THE SEVEN DISPENSATIONS 1C

The Seven Dispensations

1. The dispensation of Innocence.
   You can find this in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Key verses: Gen. 2:16-17 says, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, 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.” A perfect God created a perfect environment and decided to create a perfect man whom he put in the perfect environment with only one instruction. If a perfect man in a perfect environment could not keep one instruction, how can an imperfect man in an imperfect environment keep Ten Commandments? Meditate on this.
   
   Does it surprise you how you cannot not keep your New Year resolutions without breaking them within a short period of time? It is the sin nature, the carnal nature, the unregenerated nature of man called the Adamic nature. Where did disobedience emanate from? Disobedience emanates from the unregenerated will of man. It is the will of man that makes him clearly distinct from other animals. The soul comprises of the mind, the will and the emotion. Your emotion is your feeling self, your mind is your thinking self while your will is your deciding self. God loves man to the extent that he created man after his own image and likeness. A loving God decided to elevate his creation to his own level. That is the truest meaning of love! True love elevates, true love takes you out of nothing and then makes something out of you. True love ennobles, true love is selfless – “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”. If God did not give man the will to make choices, then, man would have been a robot. God wanted man to freely choose to do the right thing. God gave man the freedom to choose, not by imposition. However, consistently, what man ought to have used to magnify God and fall in love over and over again with God became a weapon of offence that he is using against God. Man started frolicking with Lucifer; man started yielding his will to the will of the snake in the garden. In the heart of every bishop, there is a snake, you must kill the snake in the garden before it deceives you, before it takes away the will of God out of your system and make you disobey God.
   
   It is so easy for fallen man to be serpentine in nature. Man inherited disobedience from Adam. That is why a lot of people find it difficult to keep their New Year resolutions. If you study Romans 7, you will see how Apostle Paul struggled with the flesh. The only way to demystify flesh is to go to the cross. Apostle Paul found the secret – the crucified way is the way of the cross that is why Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23). The cross is a place of death. Apostle Paul said, “I die daily”. Believers no longer want to ‘die’ but they want to go to heaven. Until you learn to say like Apostle Paul in Gal. 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Learn to visit the cross on a daily basis. That is the secret of living above sin. It is possible to have dominion over sin; sin shall not have dominion over you. It was at the cross that flesh was crucified. It was at the cross that the key of comprehensive dominion was released. We can live above sin, we can live above self, we can live above satan and all his demons and all his works. Receive the grace in Jesus name.

TO BE CONTINUED……