Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am in Wichita, Kansas. I have had a great weekend with Pastors Derek and Talita Stoltz, Christ Life Ministries, and several others. We had a great men’s meeting on Saturday. My only regret was that I did not record the audio because the word was a clear word of the Lord. I will blog on that matter in my leadership blog on Wednesday. Yesterday I spoke concerning being supernaturally expectant of a supernatural God. How do we live with a supernatural expectancy of a supernatural God for supernatural outcomes in our natural world?
We live in a natural world with many circumstances around us that can deter us from having hope. So much of our time is filled with natural realities and we fail to see the true possibilities in the Spirit. The truth is our expectations can only be determined by our focus in life. We must be New Covenant people in the midst of the Old Covenant realities of the world in order to have supernatural expectations of life. Jesus was a New Covenant man in an Old Covenant world, yet He lived His life as a man with a supernatural expectancy of a supernatural Father. He knew God His Father to be love and He also knew that God His Father would demonstrate His love in supernatural ways. He saw what the Father was doing and was not distracted by the things of the world. The result of His focus was seen in testimonies of God’s love in supernatural ways for many. He set His face towards a future of hope because He knew who His Father was, and He knew who He was. His journey as a man was for our sake, that we might also know who our Father is and who we are in this world.
Sometimes we think that the political environments of our day oppose the will of God in our time, but the political environment of Jesus’ day was not less despairing. The natural government of Jesus’ day was that of Rome. The religious environment of Jesus’ day was that of the Pharisaic system of legalistic compromise. The natural environment of Jesus’ day was both legalistic and lawless. Jesus wasn’t distracted by the political or religious environments of His day. His focus was steadfast upon the kingdom of God and the righteousness of God in all things. He lived His life as a man with God in Him, upon Him, and with Him in all things. He did that as a man, not God. He was a Son of Man who demonstrated a life of being a Son of God. He did this as our eternal Adam for the sake of us as an eternal Eve. Because of this, the body of Christ of the first century demonstrated these same realities. At the birthing of the New Covenant church the environment of the world only manifested further as a system that opposed Christ. Both Jesus and the first century church faced a carnal and spiritually demonic opposition to Christ. Rome was ultimately epitomized in the man Nero Caesar, the sixth of twelve rulers who proclaimed themselves to be God. Nero was a degenerate man who was self-seeking, self-gratifying, and had a self-determined purpose in all that he was and did. He launched an imperial persecution upon the church that appeared to be a force that would naturally overpower all that was life and good. The anti-Christ spirit of the first century was not less than now, but the church prevailed in supernatural ways! The church prevailed because they knew Christ in them, upon them, and with them in all things!
To be people with supernatural expectancies we must know who we are in Christ and who Christ is in us. We must be supernatural people who expect supernatural testimonies in our natural world, and we must expect supernatural testimonies to be supernatural people. We must not be distracted by natural things that rob us of having supernatural expectations. We must also allow God to determine the supernatural realities in our world and we must not be blinded or distracted by our own preconceived ideas regarding His will. The focus of our lives determines the outcome of our lives. If we present our bodies to the world, we will become like the world. But if we present our bodies to God, we can expect to influence our world with the things of God.
Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Whatever gets our attention also draws our focus and what we focus on is what we give our lives to. We cannot think like people in the world. People in the world give their attention to the created things of the world. They cannot really change creation because their focus is not upon the Creator. They can only attempt to manipulate and control what they cannot control. We must give our lives to the One who gives life to influence our world with true life. When we give our whole beings to live for God, we can know that the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God will be done, despite natural oppositions. God is building a living church that has power over the realm of the dead.
Matthew 16:15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. 18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades (the realm of the dead) shall not prevail against it. 19 And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
Death cannot prevail against life. The life of Christ is not just life. It is eternal life. It is life that is resurrection from the dead and this is the testimony that is the life-giving garment of the church. We are clothed in the power of Christ!
Acts 1:8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
We must put our focus on God in all things. Our focus cannot be to change the world from the outside in. We must live to be changed from the inside out and we must do external things that inspire those in an external world to come to the One who changes hearts and minds. To be witness to Jesus is not to be witnesses for Him. It is to be witnesses of Him! Christ in us must also be Christ upon us for the sake of people in our world. We can have supernatural expectations because it is a supernatural God who is joined to our spirits within. Holy Spirit is one with our spirit so that the life of God’s Spirit floods out from our lives in supernatural ways.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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