Pouring forth speech...

"The heavens declare the glory of God;

    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

    night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language

    where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,

    their words to the ends of the world."

. . . . . . .

God created the heavens and the earth for our good, our benefit, pleasure, enjoyment, and delight!

We are masterfully designed to enjoy, appreciate, understand, delight in, use, benefit from, and rule over all the earth!

Who besides us can drink in the beauty of a sunrise, the majesty of the mountains, or the tenderness of a mother nursing her baby? We can enjoy and derive benefit from trees, flowers, plants, and animals.  

This speaks VOLUMES about our Creator!! He is GOOD and provides for, cares about, and attends to every detail of our environment for our delight and enjoyment.  We alone can fully appreciate beauty, art, majesty, creativity, colors, textures, tastes, sounds, music, language, communication, emotion, love, expression...the list could go on and on!

We are God's crowning creation....the earth was created for us!! God masterfully prepared, formed, filled the heavens and the earth for us!! For our provision, enjoyment, and delight!!

We were also created FOR GOD, for relationship with Him and for the praise of His glory!

Also, creation was designed in specific ways to ILLUSTRATE spiritual truth and to teach us about God, His character and ways, and principles of truth, wisdom, and glory!

For example, the starts were created to give us the possibility of navigation, signs for indicating seasons, days, years, months, even hours...all to provide for us ORDER, DIRECTION, and a sense of AWE of our Creator!

For our well-being, there is purpose in the details!

God blessed His work on the 5th day, meaning "to make happy" and give divine favor.  We were also blessed with fruitfulness, the ability to reproduce.

God commands us with the words: fruitful, increase, and fill.  His first commands run parallel to the desires, gifts, and abilities He had already placed in His creatures.  Obeying His command was a natural outflow of the life God had breathed into them.

We, in particular were made in God's image with a SPECIAL capacity to worship, love, and serve God.

Here are some more points on creation's "speech":

The sun, moon, and stars are:

-visible signs of God's power

-cause us to worship Him (Psalm 8,19, Romans 1:19-20)

-build faith in His promises (Genesis 15:4-5, Jeremiah 31:35-36)

-point to extraordinary events (Jesus' birth, Jesus' second coming, divine judgment)

-used for determining seasons, navigating, weather, etc,

-as a way to illustrate the concept of God's marvelous light and its effects on us, it's a picture, a metaphor for spiritual truth

Chesterton's Poem

Here dies another day

During which I have had eyes, ears, hands

And the great world round me;

And with tomorrow begins another.

Why am I allowed two?

Immortal Invisible

"What is essential is invisible" - The Little Prince

"Indeed, these are the mere edges of His ways

And how small a whisper we hear of Him!

But the thunder of His power who can understand?" -Job 26:14

"By the word of the Lord the heavens were made

And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." -Psalm 33:6

God spoke the Universe into existence as the expression of His divine will

"By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of the things which are visible." -Hebrews 11:3

"...by faith he [Moses] forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible." -Hebrews 11:27

"Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen." -I Timothy 1:17

"He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation." -Colossians 1:15

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it." -John 1:1-5

Romans 1:20

"For since the creation of the world His [God's] invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." -Romans 1:20

While most Christians emphasize learning about God via His special revelation (i.e. The Bible), most fail to attribute the study of general revelation (i.e. Creation) as a way to "clearly see" God's "invisible attributes." We overlook this truth so often.

You see, I was robbed. The joy I have now discovered from studying science was stolen from me as a child. The truth was suppressed, clouded, and twisted by the lens of secular materialism. My well-intentioned teachers dryly distributed these lenses to their students. The lenses turned vivid colors to boring shades of gray. They turned my curious mind to mush, for I was told that in reality, the universe has no purpose and there is nothing that exists besides matter, space, and time.

What my teachers and I did not know was this: As scientific knowledge of the world has grown exponentially during the modern era (ironically fueled most often by secular materialists), so has risen clear evidence of an intelligent Creator responsible for the miraculous phenomena we call the universe.

I could spend my entire life pursuing the meaning of how creation speaks clearly of God's invisible attributes. What are those attributes of God we see from nature? "His eternal power and divine nature..." but there's more!

Here's some summarized evidence for characteristics of God we find in creation:

(taken from Strobel's Case for a Creator)

COSMOLOGY: The cause of the universe must be an uncaused, beginning less, timeless, immaterial, personal being endowed with free will and enormous power.

PHYSICS: The creator is intelligent and has continued involvement with his creation since the Big Bang.

ASTRONOMY: The creator was incredibly precise in creating a livable habitat for the creatures he designed. This logically implies his care and concern for them.

BIOCHEMISTRY: Affirms the Creator's activity after the Big Bang also shows that he is incredibly creative.

EVIDENCE FOR CONSCIOUSNESS: Established the creator as rational, helps understand his omnipresence, and even suggests life after death.

In addition, one purpose we can see in all this is that humans have been designed uniquely to be able to explore the world the creator has designed and in turn discover him through it.

Here's the list of the "invisible attributes" of God we clearly see from creation. Scripture is cited with each characteristic to show how both general and special revelation are perfectly consistent:

1) CREATOR

Psalm 102:25 "In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands."

2) UNIQUE

Deuteronomy 4:35 "You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him there is no other."

3) UNCAUSED AND TIMELESS

Psalm 90:2 "Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God."

4) IMMATERIAL

John 4:24 "God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

5) PERSONAL

Genesis 17:1 "When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless."

6) FREEDOM OF WILL

Genesis 1:3 "And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light."

7) INTELLIGENT AND RATIONAL

Psalm 104:24 "How many are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures."

8) ENORMOUSLY POWERFUL

Nahum 1:3 "The LORD is slow to anger and great in power; the LORD will not leave the guilty unpunished. His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust of his feet."

9) CREATIVE

Psalm 139:13-14 "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

10) CARING

Psalm 33:5 "The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love."

11) OMNIPRESENT

I Kings 8:27 "But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!"

12) HAS GIVEN HUMANKIND PURPOSE

Colossians 1:16 "For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him."

13) PROVIDES FOR LIFE AFTER DEATH

Isaiah 25:8 "he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken."

More Quotes

"She's so spiritually minded, she's no earthly good!" - My mother

"What consumes your thoughts controls your life"

Settlin' - SugarLand

I ain't settlin' for just getting by
had enough "so-so" for the rest of my life
tired of shooting too low
so raise the bar high
just enough ain't enough this time.

I ain't settlin' for anything less than everything

Offering - Third Day

Magnificent, Holy Father, I stand in awe of all I see
of all the things you have created, still you choose to think of me.

And who am I that You should suffer Your very life to set me free,
The only thing that I can give You, is the life You gave to me.

This is my offering, dear Lord, this is my offering to You God.

I will give You my life, for it's all I have to give
Because You gave Your life for me.