Today, as I mentioned in my previous post, I started reading through the Bible with my friend who has been a believer for only about 6 months. We’ve read the Bible a lot over the last several years, although most of what we have done previously has been reading through the Gospels as well as the new believer lessons that our team uses with people who have said that they want to believe and follow Jesus. I felt like it was important for him to understand the bigger picture, the larger story that God has been telling from the beginning so he could have a solid Biblical picture of what God has been doing, leading to Jesus, and ultimately now to us.
We read Genesis 1 today, talking about how God created the earth. Here were a few notable parts of the discussion:
- God seemed to have systematically moved through the process of creation, developing each component of the creation of the earth and the heavens in a step-by-step way.
- God created man and woman in his own image. We are loved by God and considered to have great importance to him as carriers of his image and his likeness.
- We were given two commandments directly from the beginning: To be fruitful and multiply and to have dominion – oversight – over the birds, the animals, and the fish of the seas. We have been given a great responsibility for all of these.