A personal intimate relationship...with me?

Do you ever feel like God just isn't there or think "why would God want a relationship with me?" Does He really care? Is He really there for me?

Today as I study Genesis, I revisited the Creation of Adam and Eve. Now my first post talks about the special role that God designed for women and how amazing and important that role can be when it is truly understood. Today I want to talk about the personal intimate relationship that God wants with mankind.  He initiates this desire from the very beginning of our creation. Let's walk through how he did that...

• Intimate Creation
  

God got his hands dirty when he made Adam. He made him from the dust of the ground and breath of life. 

then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. Genesis 2:7 (ESV)

Everything else seems to be have been made by divine fiat (God's verbal command), but with man he took his time, he involved himself in his creation. 

Furthermore he did the same with Eve. 

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up the its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Genesis 2: 21-22 (ESV)

He got up close and personal when he made mankind-both male and female.  

Finally you are the only creation that he made in his image. 

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...." Genesis 1:26a (ESV)

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27 (ESV)

• Intimate Care & Provision

Not only did God get personal with creation he made a special place within creation for Adam and Eve. He had already declared that creation was good, but He went a step further and made the Garden of Eden for them.

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Genesis 2:8 (ESV)

God provided not only for their needs but for their pleasure.

And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.   Genesis 2:9a (ESV)

He didn't just provide food but he made the ones that were pleasant to the sight to spring up. 

He gave Adam a job to do. Adam was tasked to work the garden of Eden and keep it (Genesis 2:15). Now maybe that does not seem like such a grand thing, but I've had idle hands before. If you are an intelligent being, boredom is not fun. 

Finally he provided companionship when he made Eve. (Genesis 2:16, 21-24)

• Intimate Relationship
  

God was looking for a relationship not just in passing, but deep and meaningful. He did this by giving man choice in obedience (Genesis 2:16-17), allowing self-discovery in the search for a companion (Genesis 2:20), and giving man creativity, wisdom, and intelligence (Genesis 2:19-20).

He gave Adam the choice of being obedient to the commands of God by placing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden.  God did not need a zombie or a robot. He wanted man to choose to have a relationship with him.

God begins vs. 18 of chapter 2 by saying that it was not good for man to be alone, but he does not create woman until vs. 21-22. In between this time, Adam names all the animals, but discovers none that are fit to be his helper. God gives Adam the chance to come to his own conclusions before he makes the woman.

Finally, God gave man creativity, wisdom, and intelligence. Adam named all the animals in between the time of his creation and that of the woman's creation. From Genesis 1, we know man was made on the sixth day of creation. Adam had all the skills necessary to observe, get to know, and name each animal in a short period of time. As I said earlier, God did not need or want a zombie or a robot. He wanted a creation that demonstrated thought so that he might have a relationship with them.

LOVE

I can only imagine how God felt as he carefully made and cared for the very first man and woman. He must have loved Adam and Eve so much, but all along he knew that they were going to fail Him. How His heart must have broken as He made them! It takes a strange and powerful kind of love to love when you know you are going to get hurt. That love drove our creation, but he refused to leave mankind in sin. Even as He made Adam and Eve, He already planned out their (and our) salvation through His son, Jesus Christ. 

Just as God desired a personal intimate relationship with Adam and Eve, He desires that from each of us. Jesus' sacrifice is sufficient to save the whole world, but only applies to those who believe. (John 3:16-17). Furthermore, we are given the Holy Spirit that we might know God. As Paul tells us in I Corinthians 2:10-12, only the spirit that is in a person can know a person's thoughts. Thus, only the Spirit of God can comprehend His thoughts. God gives you His Spirit that you might understand him and what He has freely given.

God wants a personal intimate relationship with ME! And with YOU!

Are you building a Tower?

Today's lesson revolved around the beginning of Genesis 11. The first part of this chapter is about the the Tower of Babel. Noah's family has survived the flood, and generations have come. The earth is being repopulated. 

The theme here : We keep doing the same things over and over. 

You would think that having come in after God has completely wiped out all other life on the planet save for you and yours it would take a little longer for mankind to jump back into the same old life. However, the story in Genesis 11 is that man forgets what happens and why it happened.

Over and over in the passage we find that the Tower is a testament to man's glory and not God's.

"...come let us build ourselves....let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." excerpts Genesis 11:4 (ESV)

It was all about them. They were trying to be like God and escape God's commands.

They had forgotten that everything was gift from God. They were taking the very gifts that God had given them and were perverting and abusing them. God had given them the gift of speech which allowed them to communicate with one another and with him. They were using this gift to defy God.

Mankind is no exception to this perversion of God's gift. Speaking about speech specifically, we lade it with profanity, use it to pervert the gift of sex i.e. 1-800 phone sex numbers, con and lie to people with our speech, and spew hate and racism. I am no exception to this sin. I struggle to keep my language clean and at times to tell the truth. I have said things that promoted hate and not love. Admittedly I have not called a phone sex number, but in God's eyes I have already sinned.

Still in the midst of this story of man's arrogance and his failure, God's grace and mercy are shown. He had promised not to destroy all life again, and these people were committing the same sins that had led to his wrath before.

And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propse to do will now be impossible for them." Genesis 11:6 (ESV)

He saw that the world was on the same track as before and he moves to prevent man's decline.

"Come, let us go down and there confuse thier language so that they may not understand one another's speech." Genesis 11:7 (ESV)

God's confusion of their language is an act of mercy on mankind. He moves to save them from their own sin. His will is done despite mankind's attempt to defy him.

Even today we are using our gifts to build Tower's to our own glory and defy God.

Some examples:

• longevity research
• attempting to escape the boundaries of earth by living in space

In and of themselves these things are not bad, just as building a tower was not bad. But when we build those towers, study those things for our own glory and to defy the will and commands of God then they become sin. When we seek to escape his will, we have trailed into the realm of sin.

What are your Towers? How are they hindering your relationship with the Father? 

As I talked about Noah in my last post, we are often called to live on faith. The builders of the Tower of Babel were called to live on faith. God's command to Noah,

..."Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." Genesis 9:1b (ESV)

The were called to have faith that God would provide for them as they filled the earth. They choose not to have faith as shown in verse 4 when they proclaim their reason for building the tower.  

"...lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. " Genesis 11:4b (ESV)

They choose to rely on their own skills and ingenuity. Still as the passage comes to a close we find that God's will was fulfilled despite their attempts to defy him.

So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Genesis 11:8 (ESV) 

...And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. Genesis 11:9b (ESV)

His will is done no matter what you do. You can try to build Tower's in defiance of him, but you can not escape his will. We have to find and tear down those tower's in our lives that are a testament to our glory and start building a tower out of our life that is for the glory of God.