Lately, the LORD has been teaching me deeper things in His Word which I had never known and has commanded me to put them down in a book titled “ZOE – the God Kind of Life.”

This is an excerpt from chapter 4. Be blessed as you read on…

I show you a MYSTERY…

“Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath or spirit of life, and man became a living being,” Genesis 2:7 (AMP).

“The ZOE shows up best in dead people…!”

The power of God is always enshrouded in mysteries and to walk in His power, we must be able to come to the understanding of the mystery of His will. It is His ways that reveals His acts!

“He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel,” Psalm 103:7 KJV.

The first earthly state of Adam was death and that first state happens to be the last state of living men today. God only gives life to the dead and not the living. Death has always been God’s pathway to life! So you see, death is not an end, but a pathway, a route to a higher form of life and living.

When Adam was formed from the dust of the ground, he was given an earthly but lifeless body. The body appeared to be stone cold, lifeless and motionless just like the remains of any dead man today so unaware of what was, or is, or is to come and in that state of deadness being unresponsive to his natural habitat.

Have you ever observed that there is some kind of fear in people when they are before the dead?

So, for the ZOE to come into Adam, God had to start Adam from a dead state “.. and breathed into his nostrils the breath or Spirit of life, and man became a living being,” Genesis 2:7b.

This becomes what I call the journey into the ZOE: the ZOE shows up best in dead people.

God enjoys sharing His life with dead people; He shared Life with Adam and in the days of Elijah, shared life with the widow’s son. In the days of Elisha, He shared life with the dead son of the Shulamite woman and when Lazarus died, Jesus shared life with him.

God loves dead people. When Jesus rose from the dead, He shared life with countless number of dead people and brought them back to life. This has always been God’s ways and understanding this will open up a door way to access His Power!

“Just as the Father raises up the dead and gives them life [makes them live on], even so the Son also gives life to whomever He wills and is pleased to give it,” John 5:21 AMP.

Death is the only door way to life I know of!

A POWERLESS GENERATION

Adam became powerful when he rose up from the dead,

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul,” Genesis 2:7 KJV.

The moment God did this; He gave the dominion over the earth to the dead living man.

“And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it [using all its vast resources in the service of God and man]; and HAVE DOMINION over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth. And God said, See, I HAVE GIVEN YOU every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the land and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food,” Genesis 1:28-29 AMP.

Authority is only given to dead men. This was His way from the beginning and will remain His way for all times. Sad to say, we live in a generation that wants the power of God and are not willing to DIE. God has never for once trusted a living man with His Power.

This generation is spiritually bankrupt of His power; we want the Power of God so much not for His purpose and glory but for self glorification, aggrandization and for a show to prove how powerful we are.

We seek for authority and power to oppress the poor and exploit them the best way we can. The church has become a den of thieves and robbers and the pulpit a means of ripping people off their wealth and enriching ourselves while impoverishing the flocks.

The greed in the heart of men has made God’s power operate in so little dimension in what we call the ministry and because God cannot be used but uses people, the sons of men have therefore devised a way of orchestrating their dubious and mischievous intentions – they have gone the way of Balam and are neck deep into sorcery in order to operate what looks like the prophetic but is in actual sense witchcraft that manipulates the people of God.

And on the other hand, the people are so alive and perceiving that in seeing they can not SEE and hearing they can never understand. They have gradually become the Laodicea Church age in the 21st Century who seeing are blind, hearing are deaf, clothed are naked
“For you say, I am rich; I have prospered and grown wealthy, and I am in need of nothing; and you do not realize and understand that you are WRETCHED, PITIABLE, POOR, BLIND, AND NAKED,” Revelation 3:17 AMP.

The Holy Spirit is not given to us so we can speak with new tongues as most Pentecostals believe and are being taught, the decent and the indwelling of the Spirit of God within the believer is for the full manifestation of the ZOE in the believer.

The Fruits speaks of the ZOE lifestyle, the gifts reveals the ZOE demonstration of Power and these are basically the two attributes of God:

His FRUIT (character and nature):

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law,” Galatians 5:22-23 KJV

His GIFTS (Power)”

“Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same LORD. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal,” 1 Corinthians 12:4-8 KJV.

“But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of God is come upon you.” Luke 11:20 KJV.

All these manifestations are all about the operations of the ZOE – the highest form of Life!

The SANCTUARY – His dwelling place

“Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them,” Exodus 25:8 KJV.

The idea of the Sanctuary was to be a dwelling place for God among His people. God desires above all to have fellowship with His people but for this to be possible,

His people are to show their interest in having Him among them by their willingness to build Him a Sanctuary – this is always a responsibility of His people for all times. He gave the specifications to Moses and the sanctuary was built according to the pattern shown him on the mountain and dedicated as a dwelling place with His Glory covering it.

God desires to have us as His sanctuary – to dwell not just among us but IN us. The apostle Paul caught that revelation and said,

“The God Who produced and formed the world and all things in it, being LORD of heaven and earth, DOES NOT DWELL IN HANDMADE SHRINES, “ Acts 17:24-25 AMP.

Through the new birth, God has been able to establish a higher level of relationship with us not by dwelling among us as He did with the people of Israel, but dwelling in us. We have become His sanctuary – His dwelling place.

A HIGHER TRUTH

However though, we must understand that there is something even MORE that He desires and this is been reflected in the Old Testament times. He commanded Moses to build Him a sanctuary and Moses built it.

David had a vision to build a tabernacle and his son Solomon built it. To them, they wanted God to dwell among them and as such could not see the MYSTERIOUS TRUTH hidden behind the building that even though they claimed to build Him sanctuary so He could live among them, they were often found inside the sanctuary worshipping Him.

The Sanctuary was God dwelling among men and we can refer to it as the physical appearance of God Himself. Now if the purpose of the tabernacle was to have God dwell among His people, why were the people always in the Tabernacle?

The Tabernacle was to house the LORD but it ended up housing both His people. In essence, God does not just want to dwell among His people nor live in His people which are but levels of relationships, His overall desire is to house His people. Not just are we His sanctuary or tabernacles, He has become our SANCTUARY. He lives in us and we live in Him.

“FOR IN HIM WE LIVE AND MOVE AND HAVE OUR BEING; as even some of your [own] poets have said, For we are also His offspring,” Acts 17:28 AMP.

This is a higher level of relationship that He is calling us into and only a few has found this path. A relationship where everything about us in IN Him. IN Him we live (our sanctuary) IN Him we move (our walk) IN Him we have our being (ZOE – the God kind of Life).

This is the highest form of all three levels of intimacy (dwelling among us, dwelling in us and dwelling in Him). This is the level where God has become our world and we come to understand that everything we seek for and ever will need is IN HIM!

 

~ by Mark Cyril

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Author, teacher, motivational and conference speaker, Pastor Mark Cyril is the international President of CYRIL MARK WORLD EVANGELISM – an independent ministry taking the message of the cross across the Nations turning many in their numbers to salvation through Jesus Christ. He is also the Senior Pastor of Revelation Apostolic Community; an apostolic and Prophetic Word based ministry in Abuja the capital city of Nigeria – West Africa.

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