Chapter
Thirteen
God never
asks anything of you that He hasn’t already given you.
“29 ¶ And God
said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is
on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it
shall be for food. 30 "Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of
the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for
food"; and it was so. 31 ¶ Then God saw everything that He had made, and
indeed it was very good. So the
evening and the morning were the sixth day.” (Genesis 1:29-31 NKJV)
There
is an old saying, “You can’t out give God!”
In Genesis we see that everything we are, everything we have and even
everything we want is a gift from God.
And not only did God give it to us but everything God gave us was “very
good,”
Notice
that God not only gives us herbs, trees and fruit, but the seed to make those
things perpetual. All the other
creatures were not only created for us by God, but were given life! And again we see that all the creatures to
whom God gave life were made “very good.”
And
then we have this statement, “So the evening and the morning were the
sixth day.” For God also gave us
time and filled it with days of mornings and evenings. We have weeks, months, years and decades that
we can live in and enjoy all of the “very good” things God created as well as
the people who are in our lives.
List three of the most important things God
has given you.
1.
2.
3.
Why did you choose these three?
“"For God
so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in
Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16 NKJV)
Even if God asks you to give your
life for Him we are compelled by the fact that God was not only willing to
offer His “only begotten Son” for us but did.
And this verse doesn’t cover the sacrifice of Jesus suffering and dying
for us!
Sometimes we lose our appreciation
of the agape (Godly sacrificial love) love God has for us which can be seen in
the Father offering His Son and in Jesus willingly offering His life!
A study of gods worshipped by human
beings shows that they usually demand human beings to be sacrificed rather than
offering themselves for their followers.
Even the Muslim God Allah is a harsh god demanding perfection and never
offering any assurance of your security or hope!
But God’s love does not demand our
perfection as much as His love seeks to perfect us so we can have a loving
relationship with Him experienced in prayer, God revealing Himself in the
Scripture and in being guided by His Holy Spirit.
Such a God in not only worth living
for but worth dying for!
There is an old story
that as the early Christians were dying in the arena that unbelievers in the
stadiums would actually jump in with them saying that while the Christians has
something worth dying for they didn’t have anything to live for!
Does
God have the right to ask you to die for Him?
Can
you share three reasons either way?
1.
2.
3.
During
the shooting at Columbine some of the shooters would ask students if they were
a Christian. If they said yes they would
be killed. How would you answer?
(While
we can never be sure how we would respond to such a question I think preparing
ourselves for that question can help us make the choice to give ourselves for
God, who gave Himself for us!)
Does
giving yourself for God mean just dying for Him or can it also mean to live for
Him?
What
would this mean to you?
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