Greetings in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. …
Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! (Genesis 1:1, 1:31a)
God created the heavens and the earth, and God made everything in the heavens and the earth in His good will according to His good plan.
God created the light, and God called it was good. Then he separated the light form the darkness. God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” This gives a valuable insight about the God’s creation. The light is followed by the darkness, the darkness by the light, and so on until the completion of His creation. This is the God’s law, and everything in His creation must follow this law without an exception. In other words, we, as a part of His creation, also follow the law while experiencing the light and the darkness.
We all want to have the light on the earth, but we also experience the darkness. As long as we are living on earth, we meet both the light “day” and the darkness “night.” Therefore, when we are in the darkness, we should not be discouraged or dismayed, soon God will bring the light into our lives according to His infinitely good will. Only is the one that never changes His love toward us. His love never changes and will be forever. Yes, God deadly loves us. God also proved His love at the cross where He sacrificed His Only Son, Jesus Christ by putting all of our sins originated from our own darkness in our hearts. What a blessing that we have! This is the Good News, and the Good News does not end here. God also has prepared our Eternal Home for us according to His Good Will. This plan is specially and specifically designed for each of us. This is His promise, and He faithfully renews His promise every morning in our hearts.
Here is the summary of God’s plan specifically and specifically designed for each of us:
1. God forgives us and continuously forgives us as long as we come back to God and ask His forgiveness so that we can continue in the light throughout our journey on earth. It is true that each of us follows a different path of our life journey on earth, and we meet different people and fall in a difficult situation. Thus, we get a different temptation, and end up to committee a difficult sin by falling from the light. However, God is the light, and in Him, there is no darkness at all. When we approach to Him opening our hearts, God shines His light on the darkness in our hears to be filled with the light again.
For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! (Ephesians 5:8)
This is the enormous assurance coming from God, Our Faithful Eternal Father.
2. God has prepared the Heaven for us, and there is forever no darkness at all.
And there will be no night there—no need for lamps or sun—for the Lord God will shine on them. And they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 22:5)
Our eternal hope is the promise of Our Eternal Home, where we will see Our God, the Eternal and Ever-Loving Father, face to face and enjoy His presence, the fullness of His love and majestic glory forever and ever. In our Eternal Home, there is no night, no darkness, no sins, no suffering, and no tears at all. Every tear will be wiped away one by one by the loving hand of Our Ever-Loving Father. Finally, we will be at home, and will not see no more tear or pain forever. Instead we will join His joy and will sing the never-ending praise with our highest voices along with all believers ever lived on earth.
This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Most of all, all of the above has not been made as an empty promise by God as many of us frequently give out. God is different. He is not a mortal human being, but God is faithful. More precisely speaking, “Our God is infinitely faithful to us.” In fact, this sentence even cannot scratch the surface of His truth because the God’s faithfulness is far beyond our comprehension and no human language is ever invented to fully capture His faithfulness. Yes, He is infinitely faithful, and we can sure of His promise. Thus, we are confident in Him by completely trusting His faithfulness.
Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep His promise. (Hebrews 10:23)
This is the reason why we are so sure about our salvation in Him and Our Eternal Home that is prepared for us by God. Praise God, Our Eternal and Ever-Loving Father!
After creating the light on the first day, God made everything that we can see now for the following five days. For each day, God saw His own creation at the end of the day, and God say, “It was good.” We all have experienced this kind of satisfaction at a much smaller scale after looking at our own creation, whether it is a small project for our hobby or our work.
Among His creation, God gave a special attention to the creation of human beings:
Then God said “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” (Genesis 1:28)
How special was His creation of human beings?
1. God created human beings in His image.
No other creature was created in God’s image except us. Thus, we, who have God’s image, have a heart of God, Our Ever-Loving Father. Therefore, we, human beings living on the earth, are yearning for His righteousness, and looking forward to being with God in His kingdom. All of these desires are engraved in our hearts by His creation.
2. God gave us all of His creation to reign over.
God prepared everything for us: He gave all of His creation and let us to reign over all that He created on the earth and the heavens. How blessed we are! Therefore, we supposedly rule over all of His creations for Him. This means that we are responsible to take care of all His creations for Him. In Bible, there are many kings. Some of them are good, but some are not so good or even bad because they harshly reigned over his own people to satisfy his earthly desire. The same principle applies. We can be a good steward for Him or a bad one depending on how we reign over His creation around and in us. We should always remember we are responsible because God gave all of His creation to us.
3. God blessed human beings with special blessings as follows by saying,
“Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” (Genesis 1:28b)
God poured out this enormous blessing to us only, not to the other animals on the ground, the fish in the sea or the birds in the sky. Only are the human beings who received His special blessing of “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over all His creatures.” Yes, God is good. His infinitely goodness is unfathomable!
Then what we should do, who are His dearly loved children? Yes, we should be a good steward of God by filling the earth, governing and reigning over His creation. Is this all that we should do?
Let’s think about what we usually do when a person provides a fantastic favor on us by giving everything that the person owns? We say thanks to the person and give our heartful gratitude to the person.
Gratitude is one of the most powerful human emotions to express our thankfulness in our heart. Then have we really expressed our heartful gratitude to Our God, the Creator and Our Ever-Loving Eternal Father? If so, how often?
Let’s see what the first humans did to Our God, the Ever-Loving and Eternal Father. When the first man, Adam, saw the first woman, Eve whom was brought by God, what did he do?
“At last!” the man exclaimed.
“This one is bone from my bone,
and flesh from my flesh!
She will be called ‘woman,’
because she was taken from ‘man.’” (Genesis 2:23)
Adam exclaimed and expressed his own feeling about the first woman, Eve. Yes, Adam really loved Eve. That was about it. Adam had never given thanks to God. He only focused on his own pleasure by praising Eve and by telling her as a part of his own self. Adam felt the strong bonding with Eve. What’s the truth? Are both Adam and Eve are of God, not of each other because God created them. Even so, Adam had never recognized God for Eve, and did not give the credit to God, let alone of giving thanks to God. Adam was so much pleased by Eve, which was to his own satisfaction without giving back his thanks to God.
Then what did happen to the thankless life of Adam? Adam was deceived by Eve, whom he loved most. Adam should have loved God most than loving Eve, and he should have given the highest gratitude to God, not just giving his praise to Eve. Does this sound familiar to us, doesn’t it?
When Eve sinned, whom Adam loved most, Adam joined the sin without making even a single question to God about the temptation getting at him. God was far in Adam’s heart, and Eve was right next to him. Moreover, the seductive power of sin was so powerful that it quickly dragged in Adam to the sin. If Adam had fixed his eyes on God and had given thanks to God always, Adam could have had not fallen into the sin by being in the light of God. In fact, Adam was so vulnerable at the temptation, and the seductive sin of Eve immediately shallowed up the entirety of Adam at once. Adam even did not resist.
Indeed, God gave everything to Adam and Eve, and God asked them to govern and reign over them. But they failed. Why? Their lives critically lacked in thanksgiving to God, and this made them powerless before the sin, and they were failed immediately.
Therefore, if thanksgiving to God is lacking in our lives, we should be alarmed because this is the first sign that our hearts are far from God. On the other hands, sins are right next to us because we are in the world full of sins. Then a terrible sin quickly approaches to us and takes hostage of the sin while making us fall. Soon we realize that we have become the slaves of the darkness by falling from the sons and daughter of the light of God, Our Father. Then what should we do? We should be equipped with a weapon that allows for us to fight against this seductive power of sin. As we talked above, the most powerful weapon against sins and temptations is “Thanksgiving to God.” Yes, we should not take off our eyes from God, Our Ever-Loving Father, and continuously give thanksgiving to God in every situation and every moment. Then our enemy Satan cannot be even getting close to us.
Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)
God created the heavens and the earth, and God said, “It was good” at the end of each day, but on the last day when He created us, God said, “It was very good.” God had never said “very good” after creating any other creations except us. This is the proof how much God loves us. On the other hand, the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, lived their thankless lives. Soon they were tempted and sinned. Please note that this fall had happened in the paradise. Then how much more so for us who live in this world, not the paradise? We are extremely vulnerable and completely exposed to sins around and in us.
Therefore, let’s focus on our eyes on the cross, walk the walk given to us while giving our highest thanksgiving and gratitude to God, Our Ever-Loving and Eternal Father. God has just given to us this new year of 2020. Along with this new year, God has just given all things for us. Now, it is up to us – whether we give thanks to God by expressing our highest gratitude to God from our deepest part of our heart or not. Please remember throughout this new year, 2020, our thanksgiving and praise to God will give us the greatest strength to live out our most victory year in 2020 by overcoming everything coming at us. Though our heartful thanksgiving, we will successfully govern and reign over our lives in Him according His will while making Him greatly pleased with us. At the end of 2020, surely we will see the face of Our God, who is greatly pleased in us. Then we will never forget 2020 as the most victorious year in our lives.
God’s blessings on each of you in 2020. Happy and Blessed New Year in Him!
the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise. (Isaiah 43:21)