Genesis, origins, the beginning is the story of God, not just history, and it’s not just their story, the origins of Israel, it’s our story. John Walton says, “It expresses God’s love for the people he created and his intention to bless them in spite of rebellion and sin. The picture of love, mercy, and compassion thus portrayed by means of blessing stands in stark contrast to the self-protection and self-promotion that characterized the gods of the ancient world (and ourselves). The theology of Genesis thereby leads us to an understanding and appreciation of grace as an expression of God’s character that reaches far beyond our own personal experience of redemption.”

How are you looking for ways that God wants to create or bring life anew in your lives, naming the failure when we do move in self-protection or self-promotion or control or fear or shame, as well as seeing the ways God is desiring to redeem us.

Are you moving towards the things of God or away?

Are you living a life pleasing or unpleasing towards him?

Are we living in the blessing of his relationship or wanting to take advantage of the blessing and use God?

Assess your relationships with God, others, and yourself. Choose one area to intentionally pursue healing and health.

We can uncover the message of Genesis by focusing on the picture of God that it offers. The church is desperately in need of recovering the view of God offered by Genesis.
Deuteronomy 4:32-35, 39- 32 Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? 33 Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? 34 Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? 35 You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other…. 39 Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.

What does this passage mean for you? Mean for your next steps in faith?

Take a moment with this new song and reflect on the power of the lyrics. God You're So Good