Human Nature

I love to study nature. Just to see the way the nature works fascinates me. How the bee knows where to find nectar or how photosynthesis works. How the planets revolve round the sun without going off course or how the mountains are formed. How tornados are created or how creatures adapt to their environments. All of it amazes me. Plants, animals, weather, and the earth itself. To say I was an Earth Science geek in school would be an understatement.

But of all the things that most fascinate me, its how all creatures have a built in instinct to know just how to take care of themselves and their young. Just think, minutes after a foal is born, it’s walking. The creatures God created are amazing, but none more so than man.

Our human nature was given to us by God. He created us with certain basic instincts and desires. The instinct to eat when we get hungry, to drink when we thirst, to protect our young when they are threatened were all encoded into our DNA. All of these are innate parts of our being. We are hard wired with the desire to seek out love and relationship and most importantly to worship. God created us to worship. What we worship is the ultimate question.

In chapters 4-5 Kelly dives into this issue of who we are to worship. She begins by taken us back to the days of Sunday school where we learned the Ten Commandments. The first commandment is the most important.

“I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” (Exodus 20:2)

The Lord begins by setting up His authority. If we do not except that He is Lord then all the other commandments have little meaning in our lives.

Not only do we need to settle that Jesus is Lord, but also that He is the only God. In today’s culture, with its open acceptance of every religion and tolerance for everyone mentality, we are in danger of forgetting that there is only one God.

So why do we need to settle this in our hearts right off the bat?

“If God is not God, if he is not the only God in our lives, then his commands and principles and truths become matters of suggestion that we’re free to savor or toss at our whims.”

I love how God reminds us with just a tiny word that our relationship with him is personal. Remember the first part of Exodus 20:2? “I am the LORD thy God.” There is it, that tiny word- thy. I am the Lord your God. Not just any God, but your God. It’s personal. It’s relational. I like how Kelly says it,

“It’s the one word that changes everything, the word that brings what could have been a faceless God into a reachable One….” She asks, “Is he God, or is he your God?”

Being in a relationship with God will give you the strength to turn from your idols and live for God.

So back to our human nature. We’re designed to worship something. Whether it is God or an idol, we’re going to worship one or the other.

“If we’re not in a personal relationship with him, we will absolutely be in it with something else, a false god, because our hearts are designed in such a way as to be intimate with something.”

So which one will we choose?