Good Morning Gorgeous,

It’s a brand new day. A fresh new start. A new day to rise unto the Lord and allow His love to wash over your soul.

A new day to ask Him to reveal to your heart how much He loves you.

A new day to open up your heart and allow Him to heal parts that are wounded, raw, and painful.

A new day to trust that His love covers ALL. Not some, not part, but all is covered and healed in His love.

The Word God put on my heart for 2022 is LOVE. I shared about that here:

In digging deeper into His love and allowing Holy Spirit to teach me new things about God’s love, I am going to write about His love on display in all 66 books of the Bible! Starting with Genesis and going all the way in order through Revelation!

We hear all the time how much God loves us. You may have also heard that the Bible is His Love story toward us. And many books that demonstrate His great love may come to mind when you think of God’s love. Think the gospels, the book of Psalms, Corinthians. But every book? Every single book with a theme act of love from God to His people? Yep. Every. Single. Book.

And in my digging into the scriptures, I am going to specifically showcase demonstrations of His love throughout every book. I am so excited to dig into this. I don’t even know what He will reveal. I am trusting that as I follow my Bible reading plan for the year, He will illuminate His love and show me what to write and share.

Genesis is a challenge to choose just one demonstration because the book is BRIMMING with God’s love. But in meditating on the start of the Bible and the end of the Bible, both are monumental displays of His love. The very beginning of creation and the final restoration of creation. Beautiful bookends that show His mercy, power, and GREAT LOVE for His creation.

If we are to study how much He loves us, let’s begin with how God created us. God already demonstrated in the first 5 days of creation that He could simply speak and creation happened. LET THERE BE LIGHT and there was! Let there be a separation between Land and Sea, and there was. Let there be sea creatures and there was. Let there be birds and land animals, and there simply WAS. Just from His spoken authority!

From the land to the stars to the plants and animals, ALL of creation is simply spoken into existence by an all powerful God whose Words can build whole galaxies!

And God continues this pattern until mankind!

Oh but not man, God pauses. He’s got great plans for man. He’s got a creation that will top all the others. He’s got a creation that will be like Him, in His very image just like a son or a daughter resembles their parent.

This creation will walk with Him, talk with Him, but they will have freedom. They will never get forced to reciprocate the love He has for them.

They will have free choice to love Him back or not. This creation will not be a servant to Him nor a robotic creature void of emotion or deep thought.

This creation will be in His own image bearing His likeness, and will have the capacity to love deeply and also feel a wide range of emotions.

He will bend down to the dust of the earth, the very dust that He spoke into existence and He will get His hands in it. He will work the dust and create and fashion and form and design this man. And when He is done with His physical body, the Lord will bend down even closer and breathe the very breath of life into his lungs. He will breathe His own breath into him. What an act of love!

There are so many beautiful details here to soak up. Let us not breeze over the creation story because we’ve heard it so many times. Let this story not lose it’s majesty! There are three key details to pay close attention to. Items to lean into and soak in the reality that God made mankind differently than all else, God took more care, God took special joy in the creation of man, and God gave a gift to mankind right away.

1. God made us special and with more care. He got His Hands dirty. He plunged them into the dust of the earth and formed man like a potter would form clay. He paid attention to the details and crafted Him to be like Himself. He gave us His character, His likeness, His own image! And THEN, He breathed the breath of life right into Adam’s lungs. His own breath would be the life-force of man! Pause and meditate on that. He so loves you and me that He made us with great care and precision. And you may say, “Well that was just the first man.” But God reminds us later in scripture that He takes this care with EVERY single one of us. He forms and fashions us, knitting our details together in the womb. How amazing is HIS LOVE!

2. He takes great joy in His creation of man! To study this further, I encourage you to take out your Bible and look in Genesis 1: . Pay close attention to the words He speaks after each new creation. He calls each new creation “Good.” God looked and saw that it was good. This pattern continues after each new day! Until Adam! Just like he broke the mold when He spoke every other created thing into existence until mankind when He chose to fashion and form Him with His own Hands. He changes it up again as He surveys His creation! He creates each new thing and simply called it good. He gets to the creation of man. He surveys him. He sees that He is in His likeness and image and like a Papa filled with JOY and bursting with pride, He calls man “VERY good.” The only creation to get an additional adjective!

3. And lastly, it’s important to note that Adam was born right into REST!

The first time I heard this, I was blown away. Our worship leader preached a message and she invited us to look at creation closely.

Adam was created by God on day 6, and day 7 was Sabbath! Adam rested with God and was in relationship with God right from the start. His assignments from God came out of his relationship with God. His very first full day on earth was a day of REST! God designed us to be with Him first before He expects anything from us. He designed us to be people of rest and relationship. What a way to start the Bible! He begins His love letter to us with such care and design over our creation and then He delivers us right into rest and relationship with Him. That is original design! Closeness with the Lord and resting before any assignment or work. What love and care He has lavished upon us!

And then after creation, the Bible is filled cover to cover with redemption stories and moments where God comes down and visits with His people, and then the ultimate act of love! He becomes a human Himself to get even closer to His beloved people. I can’t wait to dive into each book and share demonstrations of God’s love for you and me and all of creation!

And, I just have to share that as I was writing this post, my son Brycen snuggled up to me and asked what I was doing. So I held him close and recounted the story of creation for him. He knew the story and even filled me in on what would happen next. After each day, I made a big to do about saying, “And God said, ‘it is gooooood,'” And then, when I got to the creation of humans, I slowed way down and described how God got close to the ground and formed and fashioned Adam from the dust of the ground and then God “Whoooooo” breathed His breathe of life right into Him and stood back and said, “It is VERY gooood.”

The look of marvel and wonder in my son’s eyes as the story came to life was priceless. And the best part came later in the day. He re told the story to his dad and when he got to humans he said God said, “Ooh, it is gooder!.”

I teared up! He listened and understood. Friends, tell your babies the stories. Tell them with fresh expression and wonder. Watch your children soak in the love and goodness of God. They are listening. If your children are older, still tell them. Ask God for natural, unforced opportunities to tell the miraculous stories of the Bible with fresh awe and wonder. God will provide the time, space, and words for you to share the Word of God afresh with your loved ones.

Dear Heavenly Father,

The love You have for us is hard to grasp with our human minds and limited thinking. It is so deep and far and wide. You have a love for us that is unconditional, unearned, and so lavish. Open our hearts to fresh revelation of how You love us. Show us again and again that You love and care for us far deeper than we could ever return. But give us a zeal and a desire to pour love back unto You with lavish expression.

In Jesus’s Name, Amen..

Blessings and deeper realization of how much He loves you,

Vanessa Lynn