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God's Plan For Supernatural Living Series
Contributed by Robert Higgins on Mar 10, 2009 (message contributor)
Summary: What is God’s plan for the church? Is it to be a bunch of sacrificial people or is it to be people who Re-Present Jesus to a lost world?
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Living the Supernatural Life – Part Two: God’s Plan
Last week we introduced the concept that many of us are living far below our potential (kind of like a eagle living with turkeys) when it comes to the supernatural life. We live on a plane of existence that the rest of the world does…an arena where we measure things by what we see, feel or hear.
But being born-again, new creatures in Jesus Christ, with the Spirit of the Living God dwelling within us, our standard operating level should be in the supernatural and not the natural realm.
Last week we asked “why don’t we live in the supernatural realm more often or fully?”
I shared that I believed it was because we get comfortable, lazy, and literally put our spiritual life on “auto pilot.”
There is no better fulfillment of the enemy’s plan than to have the church of Jesus Christ living in the natural rather than the supernatural realm.
Satan desires to thwart God’s plan of spreading the Kingdom of Jesus Christ across our world, and if putting the church to sleep will stop the Kingdom’s advance, then that is exactly what he will seek to do!
I know that I am speaking to your minds right now, and that life change won’t happen if your mind is the only thing I preach to. So I want to pray for all of us in this room, right now:
Lord God, I ask that You would open the eyes of our hearts and grant us the supernatural revelation of Your Spirit, that we might know the height and width and breadth and depth of Your power that is being made available to us to advance Your Kingdom across this world. Remove the blinders from our eyes, give us ears to hear, and give us the desire to be used by You in this darkening world we live in. In the person and name of Jesus Christ I pray, amen.
God has a plan and you are a vital part of it.
How many of you believe that? God has had a plan from the beginning of time. Did you know that? He unveiled that plan in the Garden where He created the first man and woman. The bible says that “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Gen 1:27)
The Hebrew word for image is tselem, which means likeness or resemblance. In the Aramaic, it means “icon, image or statue” and can mean shade or shadow of something.
Adam and Eve were made in the image of God, they were made to resemble the character and likeness of God Himself.
God even gave humanity the ability to co-create eternal souls, something He has entrusted to no other creature under heaven.
The bible says that human beings were made to be “a little lower than God.”
Psalm 8:4-6 “What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty! You make him to rule over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet…”
Man was created to reflect the very glory of God and he was made to rule over the works of God’s hands, that is to rule over creation.
Humanity, in 1 Cor 11:7, is said to be “image and the glory of God.”
“For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God;”
In other words, God is recognized in humanity. Why is this so?
So that humanity could represent Him.
When all of creation looked at man, they were supposed to see a reflection of God. And that is exactly what they did, until Adam sinned and “fell short of the glory of God.”
In fact, God appointed Adam, to be His steward or manager, His representative on earth.
The earth was Adam’s assignment, and its dominion, was given to Adam.
Our passage from Psalm 8 shows us that.
But when Adam sinned, he literally handed over that dominion to Satan. So complete was that handover, that when Jesus was being tempted during his 40 days in the wilderness, that Satan told Jesus, “"I will give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority over them – because they are mine to give to anyone I please.” (Luke 4:6)
Jesus later referred to Satan as “the ruler of this world” on three different occasions.
Here is the point: God willed to do everything through human beings on earth, and so complete was that decision, that it required the incarnation to undo what Adam had done in giving it all away to Satan.