Religion's been the cause of wars, conflict, oppression, persecution. All kinds of things have been done in the name of religion, and we'll clarify the difference between religion and kingdom. Jesus never came to bring us religion. Religion is what men think up to do, and so if you're religious it's because you don't understand what God really intended us to have. He intended us to be totally free of all religiosity, totally free of all religion and to have a wonderful relationship and understand how to bring heaven to earth - most [amazing. 00.09.56] Let's have a look at God's original plan in design again, Genesis 1:26; then God said let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. So God made man a spirit being with a unique capacity to be able to not only - he's a physical being, he lives in a physical body, but is a spirit being.
We're a spirit being just like God is a spirit being, and so we have spirit capacities and as a spirit being we are able to access into the world of the spirit, the realm where God lives. As a physical being we live in the earth; let Us make man after Our image and likeness, and now He tells us - here's the mandate. Let man have dominion over all the earth. So man is created a spirit being in the image of God, put into a physical body, and given part of God's creation in which to extend God's dominion. Now if you think religion all you'll be thinking religion's about is trying to get you to heaven, but if you think kingdom you understand that God wants your life to have purpose and impact and make a difference now, see? And so God's purpose for man is that we would have dominion. That means sovereign authority. That means that the life, the power, the privileges, the benefits of heaven would come into the earth through man. That's how you're designed.
You're designed that way. You function only when you recognise and embrace that, and so that's God's original design for man. We're created for a kingdom, so when God made man He gave him a relationship, He gave him a realm of dominion and an opportunity to be a good steward and be promoted, see? So he was created for that, and the key to being fulfilled is to understand I can never have a fulfilled life unless I have a relationship with God, and fulfil His purpose in whatever area of life He has called me to fulfil. And so the cry, see so when Adam fell this is in essence what he did; in essence because you say well he ate the fruit of the tree. No, no, this is in essence what he did. He said basically in his heart I don't want God to rule over me, I want to make it on my own and do it my way. When we think of sin we tend to think of all the big ugly and bad things, which is true, it is. But the core of sin is saying God, I'm not having You to tell me what to do. I'm not having You to give me directions. I want to break out and do my own thing. That is the core of sin.
Now when he did this he lost his relationship and he lost his capacity to bring divine power into the earth. He lost his kingdom, so as a consequence of that a universal quest in every person, wherever you find people there are two things people are looking for; number one, they're looking for purpose, what is the meaning of my life here? People get to the end of their life, they say is this all it was, you know? Is this all there was to it? Because they never found their purpose, so we've already shared quite a lot this year on purpose. But the second thing people are looking for is power. People want power. We want the power to be able to control our life, control our circumstances, control what's happening around us. We have a sense where we want to be in charge of life, see? That is actually born into us because it's part of the dominion mandate. God designed us for this, except the problem is when we let go of God we do it all the wrong way. We rule over people instead of working to build people and serve people, and using God's blessings to touch the lives of others.