The Original and Final Intent of God part 1

This is my final paper for The International Healing Rooms School of Transformation in Spokane Washington. Its is very long paper so I am breaking it down in to smaller portions to post here.
I hope you enjoy it. I love to hear your feed back in the comments.
Thanks, Margot

The Original and Final Intent of God 

Part 1 

by Margot Cioccio 

A Franciscan Blessing

“May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, 

half truth, and superficial relationships 

so that you may love deep within your heart: 

May God bless you with anger at injustice, 

oppression and exploitation of people, 

so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace;

May God bless you with tears to shed for those 

who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, 

so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them 

and to turn their pain into joy;

And may God bless you with enough foolishness 

to believe that you can make a difference in this world, 

so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.”

I start my paper with what is called A Franciscan Blessing. It is my hope that this paper will inspire you on a journey to be one who is an answer to such a prayer. As we realize God’s initial and final intent I hope that we would find more and  more ways to align ourselves with His plans and purposes for our lives and for the earth and it’s creatures that He gave us to keep and care for.   

My Bible character for this report is Creator God who in the beginning was the Word. My goal is to seek out the original intent of our creator as we endeavor to return to our biblical mandate to work in partnership with our loving creator to care for the earth and to extend His Kingdom.  We must work to free people from mindsets that have held individuals and generations captive. I will attempt to show His original and final intent as we look at various verses and bible characters who walked in God’s original intent and were a challenge to the status quo of their day. 

One can safely say that things that are created by God are created with intent and purpose. God did not create the world as we know it in its present state. The world he created he declared as good. The world as we know it has been infected with sin. We who are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ are able to once again continue with God’s original intent to work from a place of love and acceptance as His family to bring about His final intent.  God’s goal is that things be on earth as they are in heaven. (Matthew 6:10) It is our calling to have dominion over the Earth he created, to tend and care for it and it’s creatures.  In Luke 4 Jesus unrolls the scroll and reads part of Isaiah 61. “  18“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

It should be our goal to understand His heart and His intent and work to bring things into alignment with His will. Jesus has accomplished the first part of Isaiah 61 for us. He proclaimed the good news of His Kingdom and helped us to begin to see that we could live as part of that Kingdom now. He has proclaimed freedom from the the many things that have held us captive. Quite often it is our mindset that holds us captive even long after we have been freed from our respective prison. We have to repent and begin to look at things from a whole new perspective. To see our problems through the lease of Gods great love for us. As such he has given us eyes that can see. It is as if he created glasses that correct our particular areas of blindness. He sets us free from the things that have oppressed us and kept us stuck in the ruts of our own futile, sinful choices. Then finally he announces that we have entered into a time of God’s favor. What I thought was interesting was that Isaiah 61 goes on about what “they” will do. Comforting those who mourn, rebuilding cities long desolate, giving beauty for ashes and much more. I believe that God has always desired to walk in relationship with us to bring His life and love to every aspect of our lives so that we may live up to in his original intent. 

There are three areas of original intent I want to consider for our wellness as three part beings created in his image. 

• God’s original intent for relationship with his people expressed in worship and honor and as we enjoy his goodness in a intimate unveiled, face to face relationship with him.  (To Worship Him In Spirit and In truth)

• God’s original intent for the care and sustenance of our physical bodies. (Our Bodies to be a temple in which His Spirit would dwell.)

• God’s original intent for his Family to extend His kingdom, not just in regards to making converts but in returning all things affected and infected by the poison of sin to His original intent.   (My Soul to magnify the Lord)

God created man to be in fellowship with Him and gave man dominion to be His representatives in the earth. Jesus even says in John 5:19 “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does”. Man promptly lost dominion at the fall through disobedience to Gods instruction and original intent that man not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  You may wonder why God would even put such a tree in the garden if He knew it would be an insidious poison to man. God is very clear that eating from that particular tree would result in death. While the death was not immediate it is a slow poison that has continued to poison those who refuse the merciful antidote provided by our loving Savior. Yet it is love that put that tree in the garden in the first place. It is evidence of God’s heart to allow man to have a free will to make choices to love and obey God or to become progressively poisoned and estranged from God. It is love that gives us the free will to choose. What the first Adam lost through sin and disobedience the second Adam, Christ regained through obedience and sacrifice. At the fall everything changed, either suddenly or progressively to a world different from God’s original intent. If we also look at God’s final intent it is to restore the world and mankind to His original intent. 

When I was younger, I did not see a need to be responsible for the earth or my physical body. I was convinced that our relationship with God was essentially spirit to Spirt and physical and earthy things were merely distractions. In my past view and mind set Jesus would come soon and wisk us to Heaven to rule and reign with him there. My focus was on learning and knowing his word, experiencing his presence and hearing his voice. Because I failed to look at his original intent I have perhaps not always aligned myself fully to his will or magnified the truth of who He is or His heart for that which he created. 

I viewed care of the earth and even my own body as being as pointless as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Little by little over many years my views have begun to change. I now realize that there is more than the black and white and what is written in red in the Bible but the “green” of life and vitality bursting forth in praise of a loving Creator.  Much of this awakening happened when I first discovered essential oils and their healing properties that were hidden in plain sight for anyone to find and use to bring healing to them self and to others. I wondered what else God might have hidden in plain sight for me to discover? 

Proverbs 25:2 “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” 

Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  Just as our creator is a three part being made up of Father, Son and Spirit, we who are made in his image are also three part beings and God has specific intentions for how we are to care for each part of our being. I have broken this paper into there distinct areas to try to reflect Gods intentions for our health and wellness as a three part being.