Moving into Authority:
In this series of teachings, we are postulating that God not only moves in and by sovereign, independent crisis experiences (one-time events requiring little preparation), He also moves in our lives through deliberative spiritual process that can be learned and applied in every believer’s life. This is why Jesus told the Pharisees in Luke 17:20-21, that the kingdom doesn’t come by observation. While God does at times sovereignly move with little more than a plaintive cry for help – it is a fact that participation and action on your part is often necessary.
If we are going to be led to understand that faith without works is dead (James 2:17), then we must also inquire of the scriptures by what methodology we might glean understanding of not only how to live in the Spirit, but also to walk (progress by steps) in the Spirit (Gal. 5:25). There is no better starting place then Genesis to begin to uncover, by revelatory inquiry, God’s creative process. Through God’s seven days, we labor to enter into rest through an understanding of God’s process that is comprehensible, reproducible and applicable in every circumstance of our lives.
Looking at Genesis 1:1 – 2:3 as the template of God’s process in our lives, by which we must cooperate with His purposes, let us briefly review the days of His creative process in our lives:
God moves and speaks. We must move upon the darkness encroaching our deep (potential) and speak as God speaks (Eph. 5:1).
God sets a boundary for the heavens (firmament) and divides the water from the waters, and calls these things by a determinate call. Likewise we must discern our boundaries, accept division that removes spiritual mixture in our lives (waters-Spirit above from the waters-spirit beneath). In that arrangement we are prepared to receive the call of God.
Having accepted boundary and dealt with mixture in our lives, we receive the call and step into the mastery of the Law of Seedtime and Harvest. The Amos 9:13 reality becomes the dynamic truth of our lives.
God creates the luminary bodies of heaven for signs and seasons. When we by faith become Lords of our own harvest, we must be alert to what is happening in the heavenly. We must discern the character (star-seed; sand-seed; dust-seed) regarding the people that will rush around us because we are manifesting the blessing and favor of God, due to willingly collaborating thus far with His purposes revealed in the seven days of His process (see chapter 4).
God commands His creation to bring forth abundantly, to multiply and fill the earth – our boundary for creation that He has set. When you have moved upon your darkness and spoken the word; when you have accepted boundary and dealt with mixture. When you have become lord of your own seed-time and harvest and gained discernment by looking into the heavenly realm to understand things around you – THEN you are positioned for full reward. Then life and life more abundantly are yours by default because you have collaborated and cooperated with the mind of God concerning your circumstance, situation and maturity in the kingdom.
Entering Into Full Authority:
Gen. 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.…31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
After six days of moving, speaking, creating, dividing and populating the environment of the earth, we find the apex of God’s process, when He not only made man, but He gave Him dominion to replenish and to subdue the environment God placed man in. This is the point in God’s process, where the responsibility becomes ours regarding all that happens in the setting that God has provided us to live out our lives in.
There is much confusion in this area that has caused men to see themselves as being at the mercy of a capricious God, regarding circumstances or situations that they have no control over. Beyond that, men over the centuries have so misunderstood the hand of God in the earth, and their role in cooperating with God in His process ,that they would rather conclude that there is no God, than accept the responsibility that is man’s, to subdue, have dominion and replenish according to the Father’s divine plan.
In other words, are we waiting on God – or is God waiting on us? The complaint often comes in the form of the skeptic’s questions:
Why do little babies die if God is a loving, all powerful benefactor?
If God exists, why does He allow wars, or tolerate man’s inhumanity to man?
Why does sickness, cancer and all manner of suffering plague the hapless victims of such diseases if in fact, as God’s word declares, that He will heal, deliver and bless us?
Is God an absentee landlord?
Is God a dead-beat dad who has abandoned us to a creation run amok?
Why does God not act?
Sometimes we come up with the wrong answers because we are not asking the right questions. Theologians, scholars and church leaders have shown themselves far too timid to challenge the validity of the question, yet have concocted libraries full of doctrine and devotional studies that explain that this is all part of God’s immutable purpose, that we simply need to realize that we will “understand it better bye and bye” and then go on to define faith as not asking these questions to begin with. This is unmitigated cowardice and completely unnecessary, for God’s word addresses these matters in a very thorough manner.
[2Co 1:19-20 KJV] 19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, [even] by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. 20 For all the promises of God in him [are] yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.
In addressing these matters, Paul teaches in 2 Cor. 1, that a believer cannot possibly be established in His faith until He realizes that God’s default answer to every demand upon His promises is yes. Another way of making this statement is:
God will never say no to what the cross says yes to when the conditions of faith, on man’s part, are met. In the beginning before the fall, God simply gave man dominion, however, because of the disobedience of Adam, we must look to the cross and the shed blood of Christ to mitigate the disqualification of sin and thereby, through faith, take again the authority and dominion that is inherently ours as new creations in Christ Jesus.
Now who is in charge? Is God in charge, or man, or the devil? That depends on who you ask and on what side of the blood line you are standing. Three times in the gospel of John, Jesus referred to Satan as the prince of this world (John 12:31; John 14:30; John 16:11). Ask yourself the question, did Satan become the god of this world legitimately? If you believe in the teaching that Satan is a fallen angel who successfully fomented rebellion against God’s throne before creation, then you would be postulating that Satan became god of this world because of his own disobedience and God’s forbearance in dealing with him up to now.
