Man 1 - what is man

The main idea of this information is that man needs to understand his purpose and function in the world. The speaker discusses how both Job and David questioned the significance of man in relation to God. The speaker emphasizes that man is not God, but also not mere animals. Man has a unique destiny and purpose that separates him from the animal kingdom. The speaker suggests that to understand how man functions, we should look at how God functions. God is independent, self-generated, and does not rely on anyone or anything outside of Himself. The speaker encourages listeners to seek their own purpose and understand their subjective purpose in life. Okay, praise the Lord. Are we living according to the design or intention of God for creating man? For us to be able to know how to function in life, we need to know the mind of God when He was creating man. So the question is the topic for today in the series is what is man? What is man? From Adam to every other man that has walked through this earth, at one point in time we have asked that question. What is my purpose in life? Who am I? Why am I here? And how should I function in this world? Because we just realize that we happen to be here on earth and we just find things around us, especially those of us that grew up in a society. The society forms a doctrine or dogma in us that we are living by and many of us believe that this is the way that life should be. But are we on the right track? Have we ever asked this question? Who am I? What am I? And how am I to function in this world? A man of God in the Bible, his name is Job. He asked this similar question in Job chapter 7, Job 17 and 18. He says, what is man that you should exhort him, that you should set your heart on him, that you should visit him every morning and test him every moment. He is asking a recurring question and I believe he is directing this question to God. Saying what is man that you should exhort him, that you should set your heart on him. God's heart is upon us. The eyes of the Lord watches over the whole heart. He sees all the activities and the ways of man. That means to God, man is very important. He says, what exactly is man? David also in the book of Psalm, he later asked the same question. In Psalm 8, verse 3, Psalm 8, verse 3 says, When I consider your heavens, the breadth of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him? And the soul of man that you visit him. For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the wealth of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, even the beast of the field, the goat of the air, and the beast of the sea that passeth through the path of the sea. In other words, the Lord is so mindful of man that in all other things that he created in his heart, he put them under the dominion of man. He made man the head of everything. We cannot just be a head without a purpose. Everyone that the Lord puts as a leader in a place has an assignment. That means as a man, when I'm referring to the man and the woman, both genders, we have a purpose, a reason for us to be here on earth. In Psalm 144, verse 3 and 4, it is the Lord, you see David as he is speaking. This Lord, what is man, that we take knowledge of him. God takes knowledge of us. He is aware of everything that we do. God, there is nothing that means God. You know the Bible says that even a sparrow, as worthless as it is, I don't know if they use the word sparrow in the days of Jesus, as worthless as it is. It says not a single one of them will fall to the ground without the knowledge of God. It says even the years on our heads, he knows the number of them. That is how much God values everything he created. But now it is saying that he who takes knowledge of man, he is aware of everything that we do. Our activities, he is so mindful of us. And the faithful thing is in verse 4, it says man is like a bread. He stays out like a passing shadow. But was that the intention of God when he created man? Was it that man should be like a bread? A man that you receive today and tomorrow you will be no more. Was that the intention of God when he created man? Definitely that wasn't his intention. When God created man, he created man to live for all eternity. In terms of body he came to work with a body that can live for thousands of years and never lose sickness. Praise the Lord. So these are legitimate questions that we need to ask ourselves. Every one of us should ask him or herself in order to find the objective purpose of man and their subjective purpose in life. For us to know our purpose as man generically, we need to ask questions like this. What is man? And for us to find our own purpose as individuals, we need to ask this type of questions. Who am I? Praise the Lord. Therefore, there are two extremes that have been made knowing I studied the responses of people all over. There are two extremes that have been made. And we try to avoid these extremes but I will make us to know what these extremes are. Number one, man is not God. Man is not God. And man cannot live to become God. We are not God Almighty. And we cannot live to become God. If we try to defy humanity and proceed to him a position that he does not possess, that is we are trying to abstract a man's attribute that he does not have. We are trying to make a God out of man of which we are never God. That is the first extreme. And the second extreme is that man is not mere animal. We have the goats, the lions, the elephants. Man is not a mere animal. We share some similar traits with them. For example, they eat. We eat. They give birth. We give birth. They sleep. We also do sleep. But we are not like them. We are not in the same category. We are not part of the animal kingdom. Man has a destiny that distinguishes and separates us from the kingdom higher, the animal kingdom. We are in a creature with destiny. I put it down here. I said, but man is higher than animal and possesses a destiny which is not available to the animal kingdom. We are higher than animals and we possess a destiny which is not available to the animal kingdom. God never required any serious responsibilities from animals. Do you know that it was the fall of man that reduced animals to what we see today? Animals devouring one another. God made a lion not to eat another animal. But it was due to the fall of man. The responsibility that God put on the shoulder of Adam, it failed. And then Satan took over the world. And when he entered into the world, he polluted everything. Not only man, even the animals. He began to make the animals to eat and kill one another. That was not the creation that God made initially. So these are the two extremes. Man is not a God. And man is not an animal. We are somewhere in between that we are going to find out shortly. So for us to escape these two extremes, we need to know how God functions. And then just oppose man with God. For us to escape those two extremes, we need to know how God functions. Let us just do a little study about how God functions. I remember our father in the Lord said something some years back. He said you cannot really define what light is. But you can use the opposite of light to define it. That is darkness. You cannot really define what glory is. But you can use shame, which is the opposite of glory, to define what glory is. You all say this is shame. Then the opposite of it is glory. Praise the Lord. For us to know how a man functions, let us see how God functions. God is an independent being. And I want us to take this study very seriously because we are going to build it. This is the foundation of this series. We are going to build on it. And this will help us to interact and relate with God. And even interact and relate with people around us. God is an independent being, autonomous and self-generated. That is, what I mean by autonomous is that it self-governs. It governs its own self. It does not submit to the government of any other being. It is autonomous. It is independent. That is, it is reliant upon itself. When Nigeria got independent from the British, we do not have to rely on them again. We cannot decide to do things on our own. Also, God is independent. He does not depend on any man or any creature or any being anywhere to do whatever He wills. He is independent and He is self-generated. That is, He does what He does. He creates what He creates out of Himself. Nobody comes...the Bible says that we need to advise God. Nobody comes to consult with God. So, I advise God and tell Him, why don't you do things in this way? Why don't you let us do things like this? The Bible says in Genesis that God decided to let us remain man in our own image. The us is still God. God in the Father, God in the Son, God in the Holy Spirit, which is still one entity, one being. So, it is not like a being somewhere that God consulted that, okay, let us make God man in our own image. It is still within Himself. Just as I have stated, you are thinking within yourself, and let me do things like this. You have the body, you have the spirit, and you have the soul. Within your soul, you can form that. This is the way things should be done. Through your spirit, the Lord can put a thing in your mind that this is how it should be done. Many times we just say that something told me it is from the spirit man. The only spirit signal of this part of the spirit man, and the spirit man related it to us. And then we cannot say, okay, I decided to do something. So, God is in...He has a counsel like that within Himself that let us make man in our own image. So, it is not like He was visiting me on that day, requesting counsel, consulting me for suggestions, praise the Lord. So, God is God, and there is no one outside of God who in any way influences Him. There is no one outside of God who influences God. He does not derive what He does from anything or anyone outside of Himself. In God's speech, you know when God was promising the ground, He said, I... How did He put it now? He said, I swear by my name, or I swear by myself. When He was blessing that, in blessing I will bless you. That was when He offered Isaac to God. He was attempting to offer Isaac, and God stopped Him. He had already offered Him in His hands. So, God said, in blessing I will bless you. He said, I swear by my name, or maybe by Himself. So, there is nothing higher than God by which He can swear. So, God does not derive from anything outside of Himself. Then, I said, He is His own center of reference. God is His own center of reference. Let me explain this very well. The earth reports proteins around His core. Today, this time, we are in the afternoon. In the next few hours, we will be in the night. Because the earth rotates. And this part is facing the sun at this time. And in a few hours time, this part is back in the sun. And facing darkness. It is that part of the universe. And then, everywhere we will see that. It is revolving, it is rotating around itself. And now, the whole earth now revolves around the sun. And it is not only the earth that revolves around the sun, but every planet that is in this solar system. We have the Mars, the Jupiter. Everything revolves around the sun. So, the sun is the center of reference for this solar system. Now, if you go a little outside our solar system, there is what we call the galaxy. The galaxy is in spiral form. By God's grace, we will be having a projector here. It is one of our plans. So, all these things I am saying, we can also explain with pictures. The galaxy is in a spiral form. It looks like you are turning. You do not know this mixture. When you are mixing this cake, butter and sugar, you are mixing it. No, it makes this cake. You see this spiral form design on the butter. That is how the galaxy is. So, it is in a spiral form. And in the center of the spiral form is something that is called black hole. It is dark. So, the scientists do not know. The camera could not zoom so much to know what is there. But from the angle, from the distance at which we are viewing it, it is a very dark cycle. And everything in the galaxy revolves around that black hole. So, there is always a movement. And the scientists now concluded that because there are billions of galaxies, the camera has made over 200 videos. And they just in the scope that the camera, the binoculars and cover. So, outside that scope, there will still be more galaxies. So, they do not know the extent. They do not even know how wide the universe will be. But they just concluded that if everything is revolving around something, that means all the galaxies is also revolving around something. And I will tell them that it is revolving around Jesus. Because that is what the Bible teaches. But it is hidden in the scriptures. We cannot say it. It is only to whom God opens his eyes to say that Jesus is the center of the universe. Everything in the universe revolves around Jesus. Now, God is his own center of reference. He revolves around himself. He is also revolved around any other object. So, he is his own center of reference. Everything depends on him. His self-existence is uncreated and is eternal. We are looking at who God is. I don't know. Okay, let me check the time. Okay, we still have 15 more minutes. So, what God is, only God is. What God is, only God is. His attributes are not transferable. I can transfer files from my system to your phone, maybe through WhatsApp, through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. But who God is, his attributes cannot be transferred to another being. He is who he is. And there is only one God. And he is exclusive in his attributes and in his activities. God functions primarily as God shall he is. He does not act out of character. His activities are always in accord with his character. That is what I mean here is that God functions primarily as who he is. He does not do anything outside of himself. His nature forms his character. So, whatever you say God does is who he is. He does not say somebody is doing something and want to act like that person. Like we human beings do. No, we say something and we like to call that person. And we try to emulate him or her. God does not act out of anything like that. He is his own center of reference. He has his own character and activities that is in accord with his character. His activities, everything he does is in accord with his character. And his character is formed out of his nature. So, he is God's God. I don't know any other way to go. I believe that we have understood that outside of God there is nothing else. Now, who is man? What was the intention of God when he created man? There are school of thoughts that has taught us, many of us we have had it. That says, man is his own center of reference. That man is his own center of reference that is independent. We have people that we teach, especially the motivational speakers. They say man is independent. Man is all, you can generate, you can self-generate. The attributes of God, they are trying to ascribe it to man. Whatever you decide to do within yourself, put energy to it and then you will achieve it. That is not the attributes of man, praise the Lord. The same man is the source of everything he does. He is the source of his own activities. Whatever I am doing, I am the reason for doing it. If I go to school, I am the reason I am going to school. If I am fighting and quarreling with somebody, I am the reason I am fighting and quarreling with that person. So, they say that man is the master of his own fate. That is, he designed his own life. You just plan your life and say this is how I want my life to be. Just plan 10 years ahead and then work with it. If you work hard enough, you will achieve it. So, they also say things like, if you put your mind to it, you will achieve it. When you fail, you have only learned a way it cannot work. Try again until you achieve it. If you can perfect your intellect through education, gather enough resources and put your best effort, you can become anything you aim for. These are attributes of God. But deceptively, the devil has brought this knowledge to man. Do we know that this is the same sensation the serpent gives to him? He says, as the Lord told him not to eat of this fruit, he said yes, that we should not eat of any other fruit in this garden. But of these three, we must not touch. And the serpent told him that if you eat this, you will become like God. So, the same deception that the devil used to bring about the fall of man is still the same deception he is using on man still today. He is making us to believe that we can become like God, autonomous, that is, governing our own selves, independent, that is, reliant on our own selves, and self-generative, that is, we can decide to do whatever we want to do and we achieve it. That is the deception of the devil, praise the Lord. Many things I am going now, they are great questions in our hearts. Because these things we have been hearing in so many times. I say, man has coined phrases of God, like, think big. If you can think it, you can achieve it. Positive thinking. Rich mindset. If you have the mindset of a millionaire, in a short time, you will become a millionaire. So, everything that we are being taught is around our mind, is around ourselves, we are revolving around ourselves. And man was not created to be like that. We were never created. Let's go on. Making man to be his own God. Okay, the ideology, all these things I have said, is making man to be his own God. If all these things are true, then the world would have become a better place than it is now. We would have had heaven on earth because some people were reasoning how to create heaven on earth and they would have worked it out. This world would have been a better place. There are many people who have brilliant ideas, things that can bring solutions to this world. And if they have worked so hard to achieve it, this world would have achieved it and this world would have been a better place. God created this world in seven days. So, because it's self-generated, it can do whatever it will do and it will achieve it. So, if man is the same, we can also think of anything and also achieve them. And this world will be a better place. We invented cars, we invented building houses, we do several things. But all these things, do we know that it is not out of us? All the houses, the cars, have been created by God. He only put the seed in our brain, in our mind. Just like the tree, when God created the earth, it is all these trees that are around that God commanded to come out of the earth. He commanded some trees to come out. But many of those trees, many of them are still around today. Many of them will have died. But the seed that was in them continued their generation. So, everything that we see that man does today, the aircraft, anything that they are doing, it is a seed that God has put in man. That is the reason he said we should dominate the air, because he has put something in us that will help us to dominate. Praise the Lord. I'm trying to see if we can cover everything. Okay. I said man's primary function is to be receptive to, by contingently, by dependently, allowing God's activity to be expressed through him. Now, how should man function? This is the way man is expressed according to the design of God. God designed man to depend on him. God designed man to revolve around him. He designed man to depend only on him. But, okay, let's back up. This is called the scriptures. Let's read 2 Corinthians 4-7. 2 Corinthians 4-7. It says, For we have this treasure in eighteen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. God created man to be a vessel. Man, the eighteen vessels referred to here is the body of man. God made us to be eighteen vessels. It says we have this treasure. And what is that treasure? Our Lord Jesus, if you will read from verse, I think verse 4 to this verse 7, you will realize that this verse is referring to Jesus. We are to accommodate a being in us whose activity we are to reflect. So we are a vessel that has a treasure within it. 2 Corinthians 5-9. 2 Corinthians 5-10. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle with the soul, without a building of God, and house non made with man, eternal in the heaven, that is, we are a house, and a house accommodates something. Praise the Lord. A house accommodates something. So this house, or another analogy, is that we are the temple. The Bible requires us to be a temple. In 4 Corinthians 16-19. It says what? Knowing not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you. Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you. Why is our body the temple of the Holy Ghost? It is because when God created man and wants man to be in his own image, he has a space within man for his own spirit to dwell in man. So that man can reflect and express his own attributes. So we are not created to depend on ourselves and think things out and say this is how we want things to be done and just be about it. It is God who should be the center of reference of our life. Praise the Lord. Therefore, man is a receiver. We are designed to receive by faith the activities of God and express them. All these things I am saying may not be very clear today, but as we continue in this series, we begin to understand better. We are to receive from God. God puts things in us. Like I said, all the creations, the cars, the inventions, the cars and everything, it sees that God has planted in us. And there are many more things that God has planted in us, but without our right foundation to God, these things cannot be expressed. So that is the reason we must not think like the people of the world, thinking that the world, as a man, is to decide his own affairs. But the affairs of man is to be decided by the spiritual thing which is God. Now, when God created man, He gave man free will. He gave us freedom of choice because He wants a man, a being, that will choose him out of love. That is the reason when He created Adam and He put him in the garden of Eden, He tells this tree, do not touch it. He gives a test to Adam because He has made him a being, a creature that has the power to choose. He has given him the power to choose for himself. So God made a man, amazing to depend on him, but he does not force himself on that man. So He limited his authority by giving man the ability to choose. So man now has to decide. So that was the reason the devil had the opportunity to come to man and deceive man. He came to man and was taking the gaze of man away from God through self. So that man can now leave God and choose to depend on self. Praise God! God made man to depend on himself and He gave us a free choice. And now the devil came to take the gaze of man away from that God whom we have to focus on and made it to turn that gaze upon self. So that we cannot become like God. And that was the beginning of the fall of man. Till today we have not been able to get it right. Every invention that we have even been making is endangering our lives more. Today we are talking of the ozone layer being depleted because of the carbon dioxide that we are releasing into the air. Making inventions is cutting arms to our body, to our life, to our existence. The lifespan of man is getting shorter and shorter despite the advance in scientific knowledge. Why? Because we have been made to focus within ourselves and we are not putting our focus anymore on God. But the truth of the matter is this. Even though Satan makes us to turn our gaze in God, we are still not dependent on ourselves as man. An unregenerated man will do things as if he lives in the flesh. Self is in control of his life. But we know that it is not self that is controlling an unregenerated man. It is just a deception, a plot, like a disguise of the devil. He uses self to cover his eyes and come to man. A man will begin to think that he is the one generating this plot and do what he is doing. We know that the devil throws dark thoughts. He will throw a thought to a man. For example, supposing the devil wants to push a suicide. The person will be taking it as if he is the one thinking to commit that suicide. Not knowing that the devil is standing beside him or somewhere throwing dark thoughts. And he will be formalizing it to that person. So that the person will not know that this thought is not coming from him or her, praise the Lord. So, self is a plot of the devil to deceive man. So, when Satan says he will become like God and will be in control of yourself. He wanted man to leave God so that he will depend on himself and then he will be able to take hold of man. And that is exactly what the devil has done. So, there are two sources through which man is presently dependent upon. You either depend on God or you depend on the devil. You cannot depend on the devil. Because man was not created to be self-dependent, praise the Lord. Any evil you see a man commit, it was from the devil. May the Lord bless you. Let me bring out some scriptures here. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 2. It says, Wherein in time past ye worked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. The spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. It is the spirit that works in the children of disobedience. In the unwritten everything's man. It is the spirit that works in them. They will think they are the one in control. But in spirit is beneath that self that is controlling them. It is deception. And that is the reason we cannot make ourselves the center of reference of our life. So, there are two causes. God or Satan. Let me take another scripture. 1 John 3. It says, He that committed sin is of the devil. He that committed sin is not of himself. It says he is of the devil. For the devil sinneth it from the beginning. For this purpose the son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. He who committed is of the devil. The devil is the one who inspired that sin in him. We don't think any... I don't know what analogy or example I can give. A man can just be seated and a thought will just come to him. He never thought about it. And he will decide I want to do it. It is the devil. I was reading one of the Jewish Jews in their literature. And it highlighted what was happening in the days of Moses. When Moses was telling Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to go. Do you know that in the scriptures, Pharaoh will tell Moses okay you can go. Then the following day he will tell Moses you are not going to go. Note that literature shows that when Pharaoh releases them, the devil will now come to him and begin to speak to his mind. He will not say out on you. He will say out on now allow the Israelites to go. Who will now be doing this labor? The devil will now begin to speak to his mind and then his hand will be added again. And he will now say Moses you are not going again. In himself he has decided that he should go. But the devil now came and influenced him. No man, praise the Lord, commits sins by himself. Verse 9 of Exodus. Whereby the bond of God doth not commit sin, for a seed remains in him. Anybody who is regenerated has the seed of God in him and he doth not commit sin. Verse 10. I am rushing so that we can run. We are almost there. 7 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 5. I am using the ESV. I copied the ESV. It is not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God. Praise the Lord. It is not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God. We cannot say that the fact that we are in church today is not because we wanted to be. It is because we are empowered by God. Jesus Christ said no body will come to me except by God sending him. That means God is the one that is working in man even bringing them to salvation. It is not a thing that we have decided by ourselves. Praise God. So we have been told, even by men of God, that when we are not living by the Spirit, we are living in the flesh. But this is not completely true because it proceeds us to be independent as Christians. When a Christian is taken out of the flesh, we say that person has allowed himself. But it is not true because we cannot allow ourselves to do something like that. There is a fool, there is a thing, the devil, who is seen after every Christian and keeps trying to fool that Christian. He deceives that Christian into sin. So I say, okay let me read it again. It says, this proceeds that there is an independent self-resource in a Christian which switches to action when we don't live by the dictates of the Lordship of Jesus. Truly, this is Satan's deception in the Garden of Eden. It says, you will become like God. Evidently, we can see that this is a lie. So this applies to people punishing themselves when they sin, believing that they are killing the old man in them. People will begin to punish themselves. I remember a brother, he invoked from Peter Polytheus to Yahweh. He said, because he did something that he should not have done. And for him to not do it again, he wanted to punish himself. He said, I will not take back the sword today. I will take down the sword from Peter Polytheus to Yahweh to punish himself. But I tell you, if God does not help him, why? Why? Because it is not himself. There is a power behind it that is pushing, pressurizing and holding Christians to go back to sin. So, if we are forced to know, anytime we fall into sin, anytime we act out of the will of God, out of the love or decrees of God, we will be forced to know that what we have just done is not coming out of me. The day the Lord cleansed our soul, He gave us His Spirit and we become a regenerated man. The Bible says in Deuteronomy, anyone who is born of God does not commit sin. It is not possible for us to decide to commit sin again without an eternal cause. Praise the Lord. So, we do not disclaim ourselves because we have done something wrong. We need to praise the source, which is the devil. And talk that influence away from our life. We will continue from there next week. So, I say Satan is the one disguising himself under the cloak of self, deceiving people, that all that man is, is either derived from God or from Satan. So, Satan goes on disguising himself in the form of self, but it is not true. Everything man is doing is derived either from God or from the devil. I will just end up with this. If we know of the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, all these fruits of the Spirit, we do not express them by forcing it out of ourselves. We allow the Spirit, because it is the fruit of the Spirit, we allow the Spirit of God to express it through us. It is not something we can do out of our own determination. It is something that we release ourselves to the Holy Spirit to express through us. And as we do that, we begin to realize that we are bearing the fruits of the Spirit. We will continue from here in our next week when we continue in the series. But in conclusion, man is not an independent being. Man is a dependent being. And because of the situation of this now, we have two sources to depend on. Either you depend on God or you depend on the devil. Even the devil himself is the greatest being and he is not independent. He also depends on God. But what he receives from God, he perverts it. He abuses it. He misuses it. He distorts it so that it will be to bring shame to God. That is his intention. So whatever he receives from God, he distorts it and expresses the distortion to the world. And the same thing is what he is doing in man. Musicians who are singing worldly songs, they are not getting those songs from their intellect. It is coming from heaven. But the devil that is in them will distort the song and use it and make it to be so worldly that it will never bring glory to God again. Musicians that are singing gospel songs, they are receiving from heaven and releasing it out to the people as they receive it. Because there is a spirit in them that is the Spirit of God that will help them to bring it out. But the people of the world, they receive it and the devil perverts it, distorts it and they release the distorted form of that attribute of God. So with this knowledge, we now know that there is nothing man does in contact that is out of himself. It is either expressing the character or attribute of God or it is expressing the character or attribute of the devil. And I pray that in any way that we are submitting to the character or trait of the devil, from today it ends in the mighty name of Jesus. We will never be influenced by the devil in the mighty name of Jesus. We are regenerated beings. We are children of the living God, carrying the Spirit of God in our body. We are the children of the living God and I decree that the Spirit of God can come and express us in and through our life in the mighty name of Jesus. Let us bow down our heads to pray. Let us appreciate the Lord for the world that we are in today. We have seen that man is a dependent man. We are not to depend on ourselves but we are to depend on the spiritual source who is God. We are created to depend on God so that our life can be meaningful, our life can make sense, our life can be impactful. Thank you for this revelation and knowledge that you have brought to us today. We give you the glory in the name of Jesus. In Jesus' mighty name we have prayed. Blessed be the Spirit of the Holy Spirit. I submit myself to your authority. Express the attribute of God in my life. Express the characters of God through my life. Express the behaviors of God, the activities of God, express them through my life. I submit myself to your authority. I submit myself to your Lord Jesus, the Lord over my life and express yourself in and through my body, in and through my life in the mighty name of Jesus. In Jesus' mighty name we have prayed. Lastly, we are going to tell the Lord that every influence that the devil is having over my life, I have obtained now by the fire of the Holy Ghost. Every connection, every influence that the devil is having over my life, to make me to act out of the will of God, outside of the will of God. Every influence that he has over my life, to make me to act against the will of God, I cut them off right now. I cut off those influences. I cut off those connections. In the mighty name of Jesus. I cut them off. I cut them off. In the name of Jesus. In Jesus' mighty name we have prayed. Father, we thank you for your Word that we have heard. Thank you because you are speaking expressly to us today. Thank you because you are aware as we are taking them in whom you will continue to expand it to us in our process. You continue to enlarge it to us and explain it to us. And begin to shine your light upon it so that we can see who we are truly in the light of your glory. In the mighty name of Jesus. That in any way that the devil has been influencing us before now, that we have been thinking that it is generated from within ourselves. That is the decree. That those influences come to an end now in the name of Jesus. We express only your attributes, only your character, only your activities in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank you Lord because we have done this. In Jesus' name we have prayed. Praise the Lord.