Zondervan - The Story Devotional: Discover Your Role in Gods Story

The Story Devotional

Copyright 2014 by Zondervan

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

ePub Edition September 2014: ISBN 978-0-310-35216-7

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from Holy Bible, New Living Translation. 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Excerpts taken from The Story. Copyright 2005, 2008, 2011 by Zondervan. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Cover design: Greg Jackson, Thinkpen

Crown of thorns photograph: Oksana Bratanova, Shutterstock.com

Interior design: Walter Petrie

CONTENTS

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

his love endures forever.

Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story

those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,

those he gathered from the lands,

from east and west, from north and south.

PSALM 107: 13

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

GENESIS 1:13

W e all know the power of words. You may remember what the bully said to you on the kindergarten playground, or what one of your parents said to you in a moment of utter frustration.

On the other hand, maybe you remember as if it were yesterday what the coach said to let you know he believed in you. Or when your sixth-grade teacher helped you recognize in yourself an area of giftedness.

Human words are powerfulpowerful to tear down and powerful to build up. And Gods words are infinitely more powerful. God saidand things happened! Where nothing had been, there was now something!

Consider what words God has spoken over you: you are his chosen (Colossians 3:12), loved (Ephesians 5:25), provided for (Matthew 6:3233), protected (Psalm 18:2), child (1 John 3:1). What God speaks, happens; so live in the reality of what he says about you!

LET THE CREATIVE POWER OF GODS WORDS RE-CREATE YOU IN CHRISTS IMAGE.

God said, Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds. And it was so.

GENESIS 1:1113

T he simple statement Let the land produce vegetation belies the almost unimaginable complexity needed for the task.

Plants need water and the God-designed water cycleevaporation, condensation, precipitation. Plants need sunlight, and God had placed the earth the perfect distance from the sun so that this planet could sustain life. God created different plants for warm and wet and cool and dry climates. Plants need a constant source of carbon monoxideand the animals God was planning needed a constant source of oxygen. The perfect symbiotic relationshipper Gods design.

God also saw that each plant had the right nutrients, the ideal temperature, and the necessary protection from the elements. Let the land produce vegetationthose simple words hardly suggest the intricacy, the complexity, of Gods creation, and they dont begin to explain the mystery of the spark of life existing in every seed.

WHAT KIND OF POWER ARE YOU SPEAKING INTO PEOPLES LIVES WITH YOUR WORDSCREATIVE POWER OR DESTRUCTIVE?

God made two great lightsthe greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. And God saw that it was good.

GENESIS 1:16, 18

A s Psalm 19:1 says, the heavens truly do declare the glory of God, and those glorious heavens are mind-bogglingly vast.

If Earth were the size of a grape, Jupiter would be a large grapefruit; Saturn, an orange; Uranus and Neptune, lemons; and the suns diameter, five feet.

Now imagine the grape-sized Earth on the corner of a city block. The moon would be about a foot from the grape-Earth. The sun would be about a city block awayand Jupiter, five blocks away from the sun. Saturn, ten blocks; Uranus, twenty blocks; and Neptune, thirty. And youd be the size of an atom.

Gods heavens declare his gloryhis size, his magnificence, his grandeur, his majesty, his power, his order, his wonder. When you look at the stars, let them prompt you to worship their makerand yours!

YOUR GOD HOLDS THE PLANETS IN THEIR ORBITS AND NUMBERS THE HAIRS ON YOUR HEAD.

God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

GENESIS 1:21

I f a pocket watch washed up on shore and was discovered by people who had never seen one before, what might their reactions be after they inspected the moving second hand and its inner workings? Would anyone consider it an amazing result of pure chance? Would anyone suggest that all the materials coincidentally came together in the perfect size, shape, and organization and, once all was in place, the watch started to work? Doubtful, isnt it? The very existence of the pocket watch suggests the existence of a Creator.

Individuals today look around at Gods amazing creation and dont see (or dont let themselves see) that there must be a Creator behind it all. Each one of the variety of creatures living in the skies and in the oceans eats, breathes, and reproduces... by chance?

We human beings are without excuse: every aspect of creation points to our Creator-God!

MAY GODS AMAZING CREATION PROMPT US TO PRAISE HIM!

God said, Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind. And it was so.

GENESIS 1:24

W hat critters come to mind when you hear the word livestock? Cows and horses and pigs? What about Brahman bulls and water buffalo and donkeys and llamas? And did you know over eight hundred breeds of cattle are recognized around the world?

What do you think of when you hear the words wild animals? Dont limit yourself to lions and tigers and bears. What about manatees, platypi, and anteaters?

Then there are those members of the animal world youve probably never met: the blobfish, the aye-aye, the star-nosed mole, the three-foot, coconut-eating coconut crab, and the list goes on. The creativity God used in designing the animal kingdom is only a fraction of the energy he used in making you.

THE CARE GOD EXERCISED IN CRAFTING YOU IS THE PINNACLE OF GODS CREATIVE CRAFTSMANSHIP, CARE, AND JOY!

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

GENESIS 1:27

Y ou are created in Gods own image. You are not a biological accident. You are not some beating-the-infinite-odds chance arrangement of cells into organs into systems into a body.