God Wants His Garden Back

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God Wants His Garden Back; The Blessing
Topic Started: Aug 16 2008, 10:25 AM (71 Views)
Stace	Aug 16 2008, 10:25 AM Post #1
Administrator Posts: 3,579 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: March 6, 2004	Kenneth Copeland published an article about "The Blessing" in his Victory Magazine. With permission, I have posted those articles below. For me, the articles give me an understanding of the plumb line that is to be in my life. I pray you are blessed by it. I know it is long, but it is something that can be read over and over to keep it fresh upon our hearts. Article Below - - - The Blessing [Ref: Kenneth Copeland] Most of us think that word simply refers to something good that God gives us—a gift He bestows. But the blessing of God actually extends far beyond that. It includes not only His gifts, but the creative power behind them. It speaks not only of what we have been given but of who we are and what God has anointed us to do. If you are a born-again child of God, The Blessing encompasses your identity, your capacity and your call. Such a statement might sound to some like an exaggeration, and it would be if I were using the word blessing like we usually do—to mean an isolated outbreak of God’s goodness in some area of life. But I’m not talking about a blessing like that. I’m talking about The Blessing—and that is a far greater thing. A Dramatic Moment in Divine History To understand the true scope of The Blessing, we must trace its origin back through the Bible to the first chapter of Genesis. There, in what I believe was one of the most dramatic moments in divine history, The Blessing made its first appearance. In the six days leading up to it, God had spoken the earth into being. He had said, "Light be!"…and light was. At His command, the sun, moon, stars and sea had all been set in place. Plant, animal and marine life had all been brought forth by God's Word. Everything had been made ready for His crowning creation: "And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" (Genesis 1:26). Personally, I believe at that moment a hush fell over the universe as all the angels and heavenly host waited in anticipation to see this God-like being who was about to be created. Their attention was riveted upon this being called man who was to be given authority over the earth. What would this creature be like? What kind of power would he possess? What work would God give him to do? All those questions were answered in an instant with what happened next. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth (verses 27-28). The First Words Adam Ever Heard With those words, God imparted to Adam and Eve— and to all mankind—The Blessing. He told them who they were: the lords of the earth created by God in His image as rulers and royalty. He told them what they were supposed to do: replenish (or fill up) the earth, subdue it and bring it into line with the perfect will of God. He also gave them the power to carry out that assignment. To bless actually means "to empower." So the first words Adam ever heard, the first sound that ever struck his eardrums was the sound of God's voice empowering him with the divine, creative ability to reign over the earth and make it a perfect reflection of God's best and highest will. How did Adam know what God's perfect will for the earth was? All he had to do was look around him. He was living in the Garden of Eden—a place created and ordered by God Himself. That Garden was a perfect demonstration of God's plan for this planet. It was a prototype of what He wanted the whole thing to be. Adam's job was to exercise his God-given authority and expand that Garden until it encompassed the entire earth. That's what The Blessing was for! It provided Adam with the power to carry on the work God began in creation. It equipped him with the divine resources he needed to follow God's example and, by speaking anointed, faith-filled words, transform the uncultivated parts of this planet into a veritable Garden of Eden. In other words, The Blessing empowered Adam to be a blessing wherever he went. The Garden of Eden was literally inside Adam. The God Who Never Quits Of course, we all know that Adam and Eve messed things up. Instead of operating in The Blessing they'd been given and becoming a blessing to the whole earth, they disconnected from God through disobedience. They bowed their knee to the devil and gave him access to their God-given authority. When they did, the whole deal was twisted. The Blessing was turned into a curse. Instead of prospering under their oversight, the earth resisted them and became their enemy. Instead of speaking to it and reigning over it as kings, Adam and Eve worked it like slaves, sweating and laboring just to eke out a living. Talk about a long fall! Adam had once had enough power to subdue the entire earth and bless it; after sin entered the picture, he could hardly make a living in his own garden. Even so, God didn't give up on His original plan. He never does. There's no variableness or shadow of change in Him. Once He sets out to do something, He stays with it until it's done. So it's no surprise that just a few chapters later, in Genesis 12, we find Him reestablishing The Blessing that Adam threw away. We find Him offering it again to a man who was willing to obey Him and enter into a covenant relationship with Him. We find Him saying to a man named Abram: Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed (Genesis 12:1-3). From Generation to Generation There's no question about it. That wasn't just any blessing God was offering to Abram. It was The Blessing—the same one Adam was given, the same divine ability and creative anointing that caused goodness and prosperity to spring forth everywhere Adam went. Once again, as He did in Genesis 1, God was offering to a man the power to bless the whole earth. Abram responded differently to that blessing than Adam did. He didn't blow it off. He received it with respect and began to operate in it by faith. He even taught it to his children and passed the blessing along to them. What was the result? Eden-like conditions began to blossom in Abram's life. Just as God showed up in the Garden to fellowship with Adam and Eve, God began to visit Abram and talk with him. Their relationship was so strong and close that God referred to Abraham (Abram's God-given name) as His friend. Abraham's physical body began to reflect the conditions of the Garden as well. The Blessing so renewed and regenerated him that he and his once-barren wife, Sarah, were able to have a son when she was 90 and he was 100 years old. The great material abundance that marked the Garden of Eden began to manifest in Abraham's life too. He became very rich in cattle, silver and gold. Everywhere he went, he prospered financially. Because of The Blessing, Abraham and the members of his household learned how to do things they couldn't do before. Without any formal military training, for example, Abraham's servants became expert warriors. They fought so effectively that when a coalition of foreign armies attacked, Abraham whipped the whole bunch with just 318 of his servants. Then he freed all the captives and walked away with all the spoil. Those are the kinds of results The Blessing produced again and again in Abraham's life. They didn't stop with him, either. They continued in the lives of his descendants because God had specifically said, "I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee" (Genesis 17:7). Because of that promise, The Blessing can be traced down through generations in the pages of the Bible. We can see it in the life of Abraham's grandson Jacob as he prospered and increased against all odds. Even when people intentionally cheated him in business, Jacob just kept getting richer. His household eventually grew so big the region he lived in couldn't contain it. Jacob's son Joseph experienced the same kind of success in the face of even greater obstacles. When his brothers sold him into slavery, for example, The Blessing empowered him to become the overseer of his owner's entire estate. Later, when a loose woman's lies landed him in prison, The Blessing promoted him until he was in charge of the whole place. Finally, when the prison couldn't hold him anymore, The Blessing brought him to the palace where he ended up as Pharaoh's right-hand man and prime minister over the entire land of Egypt. Who Is Abraham's Seed? After Joseph died, the revelation of The Blessing began to dim and Abraham's descendants slipped into 400 years of Egyptian slavery. But God—who never quits—raised up a man named Moses, breathed fresh life into that revelation and taught an entire nation of Israelites to walk once again in The Blessing of Abraham. That Blessing was what split the Red Sea for them. It was what guided them and kept them for 40 years in the wilderness. It was The Blessing that demolished the walls of Jericho and launched the Israelites into the Promised Land. It was The Blessing that gave Samson the strength to single-handedly slay a thousand Philistines, and gave David the guts and grace to kill Goliath. It was The Blessing on Daniel that kept the lions' mouths shut when he was in their den. All those people enjoyed the benefits of The Blessing because of what God said to Abraham. They all experienced some of its effects because He had promised to give The Blessing not only to Abraham himself but to his seed. "That's all great, Brother Copeland," you might say, "but I'm not Jewish. So what does it have to do with me?" If you're a believer, it has everything to do with you because the New Testament says that when God gave The Blessing to Abraham and his seed, "He [God] saith not, and to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ" (Galatians 3:16). In other words, when God spoke to Abraham and his Seed, He was speaking directly to Jesus. He was giving to Jesus (through Abraham) The Blessing that was originally bestowed on Adam. That's why Jesus is called "the last Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:45). He was the true inheritor of that Blessing. His whole earthly ministry was a demonstration of it. Everywhere He went, He brought blessing. That's why, when sick people came to Him, He healed them. He was carrying out the mission Adam had been given. He was releasing the power of The Blessing within Him to expand God's kingdom and reproduce God's perfect will as it was first manifest in the Garden of Eden. There wasn't any sickness in the Garden of Eden, so healing is part of The Blessing and Jesus healed at every opportunity. There wasn't any poverty or hunger in the Garden, so prosperity is part of The Blessing. Therefore He multiplied loaves and fish to feed the hungry crowds who came to hear Him. There was no harmful weather in the Garden, so when a storm threatened destruction, He spoke to it and calmed it down. That was The Blessing in action. It's Our Inheritance But Jesus didn't stop there. After demonstrating the power of The Blessing in His own life, He went to the cross and paid the price for the sin of all mankind. He defeated the curse, rose again and took The Blessing back so that you and I could inherit it. As Galatians 3 says: Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith…. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise (verses 13-14, 29). Do you realize what that passage is saying? It's telling us that through Jesus, you and I have become heirs—not just of a blessing, not just of some blessings, or even many blessings. We've inherited The Blessing! We've been given the power of God to create, to make available, and to overcome anything necessary to bring into manifestation the conditions in the Garden of Eden not only in our own lives but in the lives of others. That's our inheritance! We are heirs to everything God did in that Garden. Our job now is to help expand it and do our part to fill the earth with its blessing. That was God's will for the first Adam and today His will is back in place through Jesus, the last Adam. Some people say we need to get our minds off The Blessing and back on Jesus. But the truth is, you can't separate Jesus from The Blessing. It's what He came to restore. It's what He walked in and made available to others when He ministered on the earth…and it's what He has called us, as His disciples, to walk in and make available to others in His Name. Today, I believe the angels are once again waiting with anticipation, watching this new-creation race of reborn men who have been given authority over the earth in the Name of Jesus. They're waiting to respond to our command as we go into all the world, doing the works of Jesus, and telling everyone who will listen that He has paid the price for us all to inherit The Blessing * There is something within the spirit of man that rebels against oppression. There is a knowing, woven into the very fabric of our being, that we were not created to live in bondage to poverty and lack. We were not designed to submit to sickness and disease. We were not meant to be the slaves of any earthly person or any natural thing. We were meant to be kings. At times that consciousness may be all but crushed by the merciless blows of the devil. It may be numbed into deception by the false teachings of religion. But despite it all, there still burns within each one of us a longing to somehow escape the domination of natural circumstances and rise again to a place of dominion. We have the sense, etched indelibly in our spirit, that we were originally created to reign in a Garden of Eden…and nothing can quench our desire to live there again. Why is that? Because, from the beginning, that has been God’s will for mankind. He literally breathed that will into the entire race on the sixth day of Creation, the day when, as Genesis 1 says, “God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (verses 27-28, New King James Version). The New Living Translation puts it this way: “God blessed them and told them, ‘Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters over the fish and birds and all the animals.’” Be masters. Those were the first words God ever said to man. And with those words came the divine power to back them up—a power that was delivered to Adam through what the Bible calls The Blessing. God Never Gave Up At first glance, you might wonder why Adam even needed such a blessing. After all, he lived in the Garden of Eden—a perfect place where everything he could possibly need was already provided, a place pre-designed to reflect God’s best and highest will. But, as wonderful as that Garden was, it did not encompass the entire earth. Its scope was limited. According to the boundaries given in the Bible, it occupied only a few hundred square miles in the vicinity of modern-day Iraq. Adam’s assignment was to change that. His job was to finish what God had started by using his God-given authority and the power of The Blessing to multiply and expand the Garden of Eden until the whole earth was filled up with it. He was given the awesome responsibility and anointing to reproduce the conditions of Eden wherever he went. That wasn’t just God’s plan for Adam. It was His plan for all mankind…and His plan has never changed. Most believers today, however, don’t realize that. They assume that when Adam and Eve blew off The Blessing by joining themselves to Satan and turning it into a curse, God called the whole plan off. They think He canceled Adam’s original assignment and withdrew the power He’d given to fulfill it. They believe God gave up on the Garden of Eden after the Fall of Man, so they’ve given up on it too. “Well, this old earth is cursed,” they say, “so I guess as long as I live on it, I’ll suffer the effects of that curse too.” Years ago when I first got born again, I thought the same thing. As a result, everywhere I went the curse followed me. It kept me poor, sick and defeated in every area of life. I tried desperately to get away from it. I’d think, Maybe it will help if I move over here…. Maybe things will get better if I get a different job. But no matter where I went that cursed environment went with me. Don’t misunderstand. I knew I was saved and that I was going to heaven when I died—and I was extremely grateful for that. I’d even received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, but my life did not bear the slightest resemblance to the Garden of Eden. Gloria and I were $24,000 in debt (that’s like $150,000 in debt these days). We had an old car that was an absolute embarrassment, and very little income. Since we were practically void of revelation, nothing we did succeeded. Right in the middle of that, however, I went to Oral Roberts University and, because I worked for Brother Roberts, I was thrust into his tent meetings. There I witnessed astounding miracles. I watched in amazement as he used his faith again and again, like a mechanic uses a tool, to set people free from the oppression of sickness. I heard him preach “seed faith” and God is a good God. About that same time, my mother introduced us to the teachings of Brother Kenneth Hagin and I found out I didn’t have to live under the curse anymore. I could live in the blessing of Abraham because, according to Galatians 3:13-14: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (New King James Version). Honestly, back then I hardly knew what that meant. But I was smart enough to study the life of Abraham, and I found out he was an extremely successful man. God’s blessing followed him around much like the curse had followed me. Everything he did prospered! I Didn’t Understand It—But It Worked! Just that little bit of revelation revolutionized my whole perspective on life. I began to see Gloria and myself not as just poor folks trying to get by from one day to the next, but as extremely wealthy—spiritually, mentally, physically and financially. Gloria and I (since we’d learned some things about how to operate by faith) even began to talk that way. When money ran short, instead of saying, “We can’t afford that…” we’d say, “We’re blessed, glory to God! The blessing of Abraham is ours through Jesus and all our needs are met according to His riches in glory.” When we first began to say those things, our circumstances weren’t any different than they ever were. We still didn’t have any money. We were still loaded down with debt. But inside we saw ourselves differently, and before long the revelation we had on the inside began to change what was on the outside. Eleven months later, we were totally out of debt… and we’ve never been in debt again. What’s more, God’s blessing began to expand in our lives and change the atmosphere around us. Life just kept getting better and better. Even so, I didn’t fully understand what I’d tapped into for a long time. I knew “the blessing of Abraham” had come on me because of what Jesus did through His death and resurrection. But I didn’t totally realize what the blessing of Abraham was. Some years ago, however, the revelation of it exploded within me and I’ve never been the same. I was sitting on my back porch one night preparing to preach when it happened. I’d finished studying and I just began to worship and praise God, singing an old song I learned about 40 years ago that says, “Oh, the blessing of Abraham is mine. For sickness, I have health, for poverty wealth, and the blessing of Abraham is mine.” Right in the middle of that, the word of the Lord came to me so powerfully it almost jerked me up off the chair. He said, I want My Garden back! “Uh…what did You say?” I asked. He said, I came to earth. I defeated Satan. I broke his power. That Garden belongs to Me again and I want it back! I want My property back! That’s when it hit me: The blessing that was on Abraham to multiply, be blessed and be a blessing to all the families of the earth is the same blessing God originally gave Adam. God never gave up on His original plan. He just transferred it from Adam to Abraham, and then passed it on through Abraham to Jesus…and through Jesus to us. That blessing is nothing less than the divine empowerment to re-create the conditions of the Garden of Eden wherever we go! Faith Is the Catalyst** As a whole, the Body of Christ hasn’t fully realized it yet, but the fact is, the moment we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, He lifted us out of the curse. Even though outwardly we are still on this sin-scourged planet, inwardly we’ve been set right in the middle of the Garden of Eden. Spiritually we’ve been seated with Christ in heavenly places. Our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3) and we’ve been blessed “with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). That means if you’re born again, the Garden of Eden is inside you right now, and Jesus is saying to you much the same thing God said to Adam. He is saying, I bless you. Now take that blessing and release it by faith so it can manifest and re-create the conditions of the Garden of Eden in your life. Read that last sentence again. Notice it doesn’t say The Blessing will operate automatically in your life just because you’re saved. The Blessing has never operated automatically. It must always be received and released by faith. Faith works like a catalyst to activate The Blessing and put its power to work in your life. If you’ve ever worked with a chemically activated adhesive, you understand just how vital a catalyst can be. That kind of adhesive doesn’t work like glue. You can apply it in abundance but, by itself, it won’t stick to anything. You can put it between two pieces of wood, squeeze them together for a month, and they still won’t adhere to one another. But when you add the catalyst, a chemical reaction takes place. The reaction will cause the adhesive to harden so completely that you’d demolish the wood before you could get the two pieces apart. The Blessing is much like that adhesive. It has in itself all the divine power and know-how, all the supernatural properties, to enable God’s people to multiply, be fruitful and have dominion over the earth. It carries all the anointings necessary to make us masters over every devilish thing that would try to enslave us. It carries with it all the ability we need to begin transforming our households into a veritable Garden of Eden. But it won’t start to work until we mix it with faith. Faith has always been the catalyst for The Blessing. That was true in the life of Abraham. It was true in the life of Jesus. And it is true for us. Romans 4 leaves no question about that. It says: “For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed…” (verses 13, 16). In other words, God in His mercy said to mankind, I know you messed up. I know Adam blew it and lost The Blessing, but I want you to have it anyway. It’s My will. So if you’ll just believe what I say, I’ll bring it to pass in your life. I don’t care what the devil says about it. You can have it by grace through faith and not by works. Abraham was the first person to take God up on that offer. That’s why the Bible calls him the father of faith. When God promised to give him The Blessing that was originally on Adam, Abraham totally believed it and acted on it by faith. That’s the reason it operated in his life, changing circumstances, changing people, changing the countryside, making him rich and taking care of him wherever he went. Abraham believed in The Blessing so completely that when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac, he was willing to do it because he fully expected The Blessing of God to raise Isaac from the dead. Thousands of years later, Jesus did essentially the same thing. Operating as the “Seed” of Abraham and the heir of his blessing, Jesus walked in that blessing by faith, and exercised dominion in the earth like Adam was originally commissioned to do. Jesus, the One the Bible calls the last Adam, expanded the reach of the perfect will of God as it was first demonstrated in the Garden of Eden by conquering sickness, poverty and demonic oppression. Then He went to the cross, accepted the sin of all mankind into Himself, died and went to hell to pay the penalty for it—all the while believing The Blessing of God would raise Him up again. Now it’s our turn. Because we’re in Christ, The Blessing belongs to us as surely as it does to Jesus. In fact, we’re responsible for it because we are His Body in the earth. There is coming a day when Jesus will return and reign for a thousand years and bring this planet, in its entirety, back under The Blessing of God. What a time that will be! The Millennial Reign of The Blessing. We all look forward to that. But until that time, you and I, as believers have the awesome privilege and responsibility of manifesting that blessing in our own lives and households. We have the opportunity of taking it to others by telling them the good news and demonstrating the power of The Blessing for all to see. I can still hear the voice of the Lord in my spirit, ringing loud and clear, I want My Garden back! It’s time we, His people, His Body in the earth answer His call. The Blessing is ours. Let’s believe it, confess it and release the power of it. Let’s rise up by faith in the Name of Jesus and take back the Garden of God. End of Article



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