GOD’S PLAN FOR. US – TO LIVE A FULFILLED LIFE JOHN 10:10
God’s plan for mankind is seeing the big picture that will give our life context. Unless we know the big picture, the stuff of life – the things we see around us and the things He is doing – will not make sense. You will not have the context to understand it.
“The works that He is doing in the individual lives of His people and in the Church of God are all related to the overarching big picture. At its core, it’s about reconciliation and restoration – the reconciliation of all things back to Himself, and the restoration of all things back to His original vision and purpose.” which was distorted, perverted & tainted by the enemy & made difficult to access.
The word “restoration” means “a return of something to a former, original , normal, or unimpaired condition,” or the “restitution of something taken away or lost”. This restoration work is happening in phases and will end in the establishment of the new earth, and the full re-establishment of God’s rulership over all.
The Lord has shown three main areas of restoration that He’s working on at this time, so that we might be fully restored back to the following:
- Our original and true identity
- Our original and true wholeness
- Our original and true representation and commission
The Lord was clear that with the use of the word “true,” He was implying that there are false or untrue identities which people are living under that need wholeness and restoration.
- Original Identity
God is working to restore us so that we can walk in our true identity as those who are made in His image and likeness. Over the past decade or so, God has been highlighting and speaking to the Church about identity – knowing who He is and also knowing ourselves with more clarity. Part of His work in our lives is bringing us into a revelation and subsequent understanding of how much of the knowledge of that identity we have lost.
Here are the three areas of identity that He is working on:
- Knowing who He is. Genesis 1 tells us that God made mankind in His image and likeness, in both nature and character. To understand this, we must understand God’s true nature and character. God is teaching us what He is like, exposing false ideas that the world and the enemy have given us of God, and revealing His true identity, nature and character. He is love, and all that He does comes out of that. He is taking us on a journey of untangling and sifting through two things: 1) untruths about God that have been perpetrated throughout the centuries, and 2) our own personal filters and wounds that have caused us to see Him in a particular way, putting things on Him that are not who He actually is.
- Knowing who we are in Him. This means understanding what Christ has done, what He has gifted us in the New Covenant, and what He has made available for us to access. We see in Christ the model for what a true son or daughter of God is like.
- Knowing ourselves. He is showing us our strengths and weaknesses; dealing with wrong mindsets, worldviews, wrongful self-assessments, false identities; exposing trauma and wounds that have shaped the way we view ourselves and life. And in this process, He is renewing our minds. He is developing us, growing us in new areas; releasing into us untapped innovation and creativity; revealing treasures hidden within each of us that have awaited this time, so we can walk in the fullness of who He created us to be as individuals, and as the Church. Original Wholeness
God’s plan is to bring us into the fullness of our salvation, restoring us to wholeness in spirit, soul and body. Christ has made this available to us through His life, death and resurrection. And our part is to receive what He did and work with Him in establishing the fullness of that wholeness in our lives.
He is making us into the image of Christ, reforming within us a harmonious ‘working together’ of all our parts (spirit, soul and body). He does not want one part of us being fragmented or out-of-sorts with another. He wants us to have a healthy, harmonious life. He wants us to have the kind of life where our internal and external lifestyles work according to and from our Christ-gifted wholeness, instead of from fractured and false identities, ungodly mindsets and beliefs, trauma-informed emotions and lifestyles, and disease in our physical bodies. In this process, God is helping us to see ourselves as He sees us, helping us to hear His words of acceptance and love, and to know their truth by experience. He is enabling us to embrace the goodness that He has planned for us, and to live a fulfilling life (John 10:10).
As we receive healing and our minds become renewed, instead of seeing and therefore living life from a distorted perspective, we will be able to live from a place of communion with Him that brings us into freedom, truth and confidence. He is restoring our hearts so that we see and care as He does. And, within the healing work He does in us, He is also teaching us how to move in wisdom in our righteousness, so that we treat others with respect, dignity and lovingkindness. This then enables us to model what it looks like to walk as a child of God in the earth.
- Original Representation and Commission
Mankind, being made in God’s image, was commissioned to be a representation of God in the earth, and given stewardship and dominion of the earth. That multi-generational commission was never removed from mankind, and we are its inheritors and stewards today.
God is restoring the vision for that stewardship and rulership in His people – not that we might rule as overlords and dictators (moral, spiritual or physical), but as true stewards who care for the planet and its peoples. And He is working in us so that we can represent Him in a wise and righteous manner. We are learning to walk as those made in God’s image and, therefore, as those who are loving, kind, faithful, merciful, patient, etc. – having received and formed His character and nature within us.
Alongside the original commission to steward the earth itself wisely, and to care for its inhabitants, we have Christ's commission to go into the world as ministers of reconciliation to share the good news with them, and to model, teach and disciple them in what it looks like to walk as those made in His image and likeness, with His power and love working in us and through us.
Sol .Joan