“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule’. . .God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over . . .” – Genesis 1:26, 28
We are one week into our church-wide chronological Bible reading plan. I am so excited to be a part of our entire congregation plowing through God’s Word together and having Him corporately shape our lives. This week we have been in Genesis and we are encountering the majesty of a God who spoke the entire world into existence and who crafted man – his EPIC masterpiece – to co-rule the world with Him. That is too much for me to comprehend. What we think about God is the most important thing about us! You can determine the outcome and the way of life of a person by what they think about God. Simply put: If God is big in a person’s life, then every aspect of their life will be shaped by this big God. If God is small, then people don’t make room in their lives for something so insignificant.
In reading chapters 1-2 of Genesis this week, I was struck again by the God that we have. Here are five things that I learned this week, again, about God.
Our God is. . .
- Creator and Creative – God took the initiative to create the world as He saw fit and according to His plan.
- Relational and Loves His Creation – Our relational God created us in His image, gave us the responsibility to rule with Him, personally placed us in the garden to work it, brings a spouse into our life for our own good, pursues us after we have sinned and done wrong, and extends grace to us. Wow!
- Moral – God made us with moral boundaries. He made us to freely choose within the guidelines that He has established and these guidelines are for our own good.
- Just – We are accountable to God and when we break His commands there are consequences to our actions.
- Redemptive and Gracious – One of the most amazing things about God is that He pursues us in the midst of our wrong choices. In the same way that He pursued Adam and Eve and clothed them, God pursues us and clothes us in the righteousness of Christ. These truths about God are HUGE – they are game-changers for the way we understand God and our relationship with Him.
I want to encourage you this week to dig deep into the Word of God and mine the eternal and practical treasures that God has for you in your EPIC pursuit.
Pastor Ernie
