In The Beginning

 

The First Heart Beat - Genesis 1:26

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 1:26

The heart of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit was to share and enjoy the dance of eternal glory. To reflect the overflowing, wonderful love of the triune Godhead with perfect creation. It was the God head  “Us” that created man in their own image and all the glory of heaven was shared with man.

God stooped down, he put his life, his essence, his creativity, his majesty, his glory into the dust he had made and with all the joyous delight of the triune God he formed man. God immersed the dust into the eternal dance of love and this would not be the only time that God would stoop and kiss our world. He would bring himself down to us by lying in a manger,  work in a carpentry shop, sleep on a mountain side, eat with the forsaken and despised, be spat upon, lied about, be beaten, ridiculed, humiliated, nailed and cut open. 

And there in that moment of creation, as man was formed and God’s life was breathed into his body. For the first time in eternity, for the first moment in the joyous dance, God and man waited and listened as the first heart beat sounded on earth, the first heart beat sounded in eternity, and the first heart beat sounded in the frame of man.

Never before had a heart been formed and never before had a heart beat been heard. Creation listened to the life of God flowing through man’s frame of dust, united with glory, perfect, whole, good and heaven had entered into earth.

Stop. Breathe and listen to your heart beat, listen to your breathing, it is the wonder of life, the joy of the creator manifest in dust and alive in your heart.

Charis Notes - The Power Of Sin

Genesis 3: 9-10

Then the Lord God called Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

In these two verses we confront the power of sin. When Adam sinned, everything in his world changed. More importantly Adam’s heart changed towards God, but God’s heart towards Adam stayed exactly the same. Sin turns our back on God and makes us ashamed. Sin turns a loving Father into an angry God who must be appeased. Sin brings us under the deception of punishment. 

Sin made Adam cover up and hide behind the tree. It was sin that caused the separation between man and God, and this separation was only in the mind of Adam. In his mind Adam now saw himself condemned and hid in fear from the punishment he expected to receive from God. Every day he had walked and fellow-shipped with God, they had laughed together, talked together, and were both eternally and blissfully joyful and happy. Adam in his foolishness had thought that he could add something to this wonderful bliss God had provided, that he could make it even better. But he already had perfection.

Our sin causes us to judge God, in our minds we determine what makes God happy or angry and what we have to do to make it right.

Sin causes us to have unbelief in the goodness of God.

God in Christ took all the consequences of our sin. Christ nailed our sin, our old selves to the cross and died as me. Sin no longer causes the separation between man and God. The only separation is in the heart and mind of man which causes him not to believe in all Christ has achieved for him at the cross.

We question God because we are afraid of him, Adam thought God came to punish him, but God came to have fellowship with him. God wants to have intimate, close, fellowship with us every second of every day enjoying all the riches of his grace.  

Charis Notes - Where Are You?

Genesis 3: 9-10

Then the Lord God called Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

Perhaps here we have the heart of the gospel emanating from the unconditional love of God to us in those few words, "Where are you?". Our wonderful, all knowing, all seeing Father knew every action that Adam and Eve took, He knew that they had succumbed to the Serpent’s deception and by free choice had tried to be righteous by their own act. Adam was not trying to be evil when he committed the ultimate evil of eating from the morality tree. He was actually trying to do good and avoid evil so that he could be more like God. But he already was like God. 

God knew man had sinned and had fallen into the evil of self-righteousness, but he did not separate himself from fallen man. Everything changed when Adam sinned, everything but God. God did not change His relationship with man because of sin. God loved Adam, He cared for Adam, He was there in the garden wanting to talk and fellowship with him. God is the same, Yesterday, Today and Forever.

The unconditional love and heart of God is that He desires with an unquenchable passion to bring us into the eternal dance of his glorious trinity. His cry to us, to everyone is “Where are you?” for everything that would separate us from Him has been taken and placed on Jesus and we can now freely respond and enter into the joyous dance of the Father.

Charis Notes - Made In God's Image

Genesis 1: 26

The God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.”

It was the divine dance of bliss and happiness that created man. God here in Genesis is an “us”. An eternal, uncreated, trinity of passion, wonder, creativity, expression, love, grace, joy, happiness, fulfilment. God has never existed in a place of loneliness. God has never felt alone. He has never felt deserted. He has never felt the need to create something to fill the void of loneliness in his magnificent existence.

Out of God glorious goodness and infinite passion He was so overflowing with infinite joy that He created man to share and experience the wonderful, blissful fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Man is an expression of all the glory and goodness of the Trinity created out of dust.

Man in God’s image has all the creativity, passion, wonder, love and beauty of the abundance of the Trinity. God’s abundance is so overwhelming He could not stop Himself from giving it away, and He gives it away to us.

Christ came to give us life and give us His life to the abundance. Rivers of the Trinity to fill us up and overflow into every word, thought and action of our lives. Christ gave us by grace; all that He had created us to be.

We are wonderful, creative, glorious, beautiful, creations made from the abundance of God’s love and his passion to share everything He is.