You are a NEW CREATION!

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was barren, with no form of life; it was under a roaring ocean covered with darkness. But the Spirit of God was moving over the water. The First Day. God said, I command light to shine! And light started shining. God looked at the light and saw that it was good.”… Genesis 1:1-4)

Everything about the birthing of the earth was miraculous. Life was formed out of darkness. God brought it about with His words and brought life forth. Everything in our world is designed to birth and sustain life. Ever notice this? It is 100% perfect conditions from the sun to the moon to water, to green plants and animals. Designed to bring forth and sustain life. When you think about it, there is a 0% probability that all conditions would work together and be designed to be fruitful, bringing and sustaining life. Let alone our own lives. Nature says in all it is that He makes the impossible possible.

We get a glimpse of this picture of life at the beginning. We were designed as spiritual beings that walked the earth with God. We as His companions to tend and enjoy this life giving garden that sustained us. We partnered with Him in everything, including naming the animals. He did it all with us. Yet, given free choice, we sinned and reached to be like God rather than trusting God and walking with Him.

As a result, we were given clothes to wear in the Lord’s mercy and cast out of the Garden of Eden where we had fellowshipped so closely with God. I often think of these clothes as something they put over their skin, but Genesis 3:21 tells us (in most translations) that it was our natural skin. We were given an earthly body when Adam sinned.

So here is a reality we don’t often think of: Our earthly body is only the result of sin and not God’s ultimate best for us. It is meant to sustain us while we live in a sin filled world. Ultimately, as I am experiencing for myself in these later years of my life, our earthly body begins to wear out. Our bodies are a temporary tent that houses our spirit.

So why was giving us this natural body a solution to Adam eating the fruit and sinning? Why put us through this process of living naturally as a result and experiencing a physical death to come into our eternal life? Ever think about this?

Here is my thoughts as I write this: Our natural bodies, given to us to house our spirits in God’s mercy because of sin, allows each one of us to make the individual choice of partaking from the Tree of Life (Jesus) or eating from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Each one of us gets to decide which Kingdom to partake of because of the death of Jesus on the cross. And so we go through this earthly body experience to make this choice for ourselves.

This would mean that we are put on this earth to come to know Christ, and then to lead others to know Christ and mature in their faith. Perhaps this is why all other things are left behind when we go to our heavenly kingdom with our new bodies. None of the things of the world matter.

Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 5 about awaiting, groaning and longing for our new bodies. He refers to these as our “heavenly dwelling.” He says that we groan, longing for this so we will not be found naked, as our mortal bodies are released as we embrace eternal life. He says, “Now the One who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” (2 Corinthians 5:5)

We were fashioned and designed to live as a spiritual being in a spiritual body. He goes on to tell us that as long as we are home in our earthly bodies, we are away from the Lord. We are not away from the Lord so thinking He means that we are not in heaven with the Lord, living out of this other realm.

Even in our natural bodies, we are to live by faith, not by sight. So we are to make it our goal to please Him in all things while we wait for our full redemption. He is to be central. We are to let go of living for ourselves and worldly points of view and live into what He has given to us through His death:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone and the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The old, Paul is speaking of here is this life of living under the curse of death, hopelessness and hardness of the ground we till. Paul tells us that we are to crucify the old self that our body of sin is brought to nothing, no longer enslaved, so that we rise in the fullness of life with the Lord (Romans 6:6).

Don’t be like the worldly people,

Where the affairs of this world are highly critical.

Always looking for what they can obtain,

Seeking power, possessions and pleasures in vain.

They are unbelieving, craving, critical and skeptical,

They don’t realize their lack while they try to look respectable.

So let God change the way you think about things,

Then you will please Him as He helps you with everything.

Filled with His Spirit and led by His wisdom,

You will bring forth another Kingdom.

(Romans 12:2)

We are born again, even inside these earthly shells, to live in the Garden with God. Our lives partnering with Him in a place of bringing forth life by His Spirt and not by hard work of our own efforts. We are to be like Christ on the earth, doing the works He did and even greater works.

Everything about this new life is miraculous. Everything about it is received by faith and not by sight. It is living back into the heavenly eternal realm that we have been promised. So we could make no mistake on His works that He had for us, He came and demonstrated them. He walked the earth, giving His life away freely as He healed the sick, blind, crippled, and emotionally torn, sharing the Good News of this new found freedom with everyone around. He sacrificed Himself to bring life and freedom.

“Quit looking for good news from the world because you carry the Good News” sings. We are not to receive what the world has but bring what He has to the world. The amazing news is that God is still God and God is still good and God is willing to enter into our pain and suffering and bring new life.

Just as He did when the new day dawned with His coming to earth as a baby – a seed of life planted in the earth. When His coming was announced by an angel, “Mary asked the angel, ‘How can this happen? I am not even married!’ The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come down to you, and God’s power will come over you. So your child will be called the holy Son of God. Your relative Elizabeth is also going to have a son, even though she is old. No one thought she could ever have a baby, but in three months she will have a son. Nothing is impossible for God!’” (Luke 1:34-37)

The seed was coming directly from God and being planted in a woman. While through the veil of the world, the child looked like a normal event in every-day living, those who had their eyes on the Lord saw the amazing miracle unfolding before them. God was coming to the earth for this crazy plan of saving everyone.

Through His salvation, our lives now to be lived into this miraculous reality. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:18, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

But yet, like with the rapture, we are not just to say okay, ‘see ya later,’ and close ourselves completely in with the Lord waiting for our bodies to die. We are to have impact on the world around us. We are to live out of our earthly body in a way that pleases the Lord, is faith filled, and brings the good news to the world. We are to be lights on a hill that shine and point the way home for others around us.

Wendy Backlund, in her devotional, “Changing Your Reality” notes that the supernatural isn’t something you do, it is something you are as the new creation. We are born again as a new creation that is more than doing the miraculous. It is living from our authority of who we are as miraculous beings created by a miraculous God who made us in His own image. She notes from Romans 8:22, that the whole earth is groaning, eagerly waiting for the full manifestation of our new identity.

This new identity is hard to grasp. It is so easy to see Christianity as things we do. We die to sin and walk out our salvation by the way we love and treat others, sowing seeds while giving our lives away. But living out of two realms in the miraculous is our identity and who we are meant to be, not just what we do.

As an example, a few days ago my husband and I were having a rough time with a whole series of messes, spills, and unexpected frustrations. Everything we did and every location we went, there were these messes and the frustration just seemed to get worse. My husband has a hard time seeing and one of my boys was sick which just didn’t help. It felt like a spirit of division and discord.

I became so frustrated, I had to stop and make myself something to eat as I knew hungry and frustrated were not a good combination. But that just frustrated my husband as we were dealing with all these little things one upon the other that just became overwhelming. Finally, as I was making a smoothie with my very loud smoothie maker, I just started praying loudly, declaring a peaceful order and speaking in tongues. It so helped. It made a huge difference in me and things calmed back down.

Then that night as I was sleeping, I had a picture of this large snake. I woke up and asked God about it. He said it was the serpent that was causing chaos, division and discord in my home that evening before. So I prayed and declared that slithering thing to be crushed under my foot and I proclaimed that it would leave all that concerned me and go back to the pit of hell.

That evening as I went to church and I was worshipping, I saw my Father. He was sitting at the potter’s wheel. But it was more like a sowing machine. I asked Him what He was doing. He said that just as He had fastened my marriage and family to be untearable and immovable, He was doing this for His church. He was placing rivets in the fabric of families and fastening them in together. I was overwhelmed with joy.

Then He told me that, just like that morning, it was time to crush the head of the snake and send him back to hell. I couldn’t believe the opportunity to partner with Him in such a manner. He just kept on working and doing His fastening while I took care of this slithery snake and sent it packing. All the more, I felt unexplainable joy.

Another time, I was in worship and I saw Jesus walk by with this robe with no seams. I thought of the woman with the issue of blood and I grabbed hold of it. As I did, I could see the miraculous operating all around me. It was amazing. I stood there holding the hem and not letting go and this anointing for the miraculous was flowing.

I had to look a little odd in the natural but what struck me that, in this place of revival at Bethel Church, the unseen realm was more real to me than the seen realm. Everything was operating from the unseen and being brought into the seen realm. I had a hard time being ‘normal.’ I was stuck in honey at one point walking in the door and then overcome with joy. I pulled back a little for a time as my rational mind was telling me I had to look terribly odd. But it was so real!

All this to say, I believe this is an experience of living supernaturally. I was living in both realms at once and impacting the natural realm with the spiritual. I believe these are examples of operating in this supernatural identity. We can operate in both realms.

I have always been concerned about looking odd or doing something odd and what others think. But I feel God inviting me into more. When I see an image in my mind of my spirit, most often I am on this balance beam walking back and forth. This balance beam is the Word of God. I stay grounded in the Word. But what if God wants me to make a few leaps of faith from this? What if both are critical – standing on the Word and stepping out beyond in faith.

I have heard pastors at times talk about “those weird people.” They say that they don’t want to be one of those ‘Spirit led people who go off from the Word.” But isn’t it weird for Peter to get up from his jail cell with angels and walk out? Isn’t it weird for Paul to be led by his dreams? What about Mary talking to an angel about having a baby with the Holy Spirit? Are not these weird and outside of what was biblical at the time? Perhaps there is weird in the Word that we often ignore. People are constantly taking risks and stepping out in faith.

What if Peter and the 120 disciples said that since there were no examples of people having tongues of fire and speaking in other languages they just wouldn’t participate? What if all of them refused to speak in tongues at all because of it being weird and not previously evidenced before the coming of the Holy Spirit?

All that to say that I think that I may limit myself at times because I don’t want to be seen as weird. I get caught up in worrying about what others think and shrink back. When I do, I completely pull myself from the unseen realm as my concerns are worldly and draw me back into the world. What about if I started being more concerned about the realm of heaven coming to earth than what people thought of how I looked?

Lord Jesus, forgive me where I have sinned by over concerning myself about looking weird or being off kilter. Forgive me for people pleasing. Open our eyes so that we can see. Open our ears so that we can hear. Help us to live out of both realms and to get our identity from you and the heavenly realm. Help us to receive ourselves as supernatural beings participating in Your good on the earth.