Drawing Near to GodSample

Introduction to Genesis

Day 1: Created to Pray

Read: Genesis 1:26-28

“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen. 1:31).

The Book of Genesis tells how the world began in more ways than one.

It says God spoke the Creation into existence, out of nothing, ex nihilo—that he was not limited in his Creative Work by any preexistent material but acted in perfect freedom when he made the Heavens and the Earth. His only limitations, if one can call them that, were his Imagination and Character.

This has enormous significance for Prayer. Since God freely created the Universe by his Word, out of nothing, we can expect God to continue to act in that way. P. T. Forsyth marveled at God’s Creativity and called him an “infinite opportunist.” The Universe is not a closed system of cause and effect, it remains responsive to God’s Word. Nothing is too hard for the Lord. God answers Prayer.

Genesis also affirms touchingly, that we were made for God, because we are made like God, in his Image. It pleased him, from the beginning, to make Humankind able to walk with him in the world and share with him in the care of his Creation.

Intercessory Prayer is on the same order as all the other things we do to share with God in his Work. What we do when we pray is no different, fundamentally, than what we do when we plow a field or manage a budget. Both are rooted in Genesis 1:26-28.

When sin entered the picture and the Image of God was distorted in us, he did not give up on us but acted to save and to restore his broken and beloved creatures. The first explicit mention of Prayer in the Bible comes in this context (Gen. 4:26). When sin broke our fellowship with God, he kept the door open to call on his name and be restored. The communion with God that made the Garden of Eden such a delight remains God’s great passion for his creatures and will be established one day forever (Rev. 21:3). Prayer will once again be as the air we breathe.

PRAYER: You made me for yourself, O Lord and my heart is restless until it rests in you (from Augustine's Confessions). Teach me to pray.