Supernatural

What comes to mind when you hear the word supernatural? Flying brooms and magic wands? Secret spells and wizardry are often portrayed as Hollywood's idea for that mystical realm. Maybe your initial response includes shy but cool vampires and handsome werewolves, glistening about showing off their superpowers, and wooing young women with their good looks and fabulous pick-up lines. While these may be entertaining ideas to the mind, they are lacking completely in delivering the real and otherworldly power of the spiritually supernatural. If you like those kinds of stories, ones where the unexplainable happens and there are witnesses to prove that it was definitely not something ordinary, then the Bible has a lot to offer you between the creation story and the end time reveal.
When we think of supernatural these days, I think that our scientific minds are drawn directly to deciding that it’s just for movies or fiction. The issue of unexplained events is more thought of as things for the cable channel shows, ghost stories and mythical theories. However, looking at the history as recorded in the Bible, there were many events of this nature, and more than just a few witnesses. Some of these events are also recorded outside of biblical writings, so the bias that some claim exists in the writers of the time is substantially supported by non-biblical sources.
Some highlights of the obvious events that were hard to explain without spiritual intervention, I remember the exodus story of the Hebrew people from Egypt. It has far too many “coincidences” that helped lead to the freedom of the people. Plagues, fire from the sky, locusts, and blood red river waters; The fact that all of these showed up just as Moses was telling pharaoh to let the Hebrews go free could not have been pure luck. No one is that lucky. Later the walls of Jericho just happen to fall down after the Hebrew people follow God’s orders and march around the city believing His promise to deliver their enemy to them. Jesus brings a dead friend back to life after he has been dead for three days. Water in jugs turns into wine at His blessing. Storms calm at Jesus’s mere suggestion to be still. There are just too many circumstances that seem to happen at just the right time. You can’t explain away every miracle in the bible as an accident, so how do we explain it?
Many years ago I read a popular Christian book about the spiritual world that surrounds ours. Frank Peretti is a masterful writer, and the image that he painted in those books still exists in my mind. In its fictional account, it tells the parallel stories of both our worlds; human beings and the events that we experience, and the spiritual world with all of the angelic and demonic activity of a great science fiction movie. I don’t really think that any of us have a real grasp on how the spirit realm impacts our lives. Just the same though, I believe wholeheartedly, that there is a spirit realm in which angels and demons alike, exist around us; they tempt us to follow selfish desires and protect us from overwhelming danger.
If you are like me, you could really use some of that type of miraculous power in your life. Illnesses, job and family stress, finances upside down, who among us doesn’t think about how great a miracle would be in our time of need. Could it be that we are being bombarded by those evil spirits, roaming their realm looking to intervene in our lives with tragedy and pain at any opportunity? I believe that they do. But I also believe that we, as basically selfish and sinful people, create a lot of our own problems through bad decisions and impatience. So regardless of the source, and whether it’s a combination of our nature or their influence, or a deadly merger of the two, why do we choose not to believe for our own miracle? Why is it that before our need is the greatest and most hopeless, we fail to call on God to deliver us. Certainly we pray for miracles when all other hope is gone, but what is it that you are really expecting to happen? He always answers when we finally call on Him, I believe that. It’s not always the answer that we are looking for, but He does answer.
As Christians, we desperately need to realize the power that exists within the spiritual realm. Certainly not to the point of spending all of our waking time thinking about it, being distracted from what we are called to do, but giving it enough importance to believe and expect our prayers to affect the actions of those within it. If we call God to send angels to protect and deliver us from dangers or pain, we should expect a direct result of these requests to bring about action within the spirit world. A movement of empowerment for those beings who watch over our lives on behalf of their creator, and ours. Why is this important? I believe understanding the immenseness of God and His powers can overwhelm our senses, and especially tend to create so many questions in us that we lose the simplicity of His gospel. Yes He commands legions of angels. Yes they exist in a realm completely invisible to our own, and yet intimately connected to our lives. Yes they battle with forces of darkness and evil to protect us when we call upon Him to send them, and sometimes when we don’t. Science fiction? It certainly sounds like it doesn’t it? But in the Bible, over and over, the heavenly realm is described in great detail, with angelic warriors and great hosts of those created by God.
In Luke 1, the new church leaders again quoted the preachers and teachers of the past, in this case Zachariah, who in chapter 10 tells of the God of angel armies, who will come to put the muscle back into the people of Judah. That He will take care of them, strengthen them, revive their spirits, and fill them with courage. When we pray we reach out to a power far beyond our rational thinking. The problem seems to be our expectations. We can’t figure out why God doesn’t do what we ask Him to do. I would say that the answer to that may be perspective. Just like our parents know what is best for us as children, God sees a world around us that contains the present and the future. He sees how it will affect us, and those around us. And finally, He has a plan to use us, if we ask Him to, to fulfill His purpose for our life.
Let’s look at it from this point of view, whether you believe in the spirit realm and all of it’s spectacular biblical detail or not, does not affect its existence. I would think that believing in a God with the power to build a universe and create beauty such as we have, would convince us all that limiting what is possible and what is not would be ridiculous. With that said, take a step of faith with me to believe that you are a part of something more wondrous than you can see with your current eyes. You live in a dual realm, where God allows us to make our own choices, and walk individual paths, free from the constraints that would come upon us if we could see what is His spiritual reality. Just imagine if we had the vision to know His wonders as the angels do? It’s my belief that for this reason, we do not have the ability to see all that is around us. How could we have the freewill to choose Him if we were overcome with His glory and just the sight of Him convinced us of His majesty?
It is His love for us that protects our decision to believe in Him. Does the supernatural exist? Yes it certainly does, and its armies are empowered through His will, and called on by our prayers. It exists through God and surrounds each of us in every way. If you believe that, and align yourself with Him, talk to Him, learn about who He really is, listen to His messengers in your heart, then the realm in which you live will be opened up to the power of a super love story. One of grace and forgiveness. He doesn’t want to win you over through power and special effects, but through a willingness to call you family, and a conveyance of unconditional, even supernatural, affections.

  Zechariah 10: 3-6 (MSG)