Jesus & Tea

• 

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” Genesis 1:1

Have you ever sat down to lay hold of this very fact that God alone created heavens and the earth? He did not need any help when He did it! Where did God ever even get the idea to create the heavens and the earth? I can think of very few things to create, and yet God created all that exists. The Bible tells us that God simply spoke “Let there be Light” and there was light (Genesis 1:3). It seems He put little muscle power into such enormous creations that man is barely at the edge of comprehending. .

As Christians I find that we hardly ever meditate on the fact that God created ALL things. There is so much peace in this fact alone. Often in everyday life, our problems feel so big and impossible to overcome. More importantly, we ourselves feel big and mighty. It is so easy to fall into a kind of Christian narcissism and think “What a Christian am I!”, and “How kind am I!.” Such thoughts are quite the delusion in light of who God is.  He is the beginning, the end, and the very reality. He speaks and things come into being. He inhales and they are naught. Furthermore, it is only THROUGH him that we exist in the first place.

• “For in him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28 (NIV)
• “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” John 1:3 (NIV)

We would all experience so much freedom from ourselves and from the obstacles of life, should we absorb this truth and ask the Lord to reveal himself as our creator. We can ask: “Father God, what do you mean, when you say that you are our creator?” I took the time to ask him, and after searching the scriptures, I was really ministered to by God’s approach to answering our question.

In Our Storms

We will all come to a crossroads when life seems so chaotic that following the Lord does not make sense. On that day we will find that we love Him but are so tempted to question Him, for at times we cannot see the order in anything in our lives, let alone the world as a whole. Where is He in the midst of it all? Thankfully Job (a man mentioned in the Bible) has already walked this road, and now we can know what happens when we arrive at this pivotal point.

In the beginning of the book, the bible explains that Job was blameless and upright (Job 1:1). It later goes on to explain that God had given permission to Satan to afflict Job. Satan was convinced that Job would turn against God, but God knew otherwise, and in His sovereignty, He allowed the enemy to afflict him.  In case you are unfamiliar with the extent of Job’s sufferings, he lost all his children, many of his animals, and was covered with boils all over his body. He was acquainted with plenty of sufferings.

Job, having been a man faithful to God his entire life, switches gears later in the text and makes his case before the Lord, exclaiming that he does not deserve punishment, that he is a righteous man, and he essentially accuses God for both being an enemy to him and not knowing what he is doing. We will not criticize Job. We will empathize him, but more importantly we will stand in awe of God’s response.

Job 38:1-11

“Who is it that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? Tell me if you understand who marked off it’s dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were it’s footings set, or who laid it’s cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together, and the angels shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds it’s garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said ‘This is how far you may come and no further; here is where your proud waves halt.”

God responds to Job in the most thorough and straight-forward manner I have ever heard of. Essentially He was saying to Job “I am God.” He was saying “ I know that I am in control and that the WHOLE world is safely in my hands, and Job, you don’t know. Where were you when I created everything?”

Brothers and Sisters this our rest. This is not meant to intimidate us, but rather to provide a clear perspective of God’s sovereignty and remind us who is in control. God is the ultimate source of everything and we must always depend on Him. He is safe, and He knows what He is doing. Unfortunately, boundless peace rarely exists within the realm of rationale. The truth about God is however unending and is the reality of life. We can rest in it.

For Reflection