THE ABUNDANT LIFE OF THE BODY

John 10:10: “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

1Thess.5:23: “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” still looking at our series on understanding the abundant life, today, we are going to be looking at the abundant life of the body. Like we observed at the beginning of this series, the abundant life is not restricted to the spirit of man. This is because the total man is spirit, soul and body. We have taken the time to look at abundant life as it relates to the spirit and soul. Today, we want to look at how it relates to the body. Why we are continuing with this series in this month of blessing is that the abundant life is what describes the blessed life.

When Jesus hung on the cross to take away our sin, he delivered a total package of the salvation of our spirits, souls and bodies to us. For our spirits, he achieved the new creation for us [2Cor.5:17; John 3:3-6, 16]. For our souls, he provided access to a fertile mentality for us [2Tim.1:7; Jas.1:21, Rom.12:2] and for our bodies, He provided health, wholeness and wellbeing [Isa.53:1-5, 1Pet.2:24]. There are many things involved in our wellbeing and they can be summed up in one word: “prosperity”! In 3John 1:2 we are told that God wishes above all things that we prosper and be in health even as our souls prosper. This implies that God’s will is for us to be whole spirit, soul and body. On our part however, there is what part we need to play to actualize our wellbeing.

Physically, we must:

1.     Eat right – Dan.1:8; 1Cor.6:12-13. The bulk of disease on earth today is tied to eating the wrong food. When we learn what the right food is and adjust accordingly, we would elongate our lives in good health.

2.     Exercise – 1Tim. 4:8; 2Tim.4:1-2. Bodily exercise carries profits as it protects your muscles from atrophy which is a state of the inability of your muscles to function because of lack of use. When you exercise, your body is built up and performs all the functions it is intended to perform properly.

3.     Rest – Exod.31:14-17; Heb.4:3-11. Rest refreshes you as it did God and prepares you for your next level. A lack of rest can lead to stress which is the foundation of many terminal illnesses and in some extreme cases, it can lead to sudden death.

4.     Submit your body to serve God’s purpose. Rom.12:1 – when you are busy serving God’s purpose, you are blessed with health and fruitfulness and protected from abortions! The Lord will fight your battles and give you victory all the way! Exod.23:25-29

Spiritually, we must walk in love and keep the body also known as the temple of God holy by living in purity.  Jn.13:34-35; Jn.15:12; 1Cor.6:15-20

Mentally, we must renew our minds. Rom.12:2; Ps.1:1-3; 1Tim.4:13-16.

The abundant life of the soul 2

The emotions and the will

The emotion of man is the part of man that feels. Man is wired to love and therefore demonstrate all the positive emotions enumerated as the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 one of the most outstanding of which is joy as it expresses all of the emotions of love in one package. When a person is thoroughly influenced by the word of God, joy is the result in his emotions. In other words, he becomes joyful. See Jer.15:16; John15:11

The will on the other hand, is the part of the soul that is responsible for decision making. God has created everyman with a sovereign will such that whether or not we enjoy abundant life has to do with the use to which we put our wills. In Gen.2:16-17 where God told the man:

“Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

God automatically made it clear that man had a right to choose thus making his will sovereign. Man could choose to obey God in which case he would enjoy the abundant life or disobey God and suffer the consequence of not enjoying the abundant life. This truth is further clarified by God through his servant Moses in Deut.30:19 and in John 3:16 where God offers the free gift of salvation and says that whosoever will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved.

Based on the thoughts a man meditates, he could experience the positive emotions with which we are wired or experience the negative emotions which is not supposed to be part of us. Thus develop the emotions and the will to enjoy the abundant life; the following steps are required of a believer:

1.     Read and meditate on the word. Put it constantly before your eyes, dwell on it in your thoughts until it begins to influence your emotions and you will become so joyful that you will find it easy to make choices with your will that honours God.  See Romans 12:2; Jos.1:8; Deut.6:6-8; 1Tim.4:13-16; Jas.1:21.

2.     Consciously speak the word over your life and refuse to speak the suggestions offered you by the circumstances you are going through. This is why the bible tells us in Romans 12:2 not to be conformed to this world but be transformed from it by the renewing of our minds. Mark 11:23; Romans 10:8-11; Prov.18:21. Your speech controls your emotions which in turn dictate the direction of your will.

3.     Keep the right company. 1Cor.15:33; Ps.1:1-3; Prov.13:20. If you are friends with an angry man for instance, you will learn his way and lose the ability to exercise your will to make sound judgments (negative emotions resulting in wrong use of the will – see Prov.22:24-25; 29:22). A snare to your soul in Prov.22:25 refers to negative emotions resulting in wrong decision making!

4.     Walk in the spirit: This will see you swimming in the positive emotion that love can bring about resulting in using your will correctly by godly standards. See Gal.5:16-17; Rom.8:1.

Message for Sunday 18th August, 2013

The abundant life of the soul

Text: 1Thessalonians 5:23: “… and I pray God that your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The soul realm of the tridimensional man as we saw last week is the realm of consciousness in man. It is made up of the mind, the will and the emotions of man. It is the window through which man’s spirit sees the world and the spirit realm. For a clearer understanding of the soul, let us break it up into three parts namely the mind, the will and the emotions.

The mind

The human mind is the most complex computer in the entire world. The brain which is the physical representation of the mind is referred to in science as the magic trees of the mind because the neurons that make up the brain are nerve cells that look like trees. The brain is said to process four hundred billion actions per second. We have a hundred billion nerve cells in our brains and each nerve cell can grow up to two hundred thousand branches. This means we have around three million years’ worth plus of space in our brains to build up memories. These trees like nerve cells of our brain take up a beautiful form that can be likened to a well-watered green tree or an ugly form which can be likened to a withered grey tree depending on the kind of thoughts you dwell on because thoughts are actually things. In fact it is these thoughts look like trees in the brain!  

The mind is the part of man that thinks and reasons and stores up information in the name of memories and data. It also has the ability to process information and observations and eventually come up with a conclusion known as judgments. This in turn influences our emotions and our wills as we shall see later in this study. The judgments that the mind produce are either sound or unsound depending on how much influence the Holy Spirit and the word of God has over such a mind. In other words, depending on how spiritual the mind is. This explains why several people can attend the same Church at the same time and hear the same word of God but turn out differently. The extent to which a person can benefit from the word of God is the extent to which they have renewed their minds. Remember that at new birth, only our spirits are saved; our souls and bodies remain the same (John 3:6; 2Cor.5:17; Rom.12:1-2 and Jas.1:21). The bible tells us what to do with a part of our soul known as our mind to enable us save our souls from the spectacle colored by a wrong belief system due to our traditions and natural experiences prior to our new birth experience.

In Romans 12:2, we are told to renew our minds so that we can see clearly. Until you see clearly or view things from God’s point of view, you cannot rightly divide the word of truth and your knowledge of scriptures would be tinted by traditions of men and unbelief which make the word of God of no effect! The result would be your inability to make sound judgments in the issues of life and therefore not being able to enjoy the abundant life the Lord has already achieved for us.  See Matthew 15:3-6; 22:29; Mark 12:24; 2Tim.2:15; Col.2:8, 16-23.

The importance of developing our souls to match up with our spiritual upgrade to the class of God cannot be overstated. In Isaiah 55:8-11, God was showing the distinction between His thought level and that of the natural man and therefore, His ways and the ways of natural man. We can see from this text that the ways of God are far higher than our ways and His thoughts than our thoughts.  He went on to show that because of the high level of His thinking, His word never returns unaccomplished. This is why the Apostle Paul says that no word of God is void of power. If we are to operate successfully at this realm of abundant life to which we have been called, we must of necessity upgrade our thinking pattern to line up with that of God. The quality of your life therefore is determined by the extent to which you are able to upgrade your thinking pattern to match up with that of God. How do we get to do this? The bible tells us. We can renew our minds with the word of God to enable us live up to this new life otherwise known as the abundant life; the life lived in the realm of divinity. The process of mind renewal can be achieved by taking the following steps.  

1.     The New birth experience: The spiritual rebirth otherwise known as the born again experience is the foundation for mind renewal otherwise, we would merely experience a form of godliness that denies the power of God. No matter how much a plastic seed looks like the original, it can never germinate even when given all the right environment for it to do so. This is why your membership of a Church without the new birth experience that initiates you into the family of God does not grant you access to the abundant life. The best you can get from operating the principles of the abundant life without first laying this foundation is leanness to your soul in spite of the blessing that robs off on you and you do not want that. This is what gave rise to men like Hitler and Stalin whose lives could best be described as efforts in futility resulting in colossal wastage of lives and property. Until God gives you a heart of flesh which describes the New Creation Spirit, you cannot experience mind renewal which results in God’s word being inscribed in your heart by His Holy Spirit. Thus your soul cannot be saved. See John 3:3-6; Romans 10:6-10; James 1:21; Ezek.36:26-27; Jer.31:31-34; Heb.10:15-17.

2.     Read the word, meditate on it until understanding is hatched and share it until it becomes a part of you, then study it until you can teach it. See 1Tim.4:13-16; Joshua 1:8; Ps.1:1-3. Scientifically, we are made to understand that every single thing we hear or everything that comes into our brains through our five senses, we think about them and then we make choices and convert them into a structural thing in our brain known as thoughts which look like trees. Scripturally, we are wired for love – righteousness, peace, joy, kindness, longsuffering etc. and not bitterness, unforgiveness or any form of carnality. If we believe what we hear that conflicts with the truth of God’s word, we become prone to deception and all the negative emotions that will cause the trees of our minds (the tree like neurons that make up the nerve cells that constitute the brain) which we talked about earlier to wither and look like grey withered trees. The result would be all kinds of sicknesses and diseases. Medically, most incurable illnesses like cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, insanity etc. have been associated with negative emotions. Recently, a Doctor was teaching at a service I attended and he said there is a research going on now to prove that breast cancer in women results from the negative emotion of unforgiveness. On the other hand, if we open up to divine information, they build us up and enhance the value of our souls. This makes the word of God indispensable in our quest for mind renewal. See Gal.5:16, 17, 19-23; 1Cor.13:4-8 etc.

3.     Be an addicted student of the word and other literature relevant to your needs. Read books of great minds thoroughly influenced by God; listen to teachings that edify and encourage godliness and attend seminars and conferences relevant to your purpose and destiny. When you read resource materials of those who God has enhanced their thinking in an area where you are ignorant, you rob minds with the great and the result is an enhanced mind which helps to raise the lid on your thinking capacity and makes you more prone to rightly dividing the word of truth and less prone to wrong interpretation of scripture. Consequently your life is enhanced because you cannot be greater than your thought life. See 2Tim.2:15; Prov.23:7a; 20:13. When Apostle Peter addressed the Sanhedrin when they were called to question for preaching in the name of the Lord following the miraculous healing of a crippled man at a gate of the temple, the elders observed from the general demeanor of Peter and John that they had been thoroughly influenced through their association with the Lord. Think about what your life would be like when you are thoroughly influenced by the word and the Holy Spirit! See Acts 4:13.

Next week, we shall continue on this topic by looking at the will and the emotions and how to bring them to their potentially upgraded state.

Message for Sunday 11^th August 2013

The three Levels of the Abundant life 1Thessalonians 5:23

Like we saw last week, the abundant life we enjoy is at three levels namely:

1.     Spiritual abundant life.

2.     The abundant life of the soul.

3.     The abundant life of the body or material realm.

Spiritual Abundant life

From our text it is clear that man is first a spirit, he has a soul and lives in a body. When Jesus Christ said in John 10:10 that He has come to give us abundant life to counter the theft, killings and destruction brought upon man in the Garden of Eden through sin, his first point of call was our spirits.  Abundant life is impossible without a recreation of our spirit because sin brought spiritual death upon man. This explains why sin is at the foundation of the human problem. The Lord told Nicodemus that except a man is born again; he cannot see and enter the kingdom of God (see John 3:1-6). When Jesus hung on the cross to die for us, He accomplished the following feats for our spirits:

1.     The forgiveness of our sin by God because by shedding His blood for us, remission of sin became the portion of man and therefore access to God became possible without any sense of guilt or inferiority. See Heb.9:22-28; 1Pet.2:24; John 3:16; Isaiah 43:25. The good news here is that as a new born baby before God, you have no past as God has forgiven your sin and will not remind you of them anymore. This is abundant life because you will be able to live free of guilt. Please understand here that sin is not measured by God so your past is dead and buried irrespective of the magnitude of your offenses.

2.     He upgraded us from the class of fallen man to the class of God. This is why we can now be called the children of God. The simple logic is this: a child of an animal is an animal and a child of a human being is a human being therefore, a child of God is a god (Ps.82:6). Ephesians 2:4-6; Ps.8:3-5.

3.     Following from above, your old human nature which was the reason for your sinful habits was destroyed and removed and a new spirit from God was birthed in you by the Holy Spirit. 1Cor.5:17; Ezekiel36:26.

4.     Your spirit is now a conducive place for the Holy Spirit to reside. Thus fulfilling God’s promise to us in Ezekiel 36:27. The implication of this is that your life will now be controlled from the superior realm of God and if you learn to be led by the Holy Spirit, you will operate by divine intelligence otherwise known as abundant life. So your body is the temple of God who walks in you and dwells in you. If you pray in the tongues often, you will have access to the mysteries of God and your inner man or spirit will be sharpened to be able to pick divine signals easily such that your outer man can benefit immensely from. See Jude 1:20-24-25, 1Cor.14:14-15, Rom.8:14.

How to build up the human spirit for the abundant life

1.     Pray in the Holy Spirit or in tongues. This is the gateway to the superior supernatural realm to which you now belong. This will enable you get firsthand information from God. When you do so, you are communicating with God through His direct line. He will pick the call himself and answer you Himself. In 1Cor.14:2-4 we are made to understand that when you pray in tongues, you are not speaking to men but to God and no man would understand you; only God will. This is why you do not know the meaning of what you say when you pray in tongues. 1Cor.14:14-15. This was the secret of Apostle Paul’s ministerial success and why God committed much more light to him than all the other Apostles including those who knew Jesus Christ in the flesh. See 1Cor.14:28. If you want to enjoy abundant life in your spirit today, begin by deliberately setting aside at least 30 minutes daily to pray in the Holy Spirit and in a month of 30 days, you would have consistently prayed in tongues for 15 hours. Imagine what your life will become after then. You will supernaturally know how to make sound judgments that would bless you in time to come.

2.     Read and study the bible; then, meditate on it on a daily consistent basis and you will be amazed that you will become a spiritual floodlight that would dispel darkness anywhere you are found. See 1Tim.4:13-16; Jos.1:8; Ps.1:1-3; Prov.4:20-22; John 6:63; 15:1-7; Ps.119:11, 105, & 130. Further, feeding on the word of God this way, will enable you to grow up to be able to take your place as an heir of God in the kingdom otherwise, you will be robbed of your abundant life privileges. 1Peter 2:2; Romans 8:15-17 & Gal.4:1.

3.     Do the word. This is the only way you can come to a point of being fully persuaded that the word really works because doing the word will deliver the blessing of abundant life to you. The first two steps conditions you to do the word but whether or not you will do the word has to do with your decision because God will not tamper with your will. To obey is better than sacrifice. Do not sacrifice your abundant life on the altar of disobedience. You cannot be truly free from the devil’s oppression without continuing in the word of God by doing it. See Jas.1:22-25; 1Sam.15:17-23; John 8:31-32.

4.     In making decisions, give the word of God first place. If anything step you are to take conflicts with what God says, then decide against that that step and follow God’s word. This is the wisest way to live because God knows the end from the beginning. In life, time will never create itself for you to spend it with God; you are the one to make the decision to invest your time by giving God more of the attention than this mundane world that will soon pass away. Ex.20:1-6; Mt.22:37; Mk.12:30; Lk.10:37.

UNDERSTANDING THE ABUNDANT LIFE

JOHN 10:10:

“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

What does Jesus Christ mean here when He says He came that we might have life more abundantly?

An understanding of the words “life” and “abundant” or “abundance” would give us a clear picture of this.

The online English dictionary defines life as follows:

1. The condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.

2. The sum of the distinguishing phenomena of organisms, especially metabolism, growth, reproduction, and adaptation to environment.

3. The animate existence or period of animate existence of an individual: to risk one's life; a short life and a merry one.

4. A corresponding state, existence, or principle of existence conceived of as belonging to the soul: eternal life.

5. The general or universal condition of human existence: Too bad, but life is like that.

In summation, we can define life as the condition that distinguishes between organisms from dead organisms being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction and the power to adapt to our environment through internal changes. In other words, life implies growth and total wellbeing of any individual. Life is made possible by the fact that man is a spirit and has a soul and lives in a body – 1Thess.5:23. The spirit is what keeps the body of man alive. This is why Jesus Christ by His death and resurrection redeemed us back to God so that we can be living spirits again and his intention is that we would afterwards live our lives as dictated by the Holy Spirit through our spirits and this is made possible by renewing our minds (which is an integral part of our soul) with the word of God because the word of God is the food of our spirits that enables us to grow to the point of living life to its fullness. See 1Peter 2:2; James 2:26; Romans 12:1-2 and John 6:63.

Abundant or abundance on the other hand could be defined as follows:

adjective

1. Present in great quantity; more than adequate; oversufficient: an abundant supply of water.

2. Well supplied; abounding: a river abundant in salmon.

3. Richly supplied: an abundant land.

The world Dictionary defines it as follows:

1.	Existing in plentiful supply
2.	Having a plentiful supply (of)

Thus the intention of the Lord is for us to have a plentiful supply of life or have life to overflowing.

Thus among human beings, there are people merely existing as dead spirits walking around in a body (unbelievers) and living spirits walking around in a body.

Every born again Christian is spiritually upgraded to the class of God with the aid of the Holy Spirit who God sends to live in our recreated human spirit which has come alive through the new birth experience. See. 2Cor.5:17.

For example Apostle Paul received this abundant life and was changed from a murderer to an Apostle who was instrumental in writing more than half of the New Testament. 1Cor.15:10

Peter the fisherman was converted from an unlearned ignorant fisherman without guts to a great bold leader instrumental in moving the work of the Lord Jesus Christ to the next level after His ascension. Eg. Peter who once denied Jesus Christ had this impression about him of his enemies – Acts 4:13

“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.”

Add examples of your personal testimony how this gospel has changed you and given you and some other people you know abundant life.

Abundant life influences us spirit soul and body. We shall take these one after the other from next week. 

Welcome to August, 2013: OUR MONTH OF ABUNDANT LIFE

In John 10:10, the Lord Jesus Christ made this claim:

“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

More than two thousand years later, this claim has been proven to be the truth over and over again. The existence of the thief cannot be denied as a quick look at the violence, perversion and devastation in the world today proves his existence. The Apostle Paul in 2Cor.4:4 refer to the thief as the god of this world. Another name for the thief is Satan, the devil. He is also referred to in Revelation 12:7-9 as the dragon, that old serpent and the accuser of our brethren. The text reads thus:

“And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. “ Revelation 12:7-11.

So the thief in our text scripture has lost his place and all he seeks to do is to make us lose ours by the same means he lost his – rebellion against God. He temporarily succeeded in making man lose his place with God when he deceived the first woman and successfully tempted the first Adam to rebel against God’s authority. His method as pointed out by the Lord is to steal, kill and destroy and he does this through deception. If he succeeds in doing this to any man, the man loses his place with God and he goes ahead to blind the mind of the man from the truth so that he can eventually damage the man without remedy.

The good news however is that the Lord Jesus Christ came and by the truth which He represents, brings the light that would dispel the darkness of ignorance and its consequent deception so that we might have abundant life.

In this month of abundant life, God is set to enlighten all the dark areas of your life that came about by your ignorance. In John 8:12, the Lord makes us understand that He is the light of the world and if any man follows him, he shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life and John 1:5 tells us that the light shines in the darkness and that darkness cannot comprehend the light. Why would a right thinking person want to walk in darkness when he can have the light of life?

In light of the foregoing, this month, we shall be looking at what abundant life really means and how the believer can lay claims on it in practice.

In summation, let me quickly say here that it takes the new birth to belong to the class of people who can benefit from the abundant life the Lord brought and new birth is available to any human being irrespective of your nationality and tradition by choice. If you have not made yet made this choice and you want to do so now, please say this prayer below out loud and you will be born into God’s family:

Heavenly father,

Have mercy on me a sinner. I repent of my sin and receive the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross for my salvation. I believe He died for me and on the third day, you raised Him from the dead for my salvation. From today, I receive Him as the Saviour and Lord of my Life.

Thank you father for forgiving me and writing my name in the book of life with the blood of Jesus. I pledge allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ from this day forever in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen!!!

If you just said this prayer, congratulations! You are now born again.  Please let us know by emailing flourishinggirl@gmail.com and we will send you an e copy of our “Believers’ Guide to Growth” to enable you take off on this glorious adventure of the new creation. You can also log on to our blog at www.flourishinggirl.blogspot.com or follow us on face book at www.facebook.com/flourishinggirl.   You will access more resource materials to enrich your Christian life. God bless you!!!