Devotions this week based on the Message: “BELIEVE: Week 1: Believe in God!”
(NOTE: This sermon series and devotional series is based on a book by Randy Frazee entitled, “BELIEVE.”
You may choose to download or purchase the book as a supplement to your worship and devotional emails.)
Did anyone ever stop and ask nature if it believes in God?
What would a star or a bee or a prickly pear cactus say about its origin?
I wonder what nature would say to the theory that predominates the “science” field that says everything has evolved over billions of years and by a series of random and natural selective processes.
Would the heavens agree that they are billions of years old?
Would the earth and all that lives on it affirm those that propose evolutionary beginnings?
Not at all. Here’s what they do in their own way:
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19:1-4)
All creation knows its Creator. All creation, if it could, believes in the God who is introduced in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Creation’s statement of God’s existence were not just inventions of primitive man, but observations of every man. Creation’s testimony hasn’t changed. Man’s willingness to hear it has.
Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
The testimony of creation about God is what is called the “natural knowledge of God.” It’s one way apart from the revealed knowledge of God in the Bible that people can know a) that there is a God and b) that that God is a God of power, order, and simply God. This leaves people without excuse. Evolution is not the end of God, it is merely man’s “excuse” to have a need for God.
The Bible puts it pretty bluntly: Psalm 14:1 “The fool says in their heart there is no god.”
To be clear, creation won’t tell us fully who the true God is, that is why we need all the pages that follow Genesis 1:1 as God interacts with people and reveals himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
But if we are simply wrestling with the question, “Does God exist?” or “Do I believe there is a God?” Perhaps the answer isn’t to go outside and get “in touch with” nature, but to go outside and hear the testimony of nature. Perhaps you would hear God say to you similar to the words he confronted Job:
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’? (Job 38:4-11)
There was only one that was there: God himself. All creation testifies to it.
Apply: Read Job 38-39. As Job questions God’s ways, God answers with his resume of creative and directive acts. Consider ALL the ways God created, ordered and orchestrates nature to work. All of it testifies to his existence!
Prayer: Lord, Creator of all, let me hear the testimony of the world you created speak to your power and glory. Let this testimony strengthen my conviction and confidence of who you are and your love for me. AMEN.