How We Cultivate The Presence Of God by Pastor Mildred Kingsley-Okonkwo: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

God Excites You — or Something Is Wrong

God has to excite you. You cannot be living below standard if God does not stir something in you. If coming to church feels like a duty rather than a hunger to meet Him — that is a sign something needs attention. The worst thing that can happen spiritually is for God to become ordinary.

A Quick Recap: Creation and the Fall

Genesis 1 gives the summary of creation. Genesis 2 gives the breakdown. The two chapters together reveal something important: God did not just speak creation into being and leave it at that — He also formed it. When He said "Let the waters swarm with living creatures," the next verse tells us He created and formed each one. The same pattern applies to man: God formed man from dust, breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living being.

This matters because of what happened with Satan. Satan is a spirit without a body. When God said "Let them have dominion" in Genesis 1:26, He was conferring legal authority on beings with physical bodies. Only a being with a body has legal rights to operate on earth. That is why Satan needed to borrow the serpent's body. He came to the serpent and said, in effect: let me use your body. The serpent, described as the most crafty of all animals, agreed — and through that body, Satan was able to legally act in the earth realm.

Adam, had he been operating at full spiritual capacity, would have recognised that a spirit without a body has no right to be here. That recognition was part of what was lost.

You Are a Spirit — the Body Is the Tool

The most important and valuable tool on earth is not your spirit — it is your flesh, because without it you cannot remain here. God needs people with free will and bodies to be His representatives on earth. Angels have no free will — they obey because they are built to. God wanted beings like Him who could choose not to obey, but chose to love Him anyway. That is true worship.

When Jesus sent His followers out and said "whatever you bind on earth," He was speaking to people with legal authority in the earth realm. Demons have no such authority. When a believer who understands their legal standing says "get out in the name of Jesus," the demon has to leave — because the believer has rights here, and the demon does not.

Satan understood this legal structure. That is why he came to the serpent rather than to Adam directly. He could not approach Adam as a bodyless spirit without exposing his illegality. So he came dressed in flesh and used the tree as a lure.

What Adam Lost — and What Jesus Restored

Before the fall, Adam was operating at optimal spiritual capacity. His mind was unlimited. He named every living creature and remembered all of them. He was functioning like God — which is precisely what "in His image and His likeness" means. There were no limits. He could have entered the water, could have entered the air — he was a spirit being with a body, fully conscious of his spiritual nature.

After eating the fruit, he became more conscious of his natural state than of his spiritual one. He hid from God. He sewed leaves together — the leaves would be withered by that evening. The man who had named every creature was now making decisions at the level of panic.

Jesus came to show what it looks like to live in the spirit while in the flesh. He healed the sick, raised the dead, walked on water, stilled storms — not because He was exempt from human experience but because He was always more conscious of His spiritual reality than His natural one. When they came for Him in Gethsemane and Peter raised his sword, Jesus said: if I wanted legions of angels, I could call them now. He was never out of contact with heaven. He was continuously aware of what was available to Him.

God declared the Redemption plan at the very moment of the fall. In Genesis 3:15, while addressing Satan through the serpent, He said: the seed of the woman will bruise your head. God was announcing that He would come back as a man — through a woman — and destroy the work of the enemy. He picked a virgin specifically because God needed to overshadow her so that the child carried no sin nature through blood. A woman's blood and her child's blood do not mix during pregnancy — Jesus carried the blood of God entirely, making His sacrifice the worthy one it needed to be. And God had planned this before He even created man.

You cannot mess up your life in a way that God has not already accounted for. Before you were born, He had a plan. Before the foundation of the earth, Jesus was already the answer.

Eden Is Not a Location — It Is the Presence of God

Eden was not primarily a garden in a geographical place. Eden is the presence of God. Wherever the presence of God is — that is Eden. Jesus came to restore that. And because He came, Eden is available right now. You do not have to wait for it. You carry it.

The man was placed in the garden with two assignments: to cultivate it, and to keep it.

To cultivate means to promote or improve the growth of something by labour and attention. Cultivating the presence of God in your life requires:

• Prayer — not merely scheduled prayer, but the consciousness that God is always with you. Speaking to Him throughout the day, asking Him about decisions before you ask anyone else, being a person who lives in the awareness of His presence.
• Study of the Word — not just what a pastor said, but personally opening the Bible to check, to search, to meditate. Like someone who is hungry and searching for a promise to stand on — not reading out of routine, but out of need.
• Worship — keeping an atmosphere around you that is saturated with the things of God: messages, music, your own voice in praise. Staying in that atmosphere cultivates the presence over time.

To keep means to maintain in condition or order by care or labour. Once the presence is cultivated, it must be guarded. You cannot drift into social media consumption of other people's lives and expect the presence to remain strong. The noise of what others have and you do not have — what someone achieved that you have not — is designed to pull you out of the presence and back into the natural. Silence that noise deliberately.

This is also why shame must be addressed. When Adam sinned, shame was the second thing that appeared — right after fear. Shame caused him to hide, to blame, to shrink. Shame causes people to miss what is rightfully theirs because they are too embarrassed to ask for it. Shame says: don't speak, don't reach, don't claim. But when you know who you are in God, shame loses its grip.

Jesus Modelled It — Walk in That Awareness

Jesus told His disciples: "Father, I knew that You always hear Me" John 11:42. He was telling them that He walked continuously in the awareness of an open heaven. Everywhere He went, He was in fellowship with the Father. When He stepped out of the boat and walked on water, it was not a surprise to Him — it was the natural overflow of a life lived in the presence.

As a believer with legal authority on this earth, you move and angels move with you. You speak and God backs the word. You are never alone. Nothing — not sickness, not poverty, not failure — has legal jurisdiction over your life when you are walking in the consciousness of who God is and who you are in Him.

Father, Your presence is upon us. We recognise that You are with us. You will never leave us nor forsake us. That is the truth we stand on. We commune with You, we walk with You. We are carriers of Eden. We operate in the supernatural, in the spirit realm. We will not be held back by fear or shame. In Jesus' name.

You are a carrier of Eden. Wherever you go, the presence of God goes with you. Nothing can hold you down. By the end of this season, the evidence will be unmistakable — in your family, your work, your calling. The presence of God will make the difference. In Jesus' name.