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Volume 33   Number 09 Mar 1, 2009

        Jeremiah 29:11-14 NLT: "For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for Me wholeheartedly, you will find Me. I will be found by you," says the Lord. "I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land."
        Jeremiah encourages the exiles of Judah that God has a good plan for them—a plan for hope and a future. God has a plan for all His people, and in that plan He promises to hear and restore our fortunes. There is an individual plan for each of us, a call and a purpose. However, I believe there is one all-encompassing plan that I call His Arche design or "Plan A." This can be found in Genesis 1:26-28.
        Then 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 birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
        Here God created a being in His image and likeness as His representative to govern the earth for God's glory. Out of these verses and others in scripture, we can extract axioms that help us understand the extent and workings of God's design. The first is that God wanted not only to dwell with man but also within and so fill man with His presence that He would express through man His nature and rule.
        The New Testament states this principle clearly. 2 Corinthians 6:16: For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people." Colossians 1:27-28: To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17: Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
        This indwelling and expression of God's Spirit is known as Spiritual Life. John 10:10: (Jesus said) "I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly."
        From this principle, we can draw another axiom that man is the door to this earth for the spiritual world. God created man to express Himself. But being in God's image, man had the capacity of fellowship and choice. God's expression through man depended upon man choosing fellowship with God. Whom man obeyed in the spiritual world has the right to become His lord and the legal right to express their nature and dominion through him.
        Genesis 2:15-17: The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
        Plan A was a glorious plan for the human race. Adam and Eve and their progeny were the fundamental means by which God would manifest His rule over planet earth. But unfortunately there was a malignant spiritual personality called Satan with a plan of his own and the need to bring man under his rule in order to carry it out.
        In the garden, during the temptation, Adam and Eve exercised faith in what Satan said over what God had spoken. Instead of depending upon God, they followed Satan's counsel to become self-dependent. As a consequence of their disobedience, they separated themselves from God. They took on a new lord and master, which was Satan (John 8:34, Romans 6:16, 2 Peter 2:19), along with his nature and entered a state known as spiritual death.
        Ephesians 2:1-4 ESV: And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
        They now had Satan's spirit working through their spirit to do his will with its attendant evil, such as hate, greed, injustice, poverty, broken relationships, and a host of other maladies; all of which will eventually end in sorrow and pain for the human race.
        To reclaim humanity, Christ first canceled its condemnation for rebellion. He bridged the rupture between God and man that had been caused by Adam's willful transgression. On the cross, Christ allowed the penalty of man's judgment to be administered to Him. By His substitutionary death, Christ took the penalty due to all that have sinned against their Creator and broken His holy law. By the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the door to Satan has been cut off, and God now has the right to express His nature and power through you.
        Ephesians 2:4-6 ESV: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
        What is good news for you is bad news for Satan. In the process of leaving one Lord and going to another, keep in mind several things as you make the transmigration from one kingdom to another. Expect resistance, expect conflict. As Christ reminded His disciples, the taking of the Kingdom of Darkness involves a struggle.
        Luke 11:20-23 NASB: "But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own homestead, his possessions are undisturbed; but when someone stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away from him all his armor on which he had relied and distributes his plunder." Most of your life the enemy has been using you as a tool and doorway. It can leave a lot of residue behind. Old patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving may be difficult to break.
        Ephesians 4:17-24: This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
        We must also never forget that the main purpose of God's design was to create mankind in His image and likeness with dominion following. In other words, it was not so much in what you do but who you are. To act like God is to look like God. John 14:9 ESV: (Jesus said) "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father."
        Unless you are willing to do what it takes to change to God's image, you will always be in danger of losing the dominion you struggle so hard to retain. Plan A can also be for us, who have lived so long under Satan's rule and deception, a totally alien concept. It is not only difficult to understand but also difficult to trust, and God may at times have to coerce us into it. Psalm 27:11 ESV: Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.
        Plan A is God's plan, and He has no other. In His mercy, He may allow us to live a life that is not His original objective, but His best is still waiting for anyone wishing to live their life to the fullest. It may be difficult, and you may find the forces of the enemy doing what they can to hinder you. But God not only wants the best for you but also what He intended all along.
        Ephesians 4:20-24: But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

Rev. Ken Cole