Happy Father’s Day! It was great to see the photos you shared of you and your dads this past week.
On Sunday, I described sharing the gospel not as trash duty, but a treasure hunt. Is this the way we typically describe evangelism in church?
Why wouldn’t we look at it this way?
Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”
Genesis 1:26–27 (NLT)
So God created human beings in his own image.
In the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
What does it mean that man is created in the image of God? Does it mean that God has two eyes, ears, a nose and a mouth?
“His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
Acts 17:27–28 (NLT)
What does this mean about our identity?
When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—
Psalm 8:3–8 (NLT)
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.
You gave them charge of everything you made,
putting all things under their authority—
the flocks and the herds
and all the wild animals,
the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea,
and everything that swims the ocean currents.
But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.
Romans 1:18 (NLT)
Of course God is angry! We have suppressed the truth about who He is, and about who we are!
How are we to find that treasure in ourselves?
How are we to find that treasure in others?
How can we change our perspective from focusing on the trash to looking for the treasure?
We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.
2 Corinthians 4:7 (NLT)