Now here’s the final message from our series, «Getting Back to Love.» I want us to turn to Genesis chapter 1, and if you’re having trouble finding it, you’re going to need some special prayer, and we will be more than happy to accommodate. Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 through 5, is closing out this love series. As we look to the resurrection and God’s continuous resurrections in our lives, there is no greater expression of God’s love than for Him to be faithful enough to continue to produce manifold breakthroughs in our lives time and time again. As I was studying this the other day, I recognized a way of God. Isn’t it a blessing when you discover a new way of God? Because there’s a passage in Isaiah 55 where God says, «My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways.» That’s where a lot of the confusion, breakdown, and discouragement comes in; it is because God is taking us in a way that is different from the way we would take ourselves. Anytime you have an opportunity to get a little peek into a way of God, it is an instant upper—I mean, it is an instant life elevator, and I believe that we’re going to see that here today.
So let’s look at this real quickly. I want to read and point out some things. Let me say this really quickly: first of all, as it relates to resurrection, here is one misconception about resurrection. One misconception about resurrection is that God awakens a dead thing. That’s not a resurrection. Resurrection is not God awakening a dead thing; it’s God creating a new thing where the dead thing once was. Jesus was not raised back up to be what He was when He went down. The Son of God, a man, died; a divine being rose. Mortality died; immortality rose. So when you think about resurrection, even if there’s something dead in your life and you might be praying for it to be awakened, you don’t want it if it died; there was something wrong with it. You’re not ready. Yeah, it is eternal. I need to give you some more scripture first—I mean, you might be near praying for something right now that’s dead. «Oh God, if You would just awaken it, ” not realizing that if it was what it should have been, it would have never died in the first place. Sometimes things have to die so that what God really wants to do, He can do. Oh, you’re not ready; you’re not ready. I feel it. Let’s think—I’ll take my time. Don’t you make me rush.
I want you to understand how God works. See, things die oftentimes because they were not good enough to exist in your future, and you’re over there trying to give it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and God is saying, „That’s not how I work.“ Resurrection is when something dies, and I create something greater in its place because the new and the old cannot coexist. There are two lives, two circumstances, and we’re going to see this in a little bit more detail. Are we tracking? We’ll get into it in a second here. Here we go.
It says, „In the beginning, God created.“ There’s so much there! In the beginning, it says, „God.“ If we go back in time to everything we have come to know and experience in this thing called life in the universe that God has created, if we go all the way back to the beginning of all of that, we will find God already developed, fully grown. He didn’t go to God school; He didn’t go to the University of Divinity. He was God. And God is there doing what He does. What does a creator do? He creates. In the beginning, God was doing what He does, and that is He creates.
Now here’s the challenge with creativity, and here’s the challenge with creation. This is where some people get stuck. If God is perpetually creating, it is impossible for Him to not de-create. Here we go. There is a term in business called „creative destruction.“ That’s when it is impossible for you to move forward with what you are working with, and so, in order to create more, you have to destroy what was. Let me keep reading; you’re going to get it.
„In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.“ The next verse says, and this is tricky, „In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, ” and it says, „and the earth was without form and void.“ That should kind of stop you a little bit. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and then skips to „and the earth was without form and void.“ Isn’t that crazy? If God creates something, it should certainly be with form and certainly not void. But you have to understand the process of creation and even recreation. God does not shine up an inadequate thing. God destroys the inadequate thing to erect in its place the adequate thing for that time and season. Are you hearing me?
Here’s how it plays out in your life because it’s tricky. Here’s the truth: it’s tricky because we are praying. A lot of times, we pray for change but don’t understand what the change is going to bring us into. So we’re saying, „God, I want You to create my future, ” not realizing that in order for Him to create your future, He has to…
