Belief in the Supernatural — Morning Devotions

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Transcript

For thousands of years, humans have held religious beliefs and participated in religious rituals. Throughout history, every human society has featured some kind of supernatural or religious belief. Lots of books, articles have been written on this belief in the supernatural. It really is a common part of human life and it’s been part of our way of life. Think back to your childhood, for example.

Marvel Comics were read by thousands of kids, and that included stories like The Fantastic Four and then came Spider-Man. So each of these stories have extraordinary capabilities. For example, people are able to fly, Superman withstanding bullets, they are larger than life people with a touch of the supernatural, but it’s not new. It’s been around for a long time. Greek myth is filled with supernatural heroes like Hercules who could do amazing things. Hercules was given 10 tasks to do and did each one of them by his mighty supernatural power. In a 2005 interview with the poet Les Murray, he was asked how comfortable he felt being an eccentric Australian voice or a rural poet speaking for an urban culture.

He was a Roman Catholic speaking for a largely secular people. This is what he said. I just speak as I am. I am a Catholic. I don’t believe that other people are necessarily secular. I think that intellectuals are mostly secular or are required to pretend that they are, but in broad terms, people are very varied, he said. So I think what he meant was there’s a wide variety of thinking about religion in Australia.

The supernatural in our natural world

We understand the natural world. I mean, we interact with it every day. This morning we climbed out of our bed, we brushed our natural teeth. Well, I hope you did.

And we put on natural clothes and went about our natural lives, and today I’m speaking to you in a small natural microphone which I hope you can hear and understand. We might not know how everything in this world works, but we understand it because we live in it. Here’s the point we also live in a supernatural world.

We know our time on this planet is quite brief in the grand scheme of things, and supernatural belief helps us to connect ourselves to something that solves the problem of smallness. That’s one of the reasons people pray, for example, they want to have a conversation or a connection with the divine as a way to help resolve some of their personal problems or struggles. I think there is a cry in the human heart to be lifted out of the humdrum ordinary physical existence to something better and greater. There’s a cry for the extraordinary, and I would say a cry for the supernatural, because we were made for God. We were not just made for the 9 to 5 existence. You were made for more than that. Do you not feel it inside your heart that you were made for more than just a humdrum experience and Jesus Christ came to bring us that – a new life that’s supernatural when God invades our life through the Holy Spirit. We can be born again as a child of God and life becomes very different. We’ve got a new agenda and a new reason to live for Him. It was the late author and pastor Adrian Rogers, who said, I think brilliantly – If you don’t have Christ on the inside, then your religion is superficial. If you have Christ on the inside, then your religion is supernatural.

A great description of the Christian life. The supernatural is a real part of our world.

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It’s no less real just because it’s invisible. And according to the Bible, man is not just a physical being, but man also has a soul and a spirit. And the Bible says it clearly in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 verse 11, God has put eternity into the heart of man. This means that we all long for something eternal or something beyond the mere material or physical world. The word supernatural originates in the Latin root word super, which means above, beyond.

And N A T U R A, which is derived from the word nati to be born, refers to the material world. Francis Schaeffer said, man, made in the image of God has a purpose to be in a relationship with God. Man forgets his purpose, and thus he forgets who he is and what life means. So without God, life loses its shine, and we can easily descend into despair. As Christians, as followers of God, we know that this supernatural presence is evident in every aspect of our lives, even if we don’t feel it around us.

Let’s Pray

Thank you, Heavenly Father, for being a supernatural God over and above what we can even understand. How marvelous to think that our lives can be connected to a God who loves us, not some being out there in space, but a God who sent His Son Jesus Christ, to show us the way and to live with us day by day. I pray this prayer in the name of your Son Jesus. Amen.