Designed and destined to reign!

It’s much easier to live empowered by God than to just live for God, you know? And that’s his heart for all of us – that we would live the Christian life from a place of his empowering. We shouldn’t be trying to do it in our own steam.
 
John 10:10 says that the thief comes, but for to steal, kill, and destroy. And Jesus says that he came to give life and life abundantly. God’s will for us is that we would live an abundant life, not just one day when we die and go to heaven, but he wants us to enjoy an abundant life right now. So why aren’t we experiencing this? And how can we experience this abundant love? We’re going to be looking at this over the next couple of episodes. And I want to encourage you just to open up your heart and receive because God’s got something special for you. I really believe that.
 
Over in Genesis chapter one, and I’m trying to turn that very quickly, but at Genesis 1:26-28, it says, and God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image. And in the image of God, he created him, male and female He created them. And God blessed them. And God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply. Replenish the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and fall of the, and of every living thing that moves upon the year.
 
So here we see God’s original design for mankind was that we would reign in life, that we would have dominion. The Word “dominion” here is the Hebrew word for dominion. God gave Dominion to Adam and Eve – He wanted them to reign! God’s original plan for us is that we would reign in this life. And I know that all of us want to reign in life. We were created to live in and experience victory in this life. You were designed to be victorious and to walk as an overcomer. That’s what we’re wired for. God’s purpose for us isn’t that life be hard or that we would suffer and live at the bottom; scrape through life and survive. For a long time I thought that that’s really what life was about: just enduring, just pushing through. But that’s not true! God wants you to thrive He doesn’t want you to just survive. And yes, there will be challenges. Yes, things will be difficult, but you have the power to overcome challenges and be victorious. And that’s not saying that every single time everything’s going to work out the way you want it to work out. It might not. But even when the going gets tough and things don’t happen the way you want them to, you can rise up and be victorious.

Even if sickness was to kill you, which isn’t God’s will, God doesn’t want sickness to kill you. Sickness was paid for on the cross. Jesus bought your healing at the cross. And so, he doesn’t want you to die of and sickness. And I’ve had some people asked me how they are supposed to die if they don’t die of sickness? Well, you can just die. Some people just die and there’s no reason why they died. When you’re satisfied with this life you can simply say within yourself, “I’m done”. Then you close your eyes and you open them in heaven. You don’t have to die of sickness. But, even if sickness were to kill you, hey, you’re going to be victorious forever because you’re a Christian!
 
We’ve got to learn to look beyond the here and now that we’re experiencing. Yes, there’s victory that we can experience in this life. Yes, we can reign in this life, but this life is really just so small. It’s so short compared to eternity. If we just think about eternity for a moment, if we think about how we’re going to live forever with Jesus in victory, that should help us to rise up and be full of joy. And that’s part of reigning in life: being full of joy.
 
God has such good plans for every single one of us, but so often as Christians we settle for second best. We settled for mediocre, we settled for everything that came in through Adam and Eve. God didn’t create us to suffer. We don’t embrace sickness. We don’t embrace sin and suffering in this world. We’re designed to overcome it. God created us to overcome it. And as a believer with Jesus living on the inside of you, something inside of you is rising up, wanting to overcome every challenge that’s coming against you. If you don’t feel that, then it’s because you’ve suppressed it or it’s because you’re ignorant of the truth that God wants you to overcome. God wants you to rise up and reign in life and live in victory and enjoy an abundant life!