2 Cor 4:3-4). The essence of the teaching of Isaiah is that every mountain and hill blocking the showing forth and seeing of the glory of God should be made low.
One of the mouths they give to true preachers is to cut down the glories of this world and show us what true glory is. This can sometimes look like preachers hate for people to have earthly attainment but they are only looking to cut down the false glory that Satan has painted to men. What we should begin to labour for is the glory that abides; the glory that is hidden in the face of Jesus.
There are only two things required of every man, this is the whole duty of man – fear God & keep His commandments. Everything is subsumed in this.
Idols are not just images, they have become people’s hearts. They are glories that flesh has painted for man. We must be wary of the promises that flesh shows us. If they haven’t weaned us from those promises, we will spend our lives serving flesh in the name of Jesus.
Flesh can be mistaken for meekness. Anything that is not a product of the working of the word of God is flesh even if it looks spiritual. (1 Peter 1:22) We cannot be free from flesh without obeying Truth by the Spirit. Spirit will always do Truth. If we claim to receive a nudging of the Holy Ghost that breaks the law of Truth, then that is not by the Holyghost. He will always empower us to obey Truth. Obeying Truth is how we are purified from flesh.
The hope of the gospel (Eternal life) is the mastery we are striving for. It is why we are obeying Truth. Mastering Eternal life must be what we strive for. When we have gained mastery, we will start seeing the world through the lens of what we have mastered; the lens of Truth.
Some of the inconvenient experiences we have gone through in our lives is to make us swear to pursue certain glories of the flesh. It may look harmless but what it has done is seal up a compartment of our soul in commitment to flesh that we will achieve it. (Isa. 28:18) Satan knows that with that commitment we cannot ascend the hill of the Lord. What God will do to bring us up the hill of Zion is to break that commitment/agreement.
We must be careful of pain points in our hearts during certain seasons and the decisions we make in our hearts at those instances. One other thing men do is swear deceitfully. This is to commit to something knowing fully well you have no plan to fulfill that commitment. There is something about the weight of our word that God expects us to keep. Our Ye must be Ye and Nay be Nay.
One thing that God honors is a man that swears to his own hurt yet still honors that commitment. The inability or unwillingness to commit to our word is a work of the flesh.
One other thing God does is to make us not mind our own things. Flesh serves its own interest. For flesh, behind everything is his OWN. That we enter our lot before our brethren does not mean we should rest. We must continue labouring until the least of our brethren have entered.
(Phil. 2:3-4) – “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.”
We are all selfish by nature. We shouldn’t mind our own things. We are not supposed to rest until our neighbor or brethren come into their own allocation or lot. To not be burdened for one another is a code of flesh. This nature is against the code of conduct of brotherhood. Flesh glories in its own safety at the expense of the agenda of the Spirit. We see Mordecai who had to warn Esther against not doing anything about the predicament Israel faced in her time or Apostle Paul’s concern for the Jews in Romans 9. We are not safe until we are all safe.
Flesh is not something you kill easily. God needs to keep shining light and show us mercy because without continuous revelation, flesh will remain. Flesh can even glory in spiritual things.
(Rom. 7:7; Rom. 8:1-3) Flesh hijacked the law and made it weak. Flesh is not afraid of spirituality, it is looking for how to blend with spiritual things. Flesh tried to use scriptures to tempt Jesus but Jesus knew the Truth. Truth is not just what is written, it is a spirit that teaches and gives judgement on how we use scriptures. We must be careful that everything we do or say aligns with the Truth of scriptures.
(Prov. 13:12) Every desire is like a tree of life, these are things we want God to do. What God wants to be our tree of life is salvation. Even if we do not get all our hopes in the days of our flesh, what should pain us right now is that we have not laid hold of the fullness of salvation.
(Zec. 8:23, Hab. 2:14) A time is coming not too distant that men in their billions will be living for the glory of God. Now it looks like we are few but we are only first partakers. God is making us rich in the knowledge of God that in that time we will be able to give men of that wealth.
What men run after will soon fail. We must be rich in God. Get your earthly attainments like education, marriage etc but more importantly, get God.
Many of us are seeking God for the corruptible rather than for His righteousness (Matt. 6:33). Spiritual things are what matters most, labour for them more than you do for natural things. We should fight to obey the Truth. We should be willing and cooperate with the Holy Ghost. A church is arising that is without blemish, that is holy and without blame before Him. This is Jesus’ prayer.
Keep obeying righteousness, it touches down even to your body. You will be renewed from inside out.
THE END.