Tag Archive for Creator

Thank You for the Beauty of This Day

2020-10-07 Hymns No comments

Here is a morning hymn that expresses
the beauty,
the glow,
the quiet joy of
walking with Your God and Father.

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Thank You for the beauty of this day,
Each little gift You’ve given.
Thank You for Your calls to work and play,
The whispers of Your wisdom.
Thank You for the colors of Your love,
The rainbow of Your goodness.
Thank You for the sweetness of Your face,
Your presence in and through us.

Trusting You,
Finding rest in You –
Father, keep it true today.

Thank You for the hope in every day,
The peace of walking with You.
Thank You for Your call to simply pray,
The joy of living in You.
Father, how unchanging is Your love
In every gift You’ve given,
Showing in the sweetness of Your face
Our sure and simple heaven. Amen.

by Ken Bible, © 2000 LNWhymns.com.

The Most Natural Way

2019-10-25 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful
toward those who keep the demands of his covenant. (Psalm 25:10, NIV)

What if it’s all true:
What if all that is was created by a wonderful Being,
more vast and mysterious than the universe itself;
if He formed us and somehow patterned us after himself;
if He loves us as His own children;
if He came to us in person to share our lives,
to deliver us from our wrongness,
to die for us when we couldn’t help ourselves;
if this Creator wants to teach us the happiest way to live . . .
What if it’s all true?

Look at this beautiful, orderly, intricate world. Look at Jesus Christ – His love, His self-sacrifice. Look at yourself. Without God, do you sense a wrongness inside?

If all the above is true, then how should we be living? Shouldn’t we turn to our loving, wise Creator to find the best, the simplest, the most natural way to live?

He has put us here together, His children, to care for each other and to depend on each other. He has given us families, friends, communities. Yet we think and live so selfishly, and so many among us are needy and lonely.

He provides for us beautifully and abundantly day by day. What do we need that His world doesn’t provide? Yet we are anxious, fearful, and greedy.

He wants to enrich us in ways we can’t even imagine. He wants us to know Him better. He wants each of us to have a face-to-face relationship with Him. Yet we consider Him irrelevant and look right past Him.

Look at the people around you. Look within yourself. Is anxiety and selfishness really the most natural way to live? The most common, perhaps, but the simplest, the most peaceful, the most satisfying? In our smallness and helplessness, is it logical to ignore the One who created us?

The One who gives us day and night, sun and rain, work and rest, the One who conceived and shaped this world of ours, cannot He guide us to the most natural way to live?

Cannot He help you become the person you were designed to be, that you want to be?

Is He not listening if you talk to Him right now?

I have a personal, constant relationship with
the Lord of all reality.
We converse freely.
We walk together in relaxed silence,
like loving Parent and child.
What could be more wonderful than this?

Hymn: Present Lord
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I Am from You

2019-08-23 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

The Lord God formed man of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7, NASB)

God, in a way, our relationship is private and personal,
one that You and I share alone.
It’s an organic relationship,
as fundamental as my substance,
as my existence.
I am from You.

I turn back to You now as demands leave me
uncertain and
seeking support.
I am from You.

I don’t just have my source in You.
I’m not a child now seeking independence.
I am a part of You once ripped away,
now seeking reunion.
You are life, and I am alive.
You are reality, and I exist.
You are air, and I am a breath.

Father, I am from You.
Make us one again, I pray.

Father, as I trust You,
my reality is as vast as You are.
I share in Your character,
Your power,
Your goodness, and
Your unlimited future.

Hymn: Imagine Your Creator’s Breath

Creator

2019-08-16 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

You created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
your works are wonderful.
(Psalm 139:13-14, NIV)

Creator,
Father,
I am Yours—
life, breath, mind, energy,
spirit and body, past and future,
I am entirely Yours.
Conceived by Your love,
knit together by Your infinite wisdom,
born and cradled by Your power,
I am the child of Your very being,
O Lord of all.

You love me.
Father God,
before the mountains could witness it,
You invested yourself in me.
You devoted yourself to my needs.
Driven by love, You held nothing back—
now, then, always.
I don’t understand it, but
everything around me says it is so—
the air, my food and water, every pattern and color,
every conversation with a friend.
Reminders flood my senses from birth through death.

Creator,
Father,
Your glory invites me to come and know You,
and prodded by my needs,
my failures and anxieties,
I look up to You.
I hunger for You.
Father, fulfill in me that unhindered relationship
that Your love has always craved,
that Your wisdom would patiently teach,
that Your power can provide.
Draw my life energies into yourself,
the Source and Goal of all I am.
Enable me to become all I can become,
to grow, to learn, to discover and aspire,
but all in You and unto You.

Creator,
Father,
nurture that trust within me.
Nurture that love.

True wealth is not possessing, but
being possessed by
almighty
all-loving,
all-wise God.

Hymn: God of the Universe

I Am Your Creation

2019-08-02 Devotional, Magnificent God No comments

O Lord, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand. (Isaiah 64:8, NIV)

During some periods in my life, I’ve lived in a vague uneasiness about myself. I’ve felt a restlessness, an unsettledness within that was hard to pin down or identify.

Eventually I realized this stemmed from a clouding of my relationship with God. Though I had not totally rejected Him, I was reluctant to face Him, afraid to stand before Him unhidden. Perhaps I had let Satan steal my confidence through his false accusations. Or perhaps sin had crept in, and I knew deep within that I hadn’t been living as I should. As a result, guilt had separated me from a full, joyful relationship with God. I was hesitant to look into His face.

If you’ve ever experienced these feelings, try something with me. Close your eyes and bow your head, and see yourself standing before Him right now. In your heart look Him straight in the face and say, “God, I am Your creation.”

Go ahead, try it.

Listen. How does your heart respond when you say that?

I have a sense of being a child, standing before my Father, with my arms outstretched, looking up into His face. No matter what my struggles, He understands me. My sins and failures have not dampened His love. I’m enveloped in acceptance, an affection, a belonging that goes deeper than my childish inadequacies.

When our children fail or get in trouble, we don’t want them to hide from us or go to other sources for help. It hurts and frustrates our hearts when they won’t share themselves with us, even when they fall. We long for them to come to us and be assured of our love, understanding, and total support, no matter what they’ve done. Our Father is the same with us. We are His. Though sin brings a cloud and a separation from Him, the separation is on our end, not His. The love and acceptance still exist. He yearns for us to turn to Him again.

As I stand before Him as my Creator, realizing I am His very own, worship becomes a living relationship. At such times, words are unnecessary. Communication lines are open from heart to heart, without the formalities of speech. The love I sense for Him is worship. That trust growing within me is the adoration He desires.

Standing there, I long to live always in His presence, in that unbroken fellowship with Him. Sin appears now as foolish and destructive, soiling that beautiful, living relationship. I want Him to seal all my affections forever as His very own. I want to live fully and freely before Him—naturally, as His love designed.

And in that love, I want to glorify Him in every way I can. Creation so beautifully and lavishly glorifies Him, singing constantly of His power, His wisdom, His love. As His creation, I want to take my place in that symphony.

We are His creation, His children. That warm, open relationship is what He wants most for us, and with us. He only asks that we trust Him—trust Him enough to come to Him immediately and repent when we have sinned; trust Him enough to bring Him our needs and concerns; trust Him enough to obey His words of love.

He is a wonderful Father!

Father, You have placed
Your Almighty, holy name on us.
We are cleansed,
protected,
equipped,
exalted, and
forever set apart as Your very own.
Thank You, Father!

Love in Living Color

2019-06-14 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

Your lovingkindness, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
(Psalm 36:5, NASB)

Our beautiful earthly home paints our Father’s love
in living color.
Open your eyes! Look around!
With youthful enthusiasm our timeless God
carefully planned all the universe,
from immense panoramas
to the tiniest, most stunning detail.

He took pleasure in displaying His magnificence for all to see.
He eagerly provided for our every need.
There in the very beginning,
the same sovereign Word that spoke the world into existence
blessed us.
He blessed us even more richly in Jesus Christ.
He continues to bless us day by day with everything
good,
noble,
pure, and
lovely.

Rejoice in Him!
Worship our Father for all He has done!

To the trusting heart,
all reality is a forest,
dense with the life and
mysterious beauty of God.

Hymn: Psalm 104

The Gift of Life

2019-05-24 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

With You is the fountain of life. (Psalm 36:9, NASB)

Do you believe the whole universe simply came to be, with no cause or creator? Do you believe that all the matter in all the stars in all the vastness of space had no source? Do you believe that the well-ordered laws of nature somehow just happened on their own?

What about life? Your body is a miracle. It is made up of billions of microscopic cells, each alive, each intricately constructed, each carrying on complex functions that no factory or laboratory can match. And somehow they all perform together in a magnificent dance that keeps your body working around the clock, without you even being conscious of it.

You didn’t ask to be born. You didn’t create yourself. You do little to keep yourself alive. Most of your essential physical functions operate automatically, requiring no conscious effort on your part. Virtually all you have to do is feed and water yourself, and for that you’ve been given powerful, built-in drives.

Quite literally, life is a gift. Your life is a gift. Each human life is a precious gift.

How should we respond to this gift of life? We should receive it with awe…with reverence…with joyful gratitude…with sober thought for how we treat this life in ourselves and in others.

We should receive this gift with love. Life was given with love, and we should receive it with love – love for our Creator and love for His life in each human creation around us. Love preserves life, enriches life, and treats it with the care and respect that it deserves.

Father, help me to see other people,
not as physical creatures,
not as crumbling shells, shallow and temporary,
but as You see them,
as living, eternal beings.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Praise to You, Giver of Life!
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The Immensity of God, Part 1

2019-04-26 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

O Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is your name in all the earth!
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which you have ordained;
What is man that you take thought of him,
And the son of man that you care for him?
(Psalm 8:1, 3-4, NASB)

Have you ever been out under the clear night sky and
looked up at the stars and
the vastness of the heavens?
Have you marveled that the Creator of all this has any interest in you?
Consider this:

Light travels so fast that a beam of light can circle the earth
more than 7 times in a second.
The moon is a quarter of a million miles away, and
its light reaches the earth in less than a second and a half.
The sun is 93 million miles away, and
its light arrives in only 8 minutes.

Our group of stars, our galaxy, is called the Milky Way.
How long do you think it takes light to travel across this one galaxy?
100,000 years!
Light travels around the earth 7 times in a second and
93 million miles in only 8 minutes.
But our galaxy is so vast that even light takes 100,000 years to cross it.

Galaxies are vast beyond our imagination.
But ours is only one galaxy.
How many galaxies do you think there are in the universe?
One recent estimate says there are
125 billion galaxies in the universe.
Try to imagine that:
93 million miles in only 8 minutes;
100,000 years to cross our galaxy;
125 billion galaxies.

We are so very small.
Reality dwarfs us.
It dwarfs the human race.
It dwarfs all that we can imagine.

But there’s more:
This vast universe is only the smallest taste of the Living God.
He overflows all physical existence.
Job 26 says that in all God’s mighty creation,
we see only the fringes of His robe.
We hear only a faint whisper of Him.

Father,
Your Word,
Your creation, and
the presence of Your Son here
all proclaim that there are
realities beyond our earthly reality.
But You are
the Creator and Sovereign King over all reality, and
I am secure in You.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Everlasting Father
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Our Lord I AM

2018-10-03 Hymns One comment

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Hear the worlds all whispering His name.
Mountains flee before Him.
All who know Him tremble at His voice.
All who fear adore Him.
Pure, complete, and evermore the same,
None can speak all His splendor in a name.
I AM. I AM.
Bow down.
He is I AM.

 

Who can stop the torrent of His love?
Who can test its measure?
Who can feel the fire of His heart?
Who conceive its treasure?
Veiled in glory, near and yet so far,
Life and love are the light of who You are.
I AM. I AM.
You are the Lord
I AM. I AM.
Our life, our Lord I AM.

 

Pure, complete, and evermore the same,
None can speak all His splendor in a name.
I AM. I AM.
You are the Lord
I AM. I AM.
Our life, our Lord I AM.

Infinite Love

2018-06-17 Devotional with Hymn No comments

What is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him? (Psalm 8:4, NIV)

The Creator of this vast universe deeply, personally loves us tiny, troublesome human beings. How can that make sense?

Look at the universe and see God’s power. It reaches to the farthest corners of physical reality and to every microscopic detail. His power reaches to infinity in both directions, to galaxies and to water-drop worlds. Some are too vast and some too tiny for us to trace with our senses. But everything is created and controlled by His will.

His wisdom and knowledge reach everywhere His power goes. We marvel that He can know everything all the time. But is it so unbelievable that the One able to create all this can also stay in constant contact with it, that He can always know it completely?

What’s more, His love is as deep, rich, creative, and complete as His power and knowledge. He not only created all that is and knows all that is, but He cares for it all, constantly and completely. Like His power and understanding, His love enfolds all He has made.

His love enfolds each of us, every moment and forever. His love is enabled by infinite ability and is guided by infinite wisdom. His love for you is unlimited and unfailing. You can trust Him. You can trust Him with every concern, no matter how far-flung or how trivial, for in every detail His love knows and controls and cares.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Look! His Goodness Fills the Morning
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