Monday Memoir: You are God’s Adventure on Earth
Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” — Genesis 1:26
Why is Christ, the very person of God, in You? Christ is the redeemed image of God in every believer. But why is he in you?
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians he stated:
“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. (Col. 1:15–17)
John the Apostle also reiterated this in John 1:1–4:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.”
We discover through Paul’s letter and John’s writing that Christ was the creative force of the universe. He existed way before He incarnated Himself in the man Jesus. He became fully divine and fully human. In Him everything on heaven and earth finds existence. He was before all things, and in Him, all things hold together.
Looking at the passages above, we understand now that Christ living in us empowers us to live out our full purpose — to create, dominate, subdue, and rule our world. He, being the creative force of the Universe that cannot be contained, lies in every believer ready to take expression in any form or to the extent the believer allows.
So why were you made in God’s image? Have you ever stopped to wonder about this?
GOD HAD A DREAM, AND HE WRAPPED YOUR BODY AROUND IT.
At the beginning of creation, God gifted us His image and likeness. This has always been his idea — to find existence in our own existence, and the Incarnation is God’s redemptive opportunity to once again reclaim his existence in our existence.
The understanding of union-life and our oneness with God means we are back home, in union with our creator, and are now individual expressions of God, each unique in his own way.
God is about adventure: to birth, create, begin, design, advance, and expand the world. He hasn’t changed His mind from the initial declaration in Gen 1:26–28 to “be fruitful, to subdue and to dominate…” Our dreams are voices of divinity singing and nudging us to a world of possibilities that awaits us.
Our model or reality is shaped by our consciousness.
God’s agenda is heaven on earth and that hasn’t changed. Jesus taught this in the Lord’s Prayer: “May Your kingdom come. May what You want to happen be done on earth as it is done in heaven.”
Earth has always been God’s dream. Man has always been God’s dream. God dreamed up a world of beauty and entrusted man as a caretaker to tender and co-create more beauty. In Genesis, the creative force of the Trinity brooded upon the face of the deep to bring beauty and awe out of chaos.
It was God who wooed Abraham from his comfort zone and safe confines into a life of affluence. Nations would eventually come to sign treaties and bi-lateral trade agreements with him. He was a man of immense wealth.
It was God who inspired Jacob in a dream to dream up the spotted, stripped, and the speckle brand that usurped the market from his business partner-turned-competitor.
It was God who gave Moses the audacious goal of national liberation, civil rights, and the emancipation movement that first began in Egypt.
It was God who would whisper into David’s ear that “Goliath’s head is yours for the taking.”
It was God who, from a cruise of oil of the widow, made an oil business.
It was God who put the dream in Pharaoh’s heart and the interpretation in Joseph’s.
In a prophetic moment, Isiah 61 captured the mission of Christ:
“The mighty Spirit of Lord Yahweh is wrapped around me because Yahweh has anointed me, as a messenger to preach good news to the poor. He sent me to heal the wounds of the brokenhearted, to tell captives, “You are free,”
and to tell prisoners, “Be free from your darkness. I am sent to announce a new season of Yahweh’s grace and a time of God’s recompense on his enemies to comfort all who are in sorrow, to strengthen those crushed by despair who mourn in Zion — to give them a beautiful bouquet in the place of ashes,
the oil of bliss instead of tears, and the mantle of joyous praise instead of the spirit of heaviness.
Because of this, they will be known as Mighty Oaks of Righteousness, planted by Yahweh as a living display of his glory. They will restore ruins from long ago and rebuild what was long devastated.
They will renew ruined cities and desolations of past generations.”
Through the mission of Christ, we see God’s relentless commitment to redeem men and culture.
We made the mistake of defining ourselves in opposition to culture. The challenge, for the most part, is that we haven’t made the connection that God is our source of expression so we keep looking back to culture — misinformed definitions and age-old misrepresentations of the human identity.
I also think that our understanding of Christ has often been very narrow, mostly within the eschatological frame of the historical Jesus. But Christ is the anointed presence of God that has come alive in every believer. He is the source of life for the recreated man in Him.
The responsibility of every believer is to grow in this consciousness of Christ in all ramifications. Many of us have not done the work of expanding our concept of Christ to His first revealed role as the Creator at work in creation, and he Hasn’t stopped since. Throughout the scriptures, He would pull men into His dream for the world and He would push men into His desire for the world.
When it comes to Christ being the creative source and force of all existence, some people get it, but when it comes to Christ as our creative capacity most of us are naïve to this fact. Many are unaware of the potentials and possibilities of this reality. Every creator has grown to trust God’s capacity within us, making the most out of our God-given potential. God was deliberate about it; man is His expression of both His image and His imagination.
Christ within us is seeking to redeem and reclaim culture through us. Cultural renewal is about the arranging of raw materials of culture to create and draw out all the potentialities for the flourishing of humanity. We are all agents of cultural renewal.
Christ is the dream in the heart of every prophet — the voice in the dreams of the night — the nudge and the impression behind their instinct. Christ is a dreamer and we all need to rediscover the dimension of Christ that is seeking to reclaim the cosmos, one dream at a time. Christ as the creative force of the universe is the next frontier that the church of Christ needs to embrace, experience, and express.
Every generation needs men that can dream dreams and tell visions. Every dream needs a man of faith, and every visionary needs to work by faith. Part of our enduring call at The Tribe is to enable a generation of dreamers. Every dreamer needs courage and every visionary man needs faith.
In God’s creative order, He invites the participation of nature and people. When He made the fish, He spoke to the water, “Let us make fishes.” The water became a participant in the creation of the vision. When it was time to make plants, He spoke to the ground and the ground became a participant for the creation of the plant and animals. God is still in the process of co-creating and He is constantly inviting us to participate with Him in the creation of beauty and wonder.
Open up your heart and allow God to use your hands and imagination in redeeming the world to the very original plan. Let your existence bring heaven down as it is up above and so shall it be below. This is God’s will for every son and daughter.
This is an excerpt from a Sermon taught at the Tribe. Watch the full video HERE
Written by Ferdy Adimefe
Ferdy Adimefe is a serial entrepreneur passionate about culture and creative industrialization. He curates expressions centred on faith, innovation and technology. He is a Father, Husband, Author and conference speaker; He is also a Pastor at The Tribe Lagos.
