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.
This was a complete and total decision of God to act through human beings.
Men and women would be God’s tool to exercising His authority and activity upon the earth.
In other words, God chose to limit His authority and activity on earth to the availability and willingness of men and women to call upon Him.
If this sounds like a limitation of God upon Himself, it is. It is also the reason the world is in the mess it is today, because God has entrusted the affairs of earth to men.
If you doubt this, you only need to look at why God selected a race of people, the Jews to work through.
Look at how God required prophets and judges and a human natured Messiah.
And look at the New Testament where God chose to fill believers with His Spirit so that He could heal and speak to the world!
All of this underscores the amazing and often overlooked truth that God depends upon people to bring His supernatural power to bear upon the earth.
2 Cor 1:8-11 “I think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and completely overwhelmed, and we thought we would never live through it. 9 In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we learned not to rely on ourselves, but on God who can raise the dead. 10 And he did deliver us from mortal danger. And we are confident that he will continue to deliver us. 11 He will rescue us because you are helping by praying for us. As a result, many will give thanks to God because so many people’s prayers for our safety have been answered.”
God depends upon our prayers to act.
Example – Why did Jesus tell us to pray for our daily bread if God already knows we need it?
Example – Why would Jesus tell us to “pray for laborers to be sent out into the harvest” of souls?
Aren’t these things already God’s will? Why am I to ask Him to do something that He already wants to do? Is it because my request is what He is waiting upon?
Elijah (1 Kings 18, James 5:17-18) - is an amazing story of God looking for someone to pray. God called Elijah to pray for a drought, and then three years later, to pray for rain.
In 1 Kings 18:1 God tells Elijah, “go show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the face of the earth.” But that isn’t the end of it. At the end of the chapter, Elijah has to pray for rain, seven times…and then God sends it.
What was the purpose of having Elijah to pray for rain, since God had already declared it was His intent to bring it about? And who prompted Elijah to pray? (God!)
In fact, Elijah has to pray for one reason…that was to complete what God had initiated. God would not send the rain until it was requested, even though God had clearly said it was His intention to do so.
Do you understand the implications of this?
God has declared wonderful promises and intentions for you and I and our world and our church and our families. But just because God has declared them won’t bring them to pass in our earthly realm. God has decreed that we must ASK for them. James says, “you have not because you ask not.”
We have made the mistaken assumption that because God is in control, because God is sovereign, that we can sit back and let go and let God. But God’s plan is that you and I be actively involved in the process of bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to earth through prayer. It is God’s design that we be a part of the equation.
If we fail to pray then God’s will doesn’t get done!
If we fail to pray, our world falls apart.
If we fail to pray, we miss out on God’s blessings.
If we fail to pray, we pass on God’s promises.
There is a terrifying example stated in Ezekiel 22:30-31 “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. 31 So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign LORD.”
God was looking for someone to intercede and pray for the land of Israel so that God could hold back His judgment, but there was no one. No one was willing to pray for mercy. No one to pray for God to forgive.
The implications of all of this is that God won’t act until we pray. God, although sovereign, has decided to let His affairs on earth depend upon men and women who will ask Him to work.
God requires our prayers, He has limited His work upon earth to men’s intercession. We are to call His promises to this reality.
I saw a quote that said, “either God wants the earth in this condition or He doesn’t.” If he doesn’t (which I believe to be true), then one of two things are a reality:
Either God is powerless to change the world (which I don’t believe), or God is waiting upon someone to call upon Him to act.
Peter Wagner said, “God allows human beings to make decision that influence history. Human inaction does not nullify the atonement, but human inaction can make the atonement ineffective for lost people.”
Our failure or willingness to pray affects the eternal destinies of people.
"Hell is larger today than it was yesterday, because many of us have failed to pray." David Smithers
This is both an awesome responsibility and an awesome privilege.
There is something that our enemy Satan fears. He fears that you will re-discover the glory that God intended for you…the glory that comes from being in the image of God.
We have been talking about “living the supernatural life” and wondering why we live so far below our new birthright!
The answer is, we have lost the vision of who we are and what we are called to live upon earth for.
We have forgotten why were saved from hell and given the resurrection life. We were given life to live!
The life of Jesus Christ, in you and I, moving us to seek the Father’s face to call His Kingdom into our reality through prayer.
The Holy Spirit that inspired prophets, like Elijah to pray for no rain and then to pray for rain is the same Holy Spirit that now dwells within you and I.
If you have learned to discern His voice, He is often calling you to pray and intercede for others.
As people of God, we are distributors for God. God is the one who produces…and our function isn’t to replace God but to release God so others can find Him.
We are like the disciples who distributed the bread loaves to the hungry multitudes, we must realize that our job is to distribute, and prayer is our method of doing so.
We don’t deliver anyone, heal anyone, defeat the enemy..all of that is already done!
Reconcilation is complete. Deliverance and victory are finished. Done.
And yet we have to ask for the release and the application of these things. (thus, the supernatural life).
Jesus Christ needs a human upon earth to represent Himself through just as the Father did so through Jesus. “As the Father has sent Me, so I also send you.” (John 20:21).
Will you let Him live His supernatural power through you through prayer?
This has been an eye opening experience for me, I hope it has been for you. I hope that you can FEEL the weight of responsibility that God has given us as His representatives, as the distributors of His Grace, and as people who call down the power and promises of God into our world so that God’s Kingdom can enter the hearts of men and women!
Dutch Sheets tells of when he was in Guatemala in 1976 building shelters for villagers devastated by an earthquake. In the evening, they would preach in the center of the village about the love of Jesus Christ. They had been ministering day after day but few were responding. On the final night of the trip, a team member told Rev. Sheets about a young girl they had found tied to a tree at the edge of the village. They asked the villagers about her. They found out that she was insane, hurting herself and running into the jungle. His heart was broken for her, and as he began to preach that night, he heard a voice inside his head saying, “tell them you are going to pray for the little insane girl across the village tied to the tree. Tell them you are going to do it in the name of this Jesus you’ve been preaching about. Tell them that through Him you are going to break the evil powers controlling her and that when she is free and normal, they can know what you are preaching is true. They can then believe in the Jesus that you are preaching about.” Rev. Sheets says, that his immediate response was, “ah, is there a plan b”” God had given him a word before the trip that simply said, “represent Jesus,” and this came to mind. As quickly as his fear had risen it was replaced by faith as God reminded him of what it meant. “the emphasis isn’t on me but on the One who sent me. I am simply His spokesman. I am merely releasing what God has already done. He has done the work of delivering the little girl, my prayers release that work. I am only a distributor of what he Has already produced.” He tells in his book, “Intercessory Prayer” that his life was changed that night forever. The resurrection life, the supernatural life of Jesus became available and Jesus emerged from the cobwebs of theology . The little girl was set free. The village turned to Christ.
There are many wounded, hurting people in our community, tied to trees. Some of them wait on you at a restaurant, others you might work with, still others sit next to you today. Their chains are alcohol, drugs, abuse, broken dreams, money, or lust.
Plan B – for all of us, is to waste the cross, the leave the tormented in their anguish, to tell them there is no hope. It is to play it safe, to sit in silence and say, “why does God let that happen?”
But God has a plan! It is His original intent to use you to bring His supernatural LIFE into everyday situations as re-presenters of the work Jesus has completed on the Cross. Intercede!
How to respond?
Rise up and release the power of God by praying for others! It isn’t just the pastor’s job to pray for someone’s deliverance! You have the supernatural power of Jesus Christ available to you. Won’t you use it, present it,
Come up for liberation in the Name of Jesus!
