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Discovering God’s Design

Discovering God’s Design –  The Earth Is the Lord’s

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Psalm 24:1–10

Nothing at all existed until God “founded it on the seas and established it on the waters” (Ps 24:2). The Creator-King exercises benevolent ownership over his subjects, giving generously of himself and of his bounty (cf. Ps 65:9–13). As such, he deserves what to the psalmist is the ultimate accolade: King of glory.

Evangelical theologian R. Scott Rodin concedes that all of creation glorifies God in a certain sense but stresses the particular obligation of human beings, created in God’s own image, to do so consciously and purposefully:

While it cannot be said that the animals were created in the image of God in the same way as humans were, it must be said that all creation bears his image in the sense that its interdependence and its robust vitality all glorify God as the Creator of all things. Therefore, there is obligation to glorify God in our relation to and responsibility for his creation.

In the chapter “A Biblical Perspective on Environmental Stewardship,” the authors of Acton Institute’s Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition deal in depth with the issues of God’s sovereign ownership and of humanity’s call to environmental stewardship.

God, the Creator of all things, rules over all and deserves our worship and adoration (Ps 103:19–22) … Fundamental to a properly Christian environmental ethic … are the Creator/creature distinction and the doctrine of humankind’s creation in the image of God. Some environmentalists, especially those of the “Deep Ecology” movement, divinize the earth and insist on “biological egalitarianism,” the equal value and rights of all life forms, in the mistaken notion that this will raise human respect for the earth. Instead, this philosophy negates the biblical affirmation of the human person’s unique role as steward and eliminates the very rationale for human care for creation …

Our stewardship under God implies that we are morally accountable to him for treating creation in a manner that best serves the objectives of the kingdom of God …

As Francis Bacon put it in Novum Organum Scientiarum (New Method of Science), “Man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocence and from his dominion over creation. Both of these losses, however, can even in this life be in some parts repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by the arts and sciences.” Sin, then, makes it difficult for humans to exercise godly stewardship, but the work of Christ in, on, and through his people and the creation makes it possible nonetheless.

Think About It

  • Why do you think God created humans to have dominion and stewardship of the earth? Why have a hierarchy? Why not have all life be created equal?
  • In what ways does this role of humans as stewards make human choices so important?
  • Can the effects of the fall be repaired? In what ways? How much?

Act on It

With other believers—a small group or accountability partner—determine how your stewardship of the earth is affecting your home and community. Brainstorm ways in which you can make better choices to reflect your role as steward.

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – A Child’s First Image of God

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Charles Stanley

Ephesians 5:1-2

A child’s first image of God is his earthly father. We Christians spend a lot of time discussing ways to protect or improve our witness. We need to live our faith in front of coworkers and friends, but in the privacy of our home, we want our family to see Jesus in us, as well. If we show forgiveness, patience, and acceptance, then our children will expect to find those traits in the Lord.

Similarly, negative behaviors—like consistent harshness, busyness, or emotional neglect—also shape a child’s view of God. I remember a young man who came to me worried about his salvation. He had received Christ as his personal Savior but wasn’t convinced that he was truly forgiven. When I opened the Scriptures to share some assurances with him, he responded, “I believe them, but I’m just not sure God’s promises apply to me.” He seemed surprised when I then asked about his relationship with his father. During our conversation, it came out that his dad had often made promises he failed to keep. Now, years later, the son lacked certainty that God would keep His word.

Being a reflection of the Lord requires no special skills; the only training guide we need is the Bible. By approaching fatherhood as an area of service and ministry, all men are able to be successful dads. As with any service rendered for God, the Holy Spirit offers fathers the wisdom and guidance they need for raising their children.

Be sure that you are attentive to the words of the heavenly Father. Then your children will rise up and call you blessed.

 

Greg Laurie

Greg Laurie – God’s Masterpiece          

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God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” —Genesis 1:26

A little girl climbed up on the lap of her great-grandmother and studied her white hair and wrinkles. She said, “Grandma, did God make you?”

Her grandmother said, “Yes, honey, He sure did.”

The little girl looked at her for a moment and said, “Did God make me, too?”

“Yes, He sure did. He made you, too.”

Then the little girl said, “Don’t you think He is doing a better job now than He used to?” As David wrote in Psalm 139, the human body, created by God, is a masterpiece of exquisite design. He said, “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (verse 14). The human body is incredibly engineered, governed by several hundred systems of control, each interacting with and affecting the other.

For example, the brain has ten billion nerve cells to record what we see and hear. Our skin has more than two million tiny sweat glands, about three thousand per square inch, all part of an intricate system that keeps our body at an even temperature. God has put this pump in our chest, known as a heart, that makes our blood travel 168 million miles per day, equivalent to going around the world 6,725 times. The lining of our stomach contains thirty-five million glands secreting juices, which aid the process of digestion.

These are just a few of the involved processes and chemical wonders that God has built into our bodies to sustain human life. There is nothing like a man or woman made in the image of God. We aren’t highly evolved forms of animal life; we are clearly made in the image of God Himself and stand apart from the rest of creation.

The most wondrous fact of all, however, is this: our Creator and Designer desires a relationship with each one of us — and sent His own Son to earth to die for us and pay our penalty in order to make that possible.

Today’s devotional is an excerpt from Every Day with Jesus by Greg Laurie, 2013

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Thinking Faith

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Ravi Z

In many circles today, we are given the impression that we face a choice between thinking and faith. We are given the impression that somehow the postures of faith and reason are mutually exclusive. We live with words in our culture that seem to confirm a divide between fact and value. There is a real world of objective things, science, and hard realities; and there is the world of tastes, opinions, and personal values. The gulf, we are told, is real and to be held to at all times. This division is further reinforced by the notion of public and private worlds, whereby one set of values or criteria rules in one sphere and a different set rules in the other. And this is then often compounded in the church with the divide between sacred and secular. The language employed is one that clearly divides that which is deemed “of God”—preaching, praying, and evangelism—and that which is deemed of “the world”—business, politics, media, and so forth.

 

Within such a context, belief is seen as something mystical, existential, and defying rational boundaries or requirements. For the Christian in such a context, thinking, theology, and reasoning can be seen as unnecessary distractions to “simple” or “pure” faith.

Yet the biblical reflection of faith is quite the contrary. We are presented with what it means to be made in the image of God, and what it means to live and function in a created order. God has given us various faculties that are the vehicles of our knowing and understanding. Reason, experience, and revelation are all legitimate means and provisions of God for us and to us.

In the words of the prophets and the cries of the psalmist we see many references to reason in relation to faith. The book of Job is an extended discussion on the “reasonableness” of Job’s situation, and though reason does not discover a right answer and makes many blunders, it is not refuted in and of itself. The entire wisdom tradition enjoins the pursuit of knowledge and understanding as an expression of worshipping God. Nowhere do we get the impression of blind faith or esoteric leaps into ecstatic union.

Moreover, in the life of Jesus, the sound use of soul, heart, and mind is further exemplified. His teaching required careful listening and comparison, as in the Sermon on the Mount. He asked questions which were structured to require reasoning, such as in the healing of the paralytic.(1) Even when asked by John about whether he was the Christ, Jesus essentially tells John to think through his own conclusions, sending messengers back to report what they heard and saw.(2) Christ’s use of questions, parables, and dialogues shows boldly that reasoning is not ruled out of our spiritual life but is a central component of it.

Indeed, when reason and faith are set up as juxtaposing postures, much is lost. In a world of many voices and demanding messages, faith and reason can be seen as interrelated partners and not enemies. The outcome of faith is a more complete understanding of truth than is possible otherwise. The outcome of seeking, knowing, and following Christ is a coherent and abundant life of which no mind has conceived all that God has prepared for those who love Him.

Stuart McAllister is regional director for the Americas at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) See Matthew 9:1-8.

(2) See John 11:1-6.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – House of Hope

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Ravi Z

To the people of Israel, the image of God’s house was central to their worldview, a house reaching from the heavens to the places on earth where God caused his name to be remembered. God’s house was seen in experiences like Jacob’s, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it” (Genesis 28:16). It was experienced in the tabernacle that once moved among them as pilgrims, and later in their pilgrimages to the temple. Ever-expanding their vision of God’s house, altars were built over the places where God had appeared to them. Though sometimes as prodigals, their longing for home was a part of their identity as children of the house of God: “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple” (Psalm 27:4). The house of God as it reached from heaven to earth was occupied by the King. As his people, they had been invited inside, where they longed to remain.

As with any group with a clear vision of inside and outside, belonging and not belonging, the Israelite’s understanding of the house of God could have easily been rationale for excluding foreigners, neighbors, and outsiders. Yet not long after God had called the people of Israel his own, God instructed them very specifically on the treatment of such people: “Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt” (Exodus 23:9). “The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34). The house of God was to be a house of hospitality, for such a spirit reflected the God within it: “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:17-19). Called to ever-remember their status as foreigners, the people who were invited into the care of God’s house were to become a sign of that care themselves.

Followers of Christ live by the same: “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering” (Hebrews 13:2-3). Similarly the apostles command: “Practice hospitality” (Romans 12:13). “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:9-10).

For those who know these ever-expanding rooms of God’s house, hospitality is a posture we are simply called to embrace. Along with the one who has welcomed us inside, we are to go out “into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.” The master of the house has prepared a feast and calls for the tables to be filled: “Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full” (cf. Luke 14:15-23).

While images appear daily of people displaced from their homes, disconnected and abandoned by tornado or flood or financial downfall, there are at the same time those who open their homes, churches who respond with food and shelter, hospitality that is given in places where distress and exclusion offer no rest. In these unlikely places, images of the house of God appear, startling us and other observers once again with its dimensions. Where lives are being touched by the “eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” the body of Christ is living its identity, offering a sign and a foretaste of the kingdom of God. The writer of Hebrews comments on this vital role, “Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast” (Hebrews 3:5-7).

Startling us with its reach and calling us to hospitality, the house of God is occupied by one who prepares a place for the foreigners and outsiders and neighbors all around us. Whether prodigals or pilgrims, in this house we discover the God who longs to welcome the multitudes home.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) 2 Corinthians 5:1-2.

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Our Daily Bread — Guard Your Brand

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Colossians 3:1-14

Above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. —Colossians 3:14

A popular clothing retailer requires that its sales clerks dress like the models in the store windows who advertise its clothes. This practice is referred to as “guarding their brand.” The idea behind it is that shoppers will be more likely to purchase clothes because they will want to look like the people they see wearing them.

In a consumer-oriented culture, it’s easy to be seduced into thinking that we can “buy” acceptance by wearing the things that beautiful people wear. Retailers would have us believe that looking good will make us desirable.

Sometimes we even convince ourselves that we can win followers for God by making ourselves attractive to the world. But the Bible is clear about what’s really important to God. He wants us to look like Jesus in our character. In a sense, Jesus is our “brand,” for we are being conformed to His image (Rom. 8:29). We attract others to Christ when we put on His attributes, which include tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering (Col. 3:12), and, above all, love (v.14).

Instead of polishing and protecting our own image, we need to be guarding and reflecting the image of God, which is being perfected in us through Christ. —Julie Ackerman Link

O to be like Thee! blessed Redeemer,

This is my constant longing and prayer;

Gladly I’ll forfeit all of earth’s treasures,

Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear. —Chisholm

One of the Spirit’s roles is to form the likeness of Christ in us.