Hope Found Here - Hope In Our Creator Series

Our theme this year is Hope Found Here, and this month we are considering the Hope we have in our Creator, our Heavenly Father, the one who created everything we see, and everything we can’t see.

Our English Bible starts with the book of Genesis, and the first words we read in Genesis is “In the Beginning God”. These words have been translated fron the original Hebrew, 'bereshith bara Elohim'. These words refer to history (there was a beginning, bereshith), then to creation (bara, He created), and then to the Creator, Elohim. God, is the Creator, He exists, He is not a product of man’s imagination, He is real, He is the basis of our Hope.

The Bible begins with the account of God creating the heavens and the earth and everything in between: stars and insects, trees and galaxies, planets and animals, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, and human beings, us. God is the one who creates all things and orders all things. He is the one who has made us, He is the one who has made everything.

If you are one of those people who have pondered if the chicken or the egg came first, Genesis clearly tells us that God created Life, and then told it to be fruitful and multiply. Whatever your views of science and the Bible, of creation or evolution or Intelligent Design the Bible teaches us that everything begins with God. God was in the beginning, actually, God was prior to what we consider the beginning of creation.

God is eternal. This is something that our finite human minds struggle to comprehend. We expect things to have a beginning and an end. God has been here since before we arrived and He will be around long after we’re gone.

God has always been and always will be. He is eternal. Life begins and ends with God. He comes first, not us.

Does it seem like I’m pointing out the obvious? Maybe I am. But I think that sometimes we need to be reminded of the most basic aspects of our faith.

Why? Because even as Christians we don’t always act or live like God comes first, do we? Just think of something simple, like how many of our sentences begin with “I” or have “I” as the main subject: “I’m going to do this today.” or “This is how I feel.”

Our thoughts revolve around ourselves and many of our feelings are ultimately self-centered. Almost without thinking about it, we put our thoughts, feelings, and even actions first. We often put more trust in our own abilities than in those of our Creator. Often our hope is based on what we think we can accomplish rather than placing our hope and trust in God.

Friends, our Hope, should be in God. The Bible teaches us that Go is the Alpha and Omega, He is the beginning and the end. In The Message Bible the author Eugene Peterson introduces the book of Genesis by saying: “First, God. God is the subject of life. God is foundational for living. If we don’t have a sense of the primacy of God, we will never get it right, get life right, get our lives right. Not God at the margins; not God as an option; not God on the weekends. God at center and circumference; God first and last; God, God, God.”

“God First” not me, not my hopes or desires, God’s plan and purpose first. God comes first, He is before all things, He is meant to have first place in our lives.

The first “day” would not have come into being without God, and God still creates our days. Without God we would have no hope, our days would be nothing, no order, no purpose, no existence.

With God we have hope, we have purpose, we have a destiny ordained by God. We have hope in our Creator, God has created us, God has provided a way for us to be saved from the penalty of our sins by trusting in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.

When we repent and turn to Jesus, when we become His follower, His disciple, the Holy Spirit comes and resides inside us, He empowers us and helps us to be the people God created us to be, He helps us to be the people God has saved us to be.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” God is the creator of the heavens and the earth, and God is our creator.

Genesis 1:2 describes the earth as “formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters”. God took something that was without shape, a formless empty void covered in darkness and He made something. God gave shape to the shapeless. God brought order to where there was no direction, He gave form to something that was formless.