God’s Design For Living The Supernatural Life

Are you tired of rules-based, ineffective and judgemental religion? Too many believers have a desire to live victoriously but operate from human strength. I explain in the book The Art of Marketing Jesus how God provided a new way to live on this side of the cross. If you are feeling empty and mentally exhausted, discover God’s design for living the supernatural life.

Divine Process for Living the Supernatural Life

Successful companies create systems and processes that generate predictable results. You will receive the same experience at every Chick-fil-A restaurant across the country. It doesn’t matter which location you choose, you will always enjoy the recipes you love. Even the layout of the restaurants and customer service experiences are the same across the board. The company has developed powerful processes that define how everything is done at each location. At the end of the day, it’s the quality of the process that empowers the workers to produce superior results.

Similarly, God created a process that empowers everyday believers to produce exceptional results. He does not demand spiritual results without giving believers a clear process that makes successful living possible. In short, the Lord has established a divine business process that works to produce extraordinary results through ordinary people. The key to the process is staying in alignment with its logical sequence; otherwise, the results will be disastrous.

Grace, Faith and Works

Paul outlines the sequence in a letter written to the Ephesian church: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:8–10). Here we have God’s design for living the supernatural life.

Notice the order of events that exists within the process. It starts with the blessing of grace, which is the divine power that makes victorious living possible. We must understand that it’s only through the power of grace that believers can receive the spiritual substance of faith, which represents the second part of the sequence. Finally, we see the climax of the divine business process manifest when the believer exercises faith in the form of good works.

Grace Before Works

The original use of the word grace speaks to the idea of God exerting holy influence upon the human soul. In other words, believers are given the spiritual capacity to have faith only because God exerted holy influence in advance. For example, Peter did not muster up enough faith to walk on water on his own. Instead, he waited until Jesus gave him the verbal blessing to walk on water. It was through the words that Jesus spoke that gave Peter the confidence to step out of the boat. The process started with God exerting holy influence, which released the grace that Peter needed to have faith, which ultimately resulted in the extraordinary work of walking on water.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, knew that acting on the words of Jesus would always produce miraculous results. She told the disciples to “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5) midway through a wedding celebration. The hosts ran out of wine and needed help. Jesus told the servants to fill six stone jars with water and serve the guests. The servants had a decision to make. Would they continue to operate based on human strength or trust Jesus?

Their willingness to trust resulted in the water turning into wine. Again, we see the sequence of the divine business process in operation. It was the words that Jesus spoke that provided the grace the servants needed to step out on faith, which resulted in the work of turning water into wine. In the same way, believers can live a supernatural life that far exceeds human ability, but nothing is possible for the believer without the power of grace.

Embrace God’s Design for Victorious Living

We must never attempt to change the proper sequence of events by putting works in front of the divine power of grace. Otherwise, we will not experience a victorious life. Many people don’t understand why they are constantly tired, frustrated and burned out. I can tell you from personal experience that doing works that are out of sequence will never produce the intended results.

We were never designed to live the supernatural life separate from the divine power source of grace. Therefore, we must learn to walk in alignment with the grace of God if we want to live victoriously. Rest assured, we have been given a new way to live that takes the heavy burden off of our shoulders and places it on the very capable shoulders of God.

Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30).