Celebrate Our Creator!
With all God has lovingly created for us -- this unfathomable world; our amazing bodies; the gravity, warmth, food, air and water we need to survive; love; families friendships and more -- it suggests we really should make time to Celebrate Our Creator!
Interestingly, almost half of the people surveyed in a post-COVID survey on religious participation said they now found being outside in nature to be the most spiritually fulfilling activity, followed by prayer and giving to charity.
Come! Behold the deeds of the LORD, the astounding things he has wrought on earth. PS 46:9
At GIFT, we believe a key building block to people having faith in God and to our heartfelt transformation is reasserting belief in our triune God as our awesome creator, provider, counselor and savior. Get ready to celebrate with GIFT's Celebrate Our Creator curriculum.
We can more fully appreciate and glorify God on Earth Day every April 22, during Laudato Si' Week (May 19-24) and Season of Creation (September 1 - October 4), via VBS and Sunday School, and throughout every day with fun, faith-filled reminders and resources to honor our Creator via GIFT's Celebrate Our Creator curriculum and activities.
Reflecting about Creation and about God as our creator provides a strong foundation for belief in our Triune God, our loving Father, the Holy Spirit our Counselor, and His loving Son, our Savior, Jesus, through whom all things were made. Each was involved collectively in the world's creation -- and in our particular, individual creation, too. We owe them everything -- including our reflection on the wonder of it all and an expression of our earnest appreciation, reverence and joy for all the wonder we have in life.
In fact, we might want to reflect on EVERYTHING being a GIFT from God. And as such, this should compel us all, all His children, to want to let God help us TRANSFORM our lives and way of thinking to earnestly want to get to know God, our Creator, more, and to seek to live like Him, as He would desire we live. Which involves our loving others as fully and selflessly as He loved us and caring for all the wonderful GIFTs He's given us in His awesome creation..
That' why GIFT created Celebrate Our Creator curriculum and materials. These materials have been used in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School and can be simple reminders that we were designed with a purpose and are all part of God's family.
Celebrate Our Creator also reminds us that we are all part of God's family, all brothers and sisters. And we should be concerned about one another and about the world we have been given to live in.
Indeed, God, as our awesome creator, deserves our worship and praise. God concerns Himself with the well-being of all His children, and He wants us to experience His love and share His love with one another. He really does deserve our love, our appreciation, and our worship.
The complexities of this incredible world and the interdependencies between elements in this world -- such as our body's dependency on a symphony of foods for optimum health, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, olive oil, and high omega 3 fish -- argue forcibly that there was a creator who had the wisdom and power to design all this. Consider, the seeds God initially created have continuously propagated and reproduced -- even by themselves -- to provide a harvest for us to live on today. The foods our Lord created yield sufficient nutrition to sustain billions of people. This awesome wonder and complexity couldn't have just happened or evolved without design and flawless execution.
Psalm 136 captures the worship we should afford our awesome Creator:
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good.His love endures forever. Give thanks...to him who alone does great wonders...who by his understanding made the heavens...who spread out the earth upon the waters...who made the great lights...the sun to govern the day...the moon and stars to govern the night...and who gives food to every creature...Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.
GIFT recognizes that God, through Jesus Christ, created the world and sustains it today. He has given us so many gifts that are to be treasured and shared equally among all God's children. And every life is part of all His good and perfect gifts coming down from above. Indeed every person, every talent, and everything we enjoy is from our God. And we have been created in His likeness -- in the likeness of our awesome Creator, with a purpose.
Let's give credit where credit is due!!! Let's Celebrate Our Creator!!!
The fact is: man has never created anything that lives. Not one thing. Not the animals and plants that we depend on for nutrition. Not our awesome bodies. Not even a drop of blood, let alone our circulatory system or inter-dependent systems. God, through Jesus Christ, created everything!
At GIFT, we believe a key building block to faith in God and our transformation is reasserting God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit as our awesome creator.
Especially considering the world's focus is turning increasingly away from God and toward evolution alone -- and is in fact discrediting creation. Many now teach there is no Creator. Which eliminates a fundamental Christian truth: that human beings are created in the image of a creative and loving God, with great dignity and creative potential, which is at the heart of Christian revelation. And it dismisses that we were created with a purpose, that God has a plan for us, and that He wants us to be with Him eternally.
It also denies the fundamental truth that we are all blessed with the GIFT of life as children of a loving God, that we're all brothers and sisters - and that we should be concerned about each other, about justice and peace, about equality, about our environment and the sustainability of our world; and that we should live a life of love, compassion and care for one another just as Christ loves us.
All this denial of God's creation, of God as our Creator, is sad. And the ramifications are so sad - and unacceptable as an offense to God.
Below are videos capturing some things we can reflect on, as we Celebrate Our Creator
and enjoy all the many GIFTs in this world that He designed.
New insights attest to a phenomenal number of galaxies (two trillion) and the incredible number of stars within each galaxy (billions) --; awesomeness.
Beneath the surface of the ocean, 2.3 miles down, this wonder-full jellyfish is but a small part of the awesome ocean life.
A hidden network exists among trees and fungi -- what this author calls the "Wood Wide Web" -- where parties can chat, share resources, help one another defend themselves from predators and more.
Expert examining and documenting the forming of a child in the womb attests to the "divinity" in the design, a design that's beyond our comprehension.
Consider the diversity of creatures, designs and interconnected functionality -- and orchestrated partnerships -- that God has provided in this world. God deserves "glory, honor and power" as the Creator of all things -- all the GIFTs of this world in the awesome symphony of life.
Our eyes speak volumes in testifying to God's awesome creation -- refuting perspectives and teachings offered by pure evolutionists.
To give God thanksgiving and worship, GIFT has developed creation-oriented, Scripture-based curriculum, content and merchandise. This includes a line of merchandise that encourages and enables us to Celebrate Our Creator.
Global Institution For Transformation
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