OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER - ISSUE 30 - JAN 2007

Dear Friends:

Have you ever pondered the power of God? The first thing that comes to mind, for me at least, when I think of his incredible might, is creation. God spoke and the worlds came into being. That takes power! But he did more than form things. He created the worlds from nothing – that means that before he could make planets, suns, moons, stars, flora, fauna, and humans, he had to create the stuff they are made of. Before he could create those materials, he had to think about what they would be.

How do you think of something that never existed?

That doesn’t have a pattern or precursor?

It is apparent that the creative power of God begins in his thoughts. He had to think of the concepts of atoms, molecules, colors, and textures before He could speak them into existence. It is one thing to be an architect and design beautiful buildings when you have materials and products to work with. It is quite another to be the one who puts the stone into the ground that can be quarried or who creates the very idea of trees that can be harvested for lumber.

None of us are at the creative level that God is in being able to think of something that never existed before and then bring it into being. A few humans are at the level of the architect who can take a look at those raw materials and dream up new and beautiful and practical ways to put them together and use them. Most of us are more like the carpenters who saw the boards and nail them into place or the stone masons who put one brick on top of another in keeping with the plans carefully engineered by a master planner.

But, let’s go back to the power of thought. God “dreamed up” the materials the universe would be made of. Those thoughts may have been general concepts at first, but we know by the wide variety of materials on Earth (let alone in the entire universe!), there came a point when God’s general thoughts became very specific. Then they were translated into words so that he said, ‘Let there be light,” and in so saying, he had a very specific outcome in mind. Light came into being just exactly as God had thought it in the first place.

Each day of creation followed a similar pattern. For example, on the fifth day, he said, “Let the water teem with living creatures and let birds fly above the earth, across the expanse of the sky.” (Genesis 1:22). Then, the Bible says, “So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.” (Genesis 1:21). He thought of them in general and created them specifically – every kind of sea creature, fish, mollusk, and coral as well as every kind of bird that flies across the sky. Each species is different, each has its own habits and instincts, and each can reproduce its own kind.

The power of the almighty God is revealed in the creation – thinking of things that never existed before, thinking also of the substance they are to be made of, and then speaking them into existence in the minutest of detail.

We probably all agree that the best part of the creation account, though, is the description of the creation of man. Genesis 2:7 gives us the detail of that event. Instead of speaking man into existence, God got his hands dirty (figuratively speaking, of course) by actually forming man “from the dust of the ground” and then he “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Very soon thereafter, he created woman with the same tender touch, by taking her from the substance of man himself so that they are made of identical raw materials, one created after the other.

How did you and I come into being? There are some very real parallels to the creation of the first man and the creation of each baby who is born into the world.

First, each of us was a thought in the mind of God. He saw us and knew us before we ever took on human substance.

Then he began to make us, first of all by creating our inmost beings (Psalm 139:13) – literally the center of our emotions and conscience.

God then gave that inmost being the beginning of a body by mating the exact sperm and egg that would make us into our very selves.

But, he wasn’t done yet. Psalm 139 goes on to say, “. . . you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Just as God bent down into the dust and formed Adam into a living soul, he has been actively involved in the “knitting together” of every human being that has entered the world since.

We came from God’s thought, then to the development of our innermost being, and finally to the creation of a human body to contain our living soul.

That’s my story and it’s yours, too. Nothing happened by chance to bring us into this world. We all began in the mind of God. Don’t you think he who so tenderly and personally brought us into existence has a plan for us that is both good and full of wonder? I do. God dreaming us up and being personally involved in our creation is proof enough for me that he wants to do great things in us, for us, and through us.

David says, again in Psalm 139,

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well . . .

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.
(Psalm 139:14, 17, 18a)

Then, David turns to his own thoughts and sees a great difference between God’s creative, powerful, and loving thoughts and his own which are subject to human frailty:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and
lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23, 24)

When we invite God to search our thoughts as David did, he can change them. He can instill them with his creativity and power and we can become more like our Maker. We know we are made in his image, and we also know that his thoughts are far different than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9). By consistently inviting him into our thought lives and asking him to exchange our anxious thoughts for his powerful, creative, and loving thoughts, we can be changed more and more into his likeness.

Our transformation begins in our minds just as we began, in the first place, in the mind of God.

A thought is a powerful thing. Think about it!

Blessings on you in 2007,

Bev

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