Swimming

I dabble in the supernatural.

I heard a few of you gasp at that! A few of you shook your heads and went, “I knew she was a little off.”

As a matter of fact, I do more than dabble, I swim in the deep waters of the supernatural. If you are going to swim, you cannot swim while wading in only up to your ankles. Picture it, you are standing on the shore of the ocean, you put your feet into the cold, lapping water, you go up to your ankles and stop because that is safe, it is comfortable, not too much is going to happen there. You feel the cold as it swishes around your feet, it is refreshing, that my friends, is my version of dabbling. I must confess I find most people play it safe, in these shallow waters of life.

If you want to swim, you are going to have to get wet, full in, the water can be cold, there could be things lurking below, but you must take the risk if you are going to swim. You have to make the conscious decision to leave the shore and head for the deep water. It can be scary but it is exhilarating!

I would like you to hear me out, give me a minute of your time, stick with me, because if I had to guess, I would say that most of you also dabble in the supernatural.

What do I mean by that?

The Oxford Dictionary describes “Supernatural” as: “events, forces or powers that cannot be explained by the laws of science and that seem to involve gods or magic.”

We all have our beliefs, different as they may be. Not all of our beliefs can be explained by the laws of science which would identify them as supernatural. If I said there is a God, most of you, or a lot of you would agree there is something there, we may not agree on who he is or what he does, but this is the definition of supernatural.

So… could we say, or agree that most of us reading this, based on the previous paragraph, dabble in the supernatural? Still not sure?

Did you know that if you believe in angels, you believe in the supernatural.

What about ghosts? Do you believe in ghosts? Those are supernatural.

Hauntings? Horoscopes? Fortune Telling? Telepathy?

There is a lot more of the supernatural stuff out there when we start looking around isn’t there?

The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 12:7: “then shall the dust (body) return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.” When we die our spirit will return to God who gave us life in the first place. We are spiritual beings; you are a spiritual being. That makes you supernatural.

Most of us consider ourselves to be human beings, physical beings with flesh and blood and we tend to ignore the spiritual part.

What if I put out to you that both the spiritual and the physical parts of us are equally important? That is how God created us, the two go together.

Looking at the very beginning, the Book of Genesis, the Creation account, Adam and Eve walked in the garden with God. Genesis 3. Wait a minute, God is a spirit and Adam and Eve were physically human, yet the Bible tells us that the spiritual and the physical were connected at the very beginning. It sure sounds like they were living in the supernatural while on earth.

Then Adam and Eve disobeyed and got kicked out of the garden. God placed Cherubim and a flaming sword to protect the garden of Eden. Cherubim, a type of angelic being that we are not 100% certain of as they are supernatural and a flaming sword… not your average day in the garden.

When I look around I get so discouraged at the amount of darkness around me, the amount of skulls, dark and scary, evil looking images on company logos, tattooed permanently onto peoples bodies. As I was driving around Dawson, I counted about 4 companies with dark, skull like company logos in a couple of block radius.

A lady at the lab I was at was typing onto the keyboard and I noticed the dark tattoos on each of her fingers, a stark reminder every few minutes for her of her beliefs.

It is not that the “darkness” has not been in the world since the beginning of the earth, the Bible tells us that satan got kicked out of heaven. Where did he go? It says, he came to earth to wage war on God’s children, “us”. Satan figured if he could not get to God, he would destroy His children. That has been the battle since before our time. That is why this battle between God and evil is so vitally important, it is a very real battle.

The fact that I believe in God – Yahweh, Jehovah, God of the Universe is a supernatural belief. You see, I cannot “see” Him, I have to have faith that He exists and while I do not “see” Him, I see the affects of the things that He does. This would be events or forces that cannot be explained by the laws of science.

I have seen miracles, healings, and miraculous things that defy logical explanations. I guess the very best way to describe some of these things would be…. Supernatural.

God is being kicked out of our homes, out of our schools, out of our governments, and even out of some of our churches. When you kick God out, guess who you allow to come walking in…….

It is not that evil has suddenly sprung up everywhere, it is more that he is simply taking over the space that we had filled with God.

To clarify, we are all dabbling in the supernatural, some of us more than others but the supernatural is all around us.

Some of us think that we are “safe” as we stand on the shore, water up to our ankles and that we can remain “safe” there forever. But truly is that what Jesus said He required?

1) Love the Lord your God with ALL your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

2) Love your neighbour as yourself.

I read this and think to myself, this is not standing in the shallows. These 2 commandments of Jesus require determined purpose.

You cannot be 100% Gods and live in the shallow water.

You cannot be 100% evil and live in the shallow water either.

What about if you are fluctuating between God and the evil? That is a horrible place to be, it would be very confusing, you would not know which one is stronger and you would not be committed to either one.

I would say a lot of our younger generation our kids, our teenagers, our young adults are in this spot.

The thing about the supernatural to our young people and children is the appeal of what appears to be “magical powers” or the supernatural! The Harry Potters, the witches, the Twilight books and movies, vampires, Hollywood has made evil, mainstream. Most of North America has bought it hook, line and sinker.

Don't believe me? The newest billboard in New York City advertising "Lilith" a demon from new video game. The picture posted on Twitter received over 97,000 likes in 24 hours. Yes, you read that correctly.

The young people discover they can do and see spells, they can see word cursing working in other peoples lives, they can hear things move and bump in the night. It can cause an adrenaline rush.

Oh my friends, satan has nothing on God. God created adrenaline!

Satan was created by God. Satan did not just happen to come about, he was gifted these powers from God. If you are a deep swimmer of God, you also have the same God powers of the Holy Spirit. Those powers have not been embraced unfortunately by many of the North American churches. Many churches teach that these miraculous powers of God stopped with the first century church.

That is not what the Bible says, it is not what Jesus says: “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to the Father.” John 14:12

Greater works than Jesus – how super cool! How supernatural!

Let’s just take a quick peek at what “powers”, we call them “gifts” does God tell us is ours?

Everlasting Life: well that blows science right out of the water doesn’t it? How on earth (pun intended) do you have everlasting life, if it is not supernatural? John 3:16

Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miraculous powers, prophecy, discernment of spirits, different kinds of tongues (languages), interpretation of the tongues: these are all listed as gifts of the Holy Spirit. None of these a person could do on their own, these are truly supernatural gifts given by God.

These gifts are alive and well and working today, not just in the first century church. How do I know? I have seen them, every single one of them in action. Yes, including everlasting life, I have had the privilege of talking with 5 people who have died and their experiences on the “other side”. Life does not end in death, death is simply a doorway to another place.

Around the world, many cultures have embraced living in the physical and spiritual worlds simultaneously, there is nothing strange about it, it is a part of their normal life. We tend to shy away from topics like this in N. America because we do not understand it, nor have we been taught about it.

Let me just say, if you want to explore the wild side of life, the supernatural of God, the crazy things that can only happen by God Himself, then my friend you had better start pushing off from shore. If you want to have “life abundantly” as Jesus Himself promised, then you need to start swimming.

It is glorious, fun and a crazy world to live in the supernatural – never ever will it be dull and boring! This life ain’t your grandmas church! It is the living, breathing body of believers who are all in, who take risks for God.

Why? Because it is who God created us to be. It is not for just some, it is the original purpose of the human race, to have this wonderful relationship with a heavenly Creator who loved us so much that He wants to have a relationship with us. Yes with you, if you will just let Him.

You can stay old and boring, stale and safe or you could believe in the dark side, that ultimately started out as a revenge against God, hell bent on destroying God’s creation, that would be you! Do not buy into that!

Trust God and His plan, start walking out into the water, a bit more, come on - more, deeper, go deeper, pretty soon, you won’t be touching the ground anymore and my friend, you will be swimming and what a swim it will be!