I’ve been learning a lot about the power of God and the authority of Christ that we have been given as his disciples. That sounds really spiritual and intense but it is one of the most simple truths to embrace as a disciple of Christ. Listen to what the bible tells us in Ephesians 2:4,
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus..”
Try to wrap your mind around that for a second. We are not only saved from our powerless life under sin, but we are actually made alive to God again. Like I’ve heard it said, God didn’t come to make bad people good, he came to make dead people alive. And even more than that, we are now sitting with Him in heavenly places! So we aren’t only saved from something (bondage to sin, separation from the love of God a.k.a. Hell) but we are saved into something.. and that’s into heavenly places with Him. So yes we have been forgiven the moment we place our trust and faith in Christ. But forgiveness of sins is not all Jesus came to bring us. That might rub you the wrong way, so let me explain more.
So many times we allow this to be our full definition of the gospel of Christ. “He came to die for my sins”. Yes he did! Praise Him for that! But the gospel doesn’t end there. We don’t just say, “Phew! Glad I dodged that hell bullet.. now I guess I’ll just wait around to go to heaven one day.” We don’t wait on the side of the highway for the heavenly triple A to come haul us away, as D. Willard put it. Jesus' message wasn't "believe in me and you'll go to heaven one day", rather it was the Kingdom of God is available now so let me show you what that looks like. He didn’t just pray that he could go back to heaven, he prayed that heaven would come to earth (Luke 11). The gospel is that we are now enabled (the new covenant is a covenant of enablement) to have power over sin and darkness and carry the power of God with us everywhere we go. And I’ve been learning month after month, day after day, that prayer is God’s power-sharing device for us. Through prayer God develops us and allows us to have more and more of His power still under his control. It wasn’t until this month in Haiti where I really experienced this with God. Let me tell you the story..
My team and I were all sitting outside of our rented house in Haiti, with no electricity therefore not much lighting other than that coming from the few 10 cent candles we had bought. We began talking about our previous night of sleep (it was now night 2 in Haiti) and a few mentioned that they felt a strong dark, demonic presence in the house at night. Fear immediately swept through many of our bones as we looked into the dark abyss of the house. In that moment I knew God was calling us to get up and place our faith in the power and authority He has given us over darkness. So we decided to use the power-sharing device God gave us and began praying over the house. Some went into the most eerie, dark rooms.. Brian, Evan and I went to the mysterious back house and declared Christ King in that place. The prayers started off timid, almost as whispers. We immediately realized we were coming up against strong opposition in that place (Haiti has some very strong oppression over it, many people have stories of encountering demons on a regular basis. Through voodoo, witchcraft and other practices, Satan has his tight grip on many areas of Haiti). Slowly though, we began to pray with more confidence and increased faith. We all felt a shift in the atmosphere. We grabbed each other’s shoulders and began to declare even more boldly that darkness and oppression had no place in that home. The enemy (darkness, demons and Satan himself) has power, there’s no doubt about that. But they have no authority. We have the Christ-given authority, so with that we began to worship. And we declared that if you resided in that household you worshipped Jesus too. After about 45 minutes of praying and worshipping we all experienced it. The fear was gone and the presence of God was ushered into that house like never before. Gladness filled our hearts that night and for the rest of our time there we experienced a sense of peace in that house (despite the crazy Chikungunya mosquito virus that broke out, but that's a story for a different time). Just imagine if we began to expand our understanding of the gospel as simply saying a prayer and being able to go to heaven one day.. and instead began understanding it as becoming those who fill the earth with the power and authority of Jesus. And through that we begin to see transformation in families, in communities, in cities, in nations. We'll start to see heaven's reality become out earthly experience. That is what Kingdom living is all about.
We begin to live in the future kingdom of Christ now. I’m not saying that people can’t enter the Kingdom of God through that simple prayer of faith, because I believe through God's grace they can, but the sad news is that the same people can live their entire life without the Kingdom of God entering into them. When the Kingdom enters into people, we begin to see what Jesus intended all along.. for people to be set free from the kingdom of this world and start to live in the freedom of His. And in His Kingdom there is no power of sin, no fear of the enemy, no self-hatred, no depression, no anxiety, no shame, no loneliness, no people who are overlooked, no injustice or evil, only the perfect and loving rule of a perfect and loving God. So if you’re sitting with any of that bondage in your life, know that there is freedom in Jesus. He has given you power and authority to see these things trumped in your life when you place faith in Him. Remember, you are seated with Him in heavenly places now, and that is the greatest reality we can live by.
Joe
