Before God created, there was nothing.
The beginning was "a soup of nothingness, a bottomless
emptiness, an inky blackness."
Then, God spoke.
He made light, sky, land, water, plants, stars and animal life
by speaking them into existence. He separated heaven from earth, day from
night, land from water simply by telling it want to do.
His Words.
Such power. Such purpose.
God made the invisible visible by speaking words.
Everything... except human beings.
When God created man, He decided to get His hands dirty.
God scooped up dust from the ground and with His powerful,
gentle hands, He began creating, shaping and sculpting man using His image, His
likeness, as the pattern.
Then, He bent down and breathed the breath of life into his
nostrils.
Man became a living soul!
His Breath.
It's life-giving.
Words that have power.
Breath that gives life.
In the beginning, God used words to create life.
Then, the very Word of God became flesh to give us the gift of
eternal life.
"In the beginning was
the One who is called the Word.
The Word was with God, and
the Word was God…
The Word took on flesh and
became human and chose to live alongside us.
We have seen Him, enveloped
in undeniable splendor
-the one true Son of the
Father-
the perfect balance of
grace and truth."
{John 1:1,14}
Jesus, the Word, also used words.
He spoke words that brought healing, cast out demons, brought
the dead to life, and even caused the winds and the sea to immediately
became calm.
The Word. The Breath.
So much power!
And God desires to breath that power into your life and my life
every single day through His Word.
The Bible.
The words of God.
Words that tell a story.
From "in the beginning" all the way to "let it
be so",
God is telling a story of love and redemption.
There is a story in the Bible of God rescuing His people, the
Israelites, from a life of slavery, bondage and oppression. God
used a man named Moses to lead them out of Egypt toward a land that was
promised to their ancestors. In between Egypt and the promised land, the
Israelites disobedience and complaining resulted in several years of wandering.
They trusted God to get them out of Egypt, but did not trust Him to
safely deliver them to the promised land or to provide their basic needs in the
wilderness.
"He let you be hungry
which helped you to not have pride.
Then He fed you with manna-
something you did not know about before.
Why did the Lord do this?
Because he wanted you to
know that it is not just bread that keeps people alive. People's lives
depend on what the Lord says."
{Deuteronomy 8:3}
God meet their need for food by making manna, bread from heaven, appear each morning.
The Israelites were instructed to get up every morning and gather their
manna for the day. Manna could not be stored and the gathering of manna
could not be delayed because as the morning passed, the manna melted.
In the Old Testament, the bread is manna that is gathered for
physical sustenance.
In the New Testament, the bread is Jesus. Jesus is the bread of life, the bread that
came down from heaven, the bread that fully and completely satisfies.
If the Word of God has the power to create and the Bread from heaven
gives us the grace and mercies we need to face each new day, then why do only
19% of Christians [people who have put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ
and Him alone for their salvation] read their Bible everyday?
Why do I think that I can make it through the day relying on my
own strength?
So ridiculous.
If we want the world to see a difference between our lives and
theirs, we need to get out of the tent and gather our manna, our daily bread. The prophet Jeremiah tells us that the
Lord's mercy, compassion, faithful love is never ending and is new every single
morning.
NEW
…you can't store yesterday's manna.
EVERY
…the manna that was fed to you on Sunday will not sustain you
the rest of the week.
MORNING
…if you wait to gather it, you will be facing the stress and
trials of the day without the grace and mercies that God was waiting to pour
into your life. He has exactly what we need to face each day, but we have
to get up and spend time in His Word, allowing it to breath life into us.
Everyday we take a step.
We either take a step toward God or we take a step away from God.
Standing still is not an option because Satan is actively pursuing his
plan, which is to keep you away from God’s Word. Mark 4 tells us that Satan
wants to steal the Word from your heart and choke the Word out of our life to
prevent you from bearing fruit.
When you read the Bible chronologically, you see this beautiful love
story unfold. God loves you so
much. He desires to dwell with you and
have a personal relationship with you.
He wants to provide for your every need, bless you with gifts you didn’t
even know to ask for and carry your burdens for you.
Spending time in God's Word was never meant to be a box you check off each day but instead a place to gather something fresh and new, to seek the One who is able to give us the grace we need to face the challenges of the day.
