True Christianity is Supernatural
There is an episode on the video series The Chosen in which Jesus is healing many people who are coming to Him for deliverance. James, one of the disciples, is concerned that the people might be coming to Christ only because they are being healed. “Would they accept Him if they weren’t healed?” he seemed to be asking.
The other disciple had no definitive answer for he too probably had the same concern. From the beginning of His ministry to the end Jesus was performing a continuous succession of miracles. He healed the sick and on many occasions we are told He healed all who came to Him (Matt. 4:24; 123:15; Luke 4:40; 6:19). He raised the dead and cast demons out of people. He caused the disciples’ boat to almost sink from catching so many fish after they had fished all night without a nibble. He fed thousands of people on two occasions with just a few loaves of bread and some fish. He walked on the Sea of Galilee. He calmed the storm that had the disciples in fear for their lives. Well, you know the rest of the story. Jesus, though He was a man, lived in the realm of the supernatural.
Now, let me see if I can give an answer to James’s question. His question came because he was missing the point Jesus was making. Jesus was demonstrating that the life He came to share with us is a supernatural life. The people James referred to, who were being healed, were being shown that they were entering a life in which supernatural happenings were to be commonplace. Yes, they were healed because Jesus touched their lives and they entered His kingdom in which God desires to continually penetrate the natural realm with the nature of heaven. He asked us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matt. 6:10). We are to pray for the reality of heaven to come to earth in our lives and the lives of those around us.
Christianity was always meant to be a supernatural experience in which the followers of Christ are ambassadors of the kingdom of God in a fallen world of sin and unbelief. But we American Christians have invented a faithless American Christianity where miracles are only in the past and anyone experiencing a current miracle is probably of the devil. We are a two billion-acre-sized Nazareth in which, if you remember, Jesus could not perform many miracles “because of their unbelief” (Matt. 13:58). We have chased God out of our schools, universities, courts and even churches because of our unbelief. We have not because we ask not and we don’t ask because we don’t believe.
Many of our churches have become nothing more than religious marketing programs aimed at bringing in more people who bring in more money so more programs can be initiated. We shy away from talking about the supernatural aspects of Christianity because it isn’t popular with the people filling the pews and paying their tithes. We have stopped seeing Christianity as supernatural because we have turned to natural ways of functioning that keep the funds and bodies coming in.
Christianity was to be supernatural from beginning to end. Life in Christ starts with a miracle — the miracle of the new birth in which Christ comes to indwell us (John 3; Col. 1:27). Our life ends when we are translated in spirit to be with our Lord. Christianity is not a religion composed of many rules and rituals but a supernatural life in which the God of heaven in Christ touches His people on earth and gives them His life for their functioning as ambassadors for His kingdom (2 Cor. 5:20).
I often hesitate to mention miracles I have seen because the telling draws attention to me but for this message I must say I have witnessed God moving supernaturally on many occasions. I have seen Him heal a young lady with cystic fibrosis, completely heal a woman who had extensive injuries to her complete spine and hips due to a bus accident. I have witnessed kidney stones and back injuries disappear instantly. Jesus visited me in person for 31 nights beginning on February 17 2009 during my treatment for cancer. That cancer was also healed in the process. I could go on but you get my point.
If you can get past your unbelief long enough you can find hundreds of accounts of miraculous healings and even resurrections throughout the world. Check out these accounts for a few examples. Before you say “yes but” and begin making excuses for not believing, go through the Gospels again and witness the supernatural life that Jesus demonstrated. Read the red letter portions and see the hand of a mighty God moving in His will upon the earth. Then look at the promises He makes to those who follow Him and the actions of those who believed and obeyed.
For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel (John 5:20
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father (John 14:12).
For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience — by word and deed by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God — so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ (Rom. 15:18, 19).
Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith (Gal. 3:5).
When I tell these stories and testify of this truth I often get a blank stare from my fellow American brethren because we cannot bring ourselves to believe in the clear teachings of scripture. We seek for reasons to explain away the miracles that are happening all around us and sink back to the natural way of dead religion.
The Holy Spirit has provided powerful instruments of spiritual ministry to every believer who does not make these excuses. We refer to them as spiritual gifts. Paul calls them manifestations of the Spirit:
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills (1 Cor. 12:7–11).
Paul says, “to each is given” referring to these gifts of ministry. Do we desire to be one of the “each?” So, what do many do with this passage. Many say that the gifts were temporary and only for the apostles. How dare we limit the power of God with our unbelief! In His last words of the Gospel of Matthew He tells us that all authority has been granted to Him and then to us He says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The fact that this promise of authority to us is, in His words, “to the end of the age” makes it clear that those of us in the twenty-first century are to walk in this supernatural way of life. It’s time to stop listening to the world and patterning ourselves after it and listen to our God and seek to do His will. We are a supernatural people called to a supernatural life in Him.
