Greetings;
It was great being home this weekend after some time on the road. I was blessed to speak at Alife yesterday. Our family is great. We are being blessed to be the testimony of God in the earth. This is a significant time in His-Story.
God is a Trinity. Although we don’t find the word ‘Trinity’ in the Scriptures, we find the description, attributes, and actions of God as a three-person being. He is the source of all life, the identity in all life, and the inheritance as the Father for all life to advance in the goodness of life. He is the expression of all life to all and through all as the Word or the expression of the Father as the Son. He is the empowerment of life in all things as the Spirit. He doesn’t need anything from anyone, because He is an I Am, and not a needy Creator who demands sacrifices and offerings from men. He, in His being; gives life, breath, and all things to all people.
Acts 17:24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.
God, as the Father, gives us life. God, as the Word or the expression of the Father as the Son, causes each of us to be an expression of Him in human form. He gives us breath. He is the Word, but we are His voice. He is the composer, but we are the song. He is the artist, but we are the painting. He is the poet, but we are the poem. We are expressions of Him! God, as the Spirit, gives the power of life in all things in us and through us. All that we are and all that we do is meant to bring life to the world in which we live. He is a giver, and not a taker from anyone. When He speaks, life happen!
Whenever God expresses Himself, life happens. We are His offspring, meant to bring the testimony of His life in this world and beyond. In the covenantal view presented in the Scripture, we see that the creation of man came from the heart of God in the substance of who God is in His being. When God saw the earth in a formless, void, and dark state of being, He spoke and there was light. The furtherance of the order, the fullness, and the light was from the substance of who God is, thus when God made man He spoke to Himself. From the substance of God came the substance of the human spirit, male and female. That substance was the power to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and have dominion.
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
From the perspective of natural things, God formed man from the dust. But it was the breath of God’s life that caused that man to become a living being. Because the substance of the breath in man came from God, who is a giver of life, that man was an expression of God as a life-giving being. Man was made and formed to be a physical substance filled with a heavenly grace. Humanity was made as spirit, soul, and body to bring the influence of God’s life to the world.
Genesis 2:4 This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5 before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; 6 but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Human beings were created to be expressions of God in the earth to bring the influence of God’s life to the world. They were to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and have dominion. I believe that true subduing is to bring life to death. This is the testimony of God’s grace. It is the testimony of the life of God influencing the spirit, soul, and bodies of men. To be a giver of life, we must be planted in the life of God in our human spirit. This is what produces the power of life in and through us in all things. To be a testimony of God’s likeness and image we must be rooted in the life of God in our spirits. This is the power of grace. I believe that true dominion is to crumble every lie with truth. Each of us makes a great us, but a terrible someone else. Who we are is enough to bring life to our world when we discover who we are in Christ and who Christ is in us. The attributes of subduing and dominion are not ones of control or manipulation. They are not expressions of taking. They are not governing rules that take from anyone. They are the factors that take us beyond the mere ability to be fruitful, multiply, and fill. These attributes are found in the character of our heavenly Father and they excel in formless, void, and dark places. Grace and truth bring order to formless realities. They bring fullness to things that need an expression of life to be filled. They bring light to cause all things to be made known as light to the world. These were the attributes of the expression of God in flesh, when He became Jesus and moved into the neighborhood.
John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
No human had lived a life full of grace and truth. The time and come for the redemption of mankind. The time had come to restore the mandate! The time had come to restore the likeness and image of God in the earth as offspring of God the Father. It was time for the door to be open to heaven and for the influence of the kingdom of the Father’s love among men.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
