"For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." - Ephesians 2:10
Even if you don’t have kids of your own, this is still for you. We all need to know the answers to these questions.
We believe that the most grounding material we have in our lives is that God loves us, that he created us in love, that he has a plan for us, that he took care of our mistakes and sin, that he is making all things new and is setting us apart for eternity.
Sometimes we miss the basics of Christianity, even if we’ve been a Christian for a long time. We don’t understand these big pieces, so when a wave comes, we get knocked down really easily. We don’t have grounded, strong theology that’s rooting us and grounding us.
I’m passionate about our kids learning this because the most important things you will ever think about God are the first things you think about God.
Those first thoughts about God don’t usually come from the Bible and from truth, they come from relationships.
It comes from hurts, disappointments, and disillusionments. What we want to do before all of those hard things come is to give kids a huge view of God so they understand who he is.
Starting with creation - who made you and why did he make you?
God always existed and he has always existed. That always hurts my brain when I think about it too hard. He was always in community, too! He didn’t need us, he wasn’t lonely, and he didn’t create us because he was bored. He existed in himself forever. This part is a little crazy - there are three Gods in one. They are one God, but there is a Godhead. There are three, different, unique people in the Godhead - God, the Father, Jesus, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All three have existed forever in relationship with each other.
That’s why Genesis 1 says, “let us create man in our image.” The us and our is pointing to the Trinitarian God - they are one God to be worshipped, but three unique persons.
It’s a really hard thing to get our heads around. But don’t you want a God like that? Don’t you want to worship a God that you can’t get your head around? A God that’s that big and that good! I personally feel a lot more secure if he is bigger than my brain can handle.
I want a God that is knowable, but unfathomable at the same time.
I know it’s true because of the word of God. The word reveals who God is and we know enough about him to worship him in truth and spirit. We don’t just have to look at the sum and know that God exists, even though creation tells us there is a big and capable and able creator out there! It cries out the glory of God, so that innately we know what is true of him.
He gave us more though - He gave us a story to explain who we are, who he is, and what we’re doing here so we wouldn’t be confused or aimless in this life. He also gave us his Son to show us that better things are coming and that evil was going to be overcome.
The story of God actually begins before creation, because He has always existed. He existed in love with the Godhead, and out of that love, there was a desire to create people that would know and love him.
A reason why people have children is because they have a love that they want to give away.
This is why we adopted our youngest son Cooper, because we had more love to give. We had space and love, so we brought someone else into our family and our relationships.
A healthy family is meant to be birthed and created in love. But we also know there can be brokenness. So much of what we understand about God is what we learn from our families.
It’s important to separate what healthy love is, and what relationship with the Godhead was meant to be. If we don’t understand the ideal, we can’t understand how it’s broken.
A lot of our bad view of God comes from broken relationships in our own life. We think God is like our father who was broken, and who we could never measure up to, or who was hateful and abusive, or who was a disciplinarian and never affectionate, or maybe he was affectionate and never protected you from injustice.
We’ve got to separate out who God actually is and how we’ve perceived him to be.
What’s true about God is that He likes you. He likes you so much. He created you! He imagined you in his mind.
He set you up in your place and time and he has a purpose for you. He gave you the Holy Spirit, and he has a plan for your life.
He designed everything on this earth to be helpful to you - all the nature, animals, food, weather, seasons, and beauty he created to bless you, so you would know his love for you. That you would be able to see his delight over you.
Think of the very best day you can imagine - that was God’s point. That you would taste Heaven on earth, that you would taste him, and you would see him in every little bitty thing. A newborn baby’s chubby feet, a beautiful starry night, a person that you love and who loves you back.
He meant for us to experience life and beauty and His creation and to delight in it and see His goodness in it.
But, the enemy pretty quickly in the story brings death and destruction. If we don’t understand what was before the enemy, that Adam and Eve walked and talked with God and had relationship with him, we don’t know what to aim for. We don’t know what it is he’s redeeming.
Those blessings are all around us today, and they’re foretastes of Heaven. We’re meant to see God in all of that. If it’s good, it’s from God. That’s what scripture tells us.
If there is anything good in your life, that is God’s gift to us, and a reminder that it will all be good again, but it’s not right now.
We’ll talk about this a lot more as we go, but I want in this moment to remember it as it began - good. We’re coming back to the good part, but right now we’re in the middle. God has done so much for us already. We have freedom from sin, we’re new creations who are set apart for great purposes, but we’re still sinners. So, how do we live in that tension until it’s all redeemed? That’s what we’re going to talk about.
Wherever you’re at with your kids today, I want you to notice God’s creation. I want you to notice something he made that is just plain delightful. Keep doing that this week. Keep talking about those things together and thanking God for those things. Because those things are meant to remind us that there's a better world coming, a world where the old has passed away and the new has come. It is coming. It’s how this story ends. It will go on forever and ever.
In the meantime, He's given us little moments, little things on earth to remind us that it's all real and it will be redeemed.
