Designed (Daily Devotional)

Welcome friends! Thank you for joining in as we take sometime to study God’s word. We are talking about intimacy with God and we are asking the question as to when this began. When we look at God’s word, right at the beginning, we see that God created man in His own image, He created him in a very different way as compared to all the other creatures. Genesis chapter 1, verse 27 says, ‘“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”’ God gave man a capability to have a character, have so many different aspects, the character that God carries, God’s goodness, His kindness, His compassion. So, man had the ability to develop himself and have a similar nature, not just that, they are created in the image of God also means to be created in the likeness of God and representing God, so that was a special design that man had. Another aspect of God creating man in His own image also has to do with the ability to relate. So, God gave man the ability to relate or mankind to relate with one another but also to relate with God. We see in Genesis chapter 3, verse 8 that ‘God fellowshipped with man in the garden.’ Once God created man, He didn’t let go of man, He did give him an assignment and commissioned him to do certain things, but the relationship that God had with man, that did not change. God came to continue His fellowship with man and so we see that God’s intention in creating man the way He did was to continue to relate with man. We are talking about this because today, as we talk about intimacy with God, we can recognize that we have been created to be intimate with God, that was part of God’s original plan. In the garden, Adam and Eve, they fellowshipped freely with God, but we know what happened. Sin corrupted the world and thereby our relationship with God was broken but thank God for Jesus who came and restored this relationship back for us. As believers, if we want, we can pursue not just a relationship; when we talk about a relationship it can be at various levels, we can pursue a very strong and a deep relationship with God because that was God’s original intention. He never wanted us to have anything less than that. I pray that we will be encouraged and awakened to the thought that God has created us for relationship and He has created us for a deep relationship. Let’s want it, let’s desire it and let’s walk in it. Let’s pray together, Heavenly Father, we thank you that your desire was to walk with man, every step of the way. As we journey through our lives, we pray that we will pursue this strong relationship with you, we pray that you will help us to learn more about it from your word and experience you in a deeper way, in Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Daily devotions to strengthen your faith each day. Daily Devotional for Spirit filled living. Each daily devotion is about five minutes in duration. These daily devotionals are centered around a weekly theme. So there are seven daily devotions that focus on the theme and bring you insight, understanding and revelation from the Bible. Each week’s theme is listed as a series. So you can listen to the current week’s devotions or go to any previous theme/series that speaks to your present need (https://apcwo.org/resources/daily-devotions ). Also available free sermons (https://apcwo.org/sermons), and free Christian books (https://apcwo.org/books) to nourish and strengthen your faith.