What is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him? You made him ruler over the works of Your hands; You put everything under his feet. (Psalm 8:4-5)
In mythology, humans are an after-thought, a nuisance, slaves and servants of the gods, and usually pawns in the gods’ scheming against each other.
But Jehovah God created man as a part of His creation. He created mankind in His own image and breathed His own life into him. After the first five days of creation, God said, “It is good.” But on the sixth day, after creating man, He said, “It is very good!”
Jehovah God has man at the forefront of His mind. He not only calls us into a relationship with Him, but the Trinity works in divine cooperation to make it possible for us to come to Him.
He doesn’t see a mass of humanity, but He sees each one of us individually and uniquely. And He is attentive to us—“For the Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer” (Psalm 6:9).
As David burst into praise with this realization of God’s forethought of us, let us echo this praise (Psalm 8:9)—
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!
The Cell’s Design by Fazale Rana, a distinguished biochemist, is an amazing apologetic for an intelligent designer of our universe: A Creator. You can read my full book review by clicking here. Below are a few quotes I wanted to pass along, and a graphic I created based on Rana’s findings.
“This elegance, evident in virtually all aspects of the cell’s chemistry, carries profound philosophical and theological significance that prompts questions about the origin, purpose, and meaning of life. Though I once embraced the evolutionary paradigm, its inadequate explanations for the origin of life coupled with the sophistication and complexity of the cell’s chemical systems convinced me as a biochemistry graduate student that a Creator must exist.”
“Richard Dawkins, an outspoken atheist, acknowledges that ‘biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.’”
“An event, system, or object is intentionally produced by a designer, then it will (1) be contingent, (2) be complex, and (3) display an independently specified pattern. … Three questions are used to determine if an event, system, or object stems from the activity of an intelligent agent. Can it be explained as a consequence of the laws of nature (necessity)? If yes, then it is not designed. If no, then can it be explained as a consequence of chance (contingent)? If yes, then it is not designed. If no, then does it display a specified pattern (specification)? If no, then it is not designed. If yes, then it must be the product of an intelligent designer.”
“These advances indicate that life’s bare essentials extend far beyond the number of proteins that must simultaneously occur for life to exist. Life’s minimum complexity also requires organization of these gene products within the cell.”
“It is superastro-nomically improbable for the essential gene set to emerge simultaneously through natural means alone. If left up to an evolutionary process, not enough resources or time exist throughout the universe’s history to generate life in its simplest form.”
“Instead of resembling a preschooler’s messy fingerpainting, the interior of the simplest cell is best described as a carefully planned and marvelously executed work of art—one that masterfully carries out life’s most basic processes in living color. Disrupting this arrangement is often lethal.”
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Look up.
See all those stars? Even all the stars our most sophisticated telescopes can see don’t even come close to showing us all the stars in our universe.
And yet of all the stars and all the planets, our Earth is perfectly positioned by our Sun. If our Sun was any bigger, we’d get too much radiation and heat. If our Earth was any farther away, we’d be too cold to survive.
God placed Sun, Earth, moon, and stars perfectly.
Look down.
Way down. All the way to the sub-atomic level.
Neutrons, protons, electrons all arranged perfectly. Too many protons or electrons—or too few—and matter wouldn’t hold together properly.
God placed those components of our atoms together perfectly.
Look in.
Right into your heart.
Gifts, talents, passions, insight, personality, temperament. All of those things in a perfect blend to make you.
You are unique. There’s never been anyone like you before, and there never will be another like you in the future.
God placed those attributes together in a perfect mixture to make you. Too much of this, or too little of that, and you wouldn’t be you.
What are you going to do with your you-ness? How about letting your Creator tell you exactly why He made you the way He did:
For YOU are God’s handiwork, perfectly created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for YOU to do. (Ephesians 2:10, with a slight change to personalize it)
God knows what He’s doing. He created the big universe perfectly. He created the sub-atomic universe perfectly. And He also created you perfectly.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Have you ever noticed how quickly we label people? We tend to give them a label based on their education, their socio-economic status, their race, their age, their job, even their choice of vocabulary.
We may not verbally express these labels, but we think them. And we will always treat people as we label them! In fact, it’s impossible to treat someone differently than you think about them.
What sort of label does God use? Well, He says that He knit you together in your mother’s womb; that He saw all of the days of your life before you were even a twinkle in your father’s eye; He knows the number of hairs on your head; He knows the thoughts in your head; He knows what you’re going to say before you say it. And then there’s this beautiful thought—
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)
The label God puts on you:
My one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable, invaluable masterpiece!
When you are givingthanksgiving for people (that means you are always thankful for people), you will begin to see them as God’s masterpieces too!
Everyone you meet is God’s gift. He gave them to humanity to do the good works which He prepared in advance for them to do. You are surrounded by gifted people!
If you don’t see people this way—or if you tend to label them with less-than-flattering tags—perhaps you should begin to pray for them. Try a prayer like this:
I thank my God for you; in fact, I always thank God for you. And every time I thank God for you, I pray for you, night and day. In all my prayers for you, I always pray with joy, being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. And this is also my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. So I urge you to join me in offering requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving for everyone.(This prayer is taken from Romans 1:8; 1 Corinthians 1:4; Colossians 1:3; 2 Timothy 1:3; Philippians 1:3-11; 1 Timothy 2:1)
Don’t just express your thanks for people on Thanksgiving Day, but be givingthanksgiving all the time. Remember: everyone you meet is a gifted person because everyone you meet is God’s one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable, invaluable masterpiece.
Alexander Tsiaras is a professor at Yale. This is a highly educated, brilliant man. In this video he is telling his audience that what scientists are learning about the human body, and there is one word that keeps occurring in his vocabulary: Divine.
The Bible says,
God, You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. (Psalm 139:13-14)
Check out this video to see how wonderfully complex and divine our Creator is—
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The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. (Psalm 19:1)
I find it somewhat ironic that the scientists who study our universe, and constantly tell us how perfectly everything works, are the same men and women who claim that God is non-existent!
To look at the absolute intricacy of the universe … to ponder how everything works together just so … to study how the massive and the microscopic coordinate activities to create perfect balance … these things all seem to show the glory of God and the work of His hands.
How absolutely ludicrous to think that something so perfectly formed came about by accident. In fact, C.S. Lewis wrote this:
If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts—i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.
I have already written about God’s Big Hands, but also consider God’s amazing and perfect Creation:
Gravity: if the force or pull of gravity were to change by one quadrillionth of a percentage (that’s 0.00000000000001), the universe would cease to function the way it does now.
Electromagnetism: neutrons are 1.001 times the mass of the proton. If this weren’t so, all protons would decay into neutrons. Positive electromagnetism would be gone, leaving only negative. Again the universe would cease to function as it does now.
The more I study our universe, the more praise I give to ourCreator!
His wisdom created this amazing world in which we live, and all of His creation is joining together in contant praise. I don’t know about you, but I choose to join creation in its praise of our Creator.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Martin Luther said:
“There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage.”
Unfortunately our culture has watered-down and diminished the value of marriage. Far too often marriage is seen as something which diminishes life, instead of enhancing it.
Perhaps this is because we have been viewing marriage with the wrong math.
Marriage is NOT ½ + ½ = 1
That makes sense mathematically, but it’s inaccurate. God didn’t create us a half-people.God created us whole and complete. So our spouse is not our better half, he/she is our better whole.
Not coincidentally, X (chi) is the first Greek letter of the name Christ. When Christ is at the center of a marriage, and when the husband and wife are more in love with Him than they are with their spouse, then a wholeness exists in the marriage.
1 X 1 = 1 is the type of marriage that glorifies God.
1 X 1 =1 is the type of marriage that is so lovely, friendly, and charming.
If you are single, keep yourself pure so you can bring your “oneness” as a gift to your future spouse. If you are married, keep the X—Jesus Christ—at the center of your marriage.
These pictures from NASA (and video compliments of Chris Abbas) show the majesty of our Creator…
The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display His craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make Him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. (Psalm 19:1-4)
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple or Spotify.
Astronomers admit that they cannot observe the entire universe, because it’s simply too vast for any equipment that has been made. In the Milky Way galaxy alone there are something like 10 trillion stars.
But that’s just one galaxy.
Astronomers used to estimate that there are another 10 trillion galaxies, but they have recently admitted that there are likely three times more stars than they originally thought. Which makes the total number in the observable universe 300 sextillion stars.
300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars
But here’s what is more amazing: God knows each of those stars by name!
Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. (Isaiah 40:26)
As awesome as the stars are, here’s what God thinks about you…
When I look at the night sky and see the work of Your fingers—the moon and the stars You set in place—what are mere mortals that You should think about them, human beings that You should care for them? Yet You made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor. (Psalm 8:3-5)
And most amazingly of all, God not only knows the 300 sextillion stars by name, but He knows you by name too (Exodus 33:17)!
Friend, in God’s eyes you shine brighter than a star! He knows you by name. If not one star is missing from His view, how much more does He see you!
If you’re feeling discouraged or alone or forgotten, step outside tonight and look up at the stars. God knows them all by name, but He knows you too—and He thinks the world of you!
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
There is a power in what we say. This is probably most true inwhat we say to ourselves.
Far too many people are so quick to beat themselves up and run themselves down. Do you ever do that?
How could I have missed that? I’m so stupid!
Grrr! I forgot my wallet again. I’m so forgetful!
I can’t believe I said that! I’m so insensitive!
I could never paint like that. I’m so uncreative!
I really messed that one up. I’m such an idiot!
I can’t seem to do anything right. I’m just a good-for-nothing!
If you talked to your friends the same way you talk to yourself, would you have any friends left?
The things you say to yourself have got to change. The way you think about yourself has got to change.
God made you the way He made you on purpose. In all of human history, there has never been another you. Right now among the nearly 7 billion people on earth, there isn’t anyone like you.
You are you because God made you. He loves what He made. He loves you!
Perfect? No way! None of us are. That’s one of the few things you and I have in common with everyone else.
Unique? You better believe it!
One of a kind? You sure are!
Good for something? Yep! You have the talents and abilities and personality and temperament that God intended for you to have.
STOP BEATING YOURSELF UP!
Look into God’s mirror and let Him reflect back to you just how wonderful you are! Spend quiet time with your Creator, with your Lover. Hear Him whisper to your heart how special you are.
Then be you. The world needs you to be you. The world is a better place with you in it.
In mythology, humans are an after-thought, a nuisance, slaves and servants of the gods, and usually pawns in the gods’ scheming against each other.
Craig T. Owens 