Necessity of the Supernatural Life

It is amazing to me how society takes such aversion to anything supernatural. Popular culture tries to discredit anything that has Christian morality behind it or claims to be supernatural. I’ve seen two major examples of this in recent news. One is the continual barrage of articles attacking Sarah Palin’s competence based on her adherence to Christian conservative morality and her potential allegiance with ministries that support Christians being endowed with supernatural gifts of healing, miracles, and revelation. It’s interesting that I had no interest in either Presidential candidate until Sarah Palin was chosen as McCain’s Vice Presidential running mate. Actually, it wasn’t until all the negative press that I began to take note of this woman and began to like everything I was hearing about her that was being journalistically twisted as relaying her incompetence. This country was founded upon Christian principals. It’s a sad day to see people appalled by a candidate with Christian morality and theology as antiquated, incompetent, and destructive for the country. I’m not sure our nation realizes what it is asking for when it wants “progressive” liberalized morality with no foundation upon God. Do we really want such a foundation? Let us consider those countries with this kind of secularist anti-God foundation were known for their slaughter of millions of innocent lives. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini are prime examples of government leaders who based their communistic dictatorship on Karl Marx’s atheism.

The second major example is the British host of the MTV awards making fun of the Jonas Brother’s commitment to purity with dripping vehemence. Have we gone mad? Is it not refreshing to see young men wanting to save themselves for their future wives and to care for them only without any baggage of past sexual relationships? We are talking young men in the Holywood spotlight! This is unheard of in today’s normalcy of broken marriages, affairs, fornications rampant in Holywood. Kudos to them for maintaining such a testimony of great character in the face of such immorality.

I say all this with understanding that is not fully society’s fault for thinking this way. It is the Church’s responsibility to shine the truth through the way we love. We have failed to show our society that God has the answers to its problems. The world looks at our problems and doesn’t see any reason to look to us for any answers.

How can we fix this problem and stop the deterioration of our government and country which is fast approaching the rampant secularism of modern Europe?

1) Christians need to take serious their responsibility to be lights in the darkness. Not to rise up in religious outrage, but to be examples of Christ love and the wholeness He produces in our lives. Let us be salt and light in this world by the testimony of our lives lived in open devotion to Christ with love for each other and everyone else being evident in our lives.

2) Christians need to operate in their supernatural giftings and not be afraid of praying for the sick. We must step out and do what Jesus called us to do, “heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons.” There can be no denying God’s existence and the evidence of the supernatural when people are rising from the dead, legs are growing out, cancer is disappearing, and people are being set free from the demonic influences in their lives.

3) G.K. Chesterton, a famous Christian writer, once answered an editorial question “What’s wrong with the world?” with the shortest editorial response “I am.” We need to look in ourselves and see the need for a Savior for the evil in our own hearts. We want to right the world and end injustice, pain, suffering, and evil. We need to realize that we ourselves have a plank in our eye that we need Jesus to restore us so that we can love our neighbor the way we should and see the love of God change hearts and minds. We can’t point the finger at others as the problem of the world. To think this way would be like expecting a child to potty train himself. We know the answer; we are more responsible for the world’s problems than those who don’t know Jesus. If we don’t rise lovingly to help our culture transform to the Kingdom of God, who will?

4) In keeping with that, our culture will not be transformed by physical force, but by the love of God. It will be by loving our neighbors as our self, by going the extra mile, by turning the other cheek, by not returning wrong for wrong, by doing good to those who persecute us, by loving our enemies, by praying for our nation, by healing the sick, and by preaching the Kingdom of God.

Rise up Church. Rise up in love.