Prosper!

"Prosper!" That word, that command, seems so powerful. "Prosper!" The Lord wants and desires for us to prosper. He wants our lives to bear fruit. He wants our lives to be good and to be flavorful, our branches to be heavy with fruit. He desires our best, because we are His best. He is a creator. One who creates wants his or her creation to be beautiful, to be quality, to be the best that it could possibly be, and we are God's creation. His desire is that we might prosper, bear fruit and multiply.

I don't very often pick up the Message version of the Bible, but today as I sat down at my computer to pull up Scripture, I felt a bit aimless. I started by looking up Ephesians in the Message version. I needed to stop and listen to the words, not just be able to complete the sentence without thinking or absorbing the tasteful morsels of its meaning. And then I came across a 61 day reading plan on Biblegateway.com. Thus, this is where I began: on day 1 -- Genesis, the Message version.

And it reads:

Genesis 1:26 - 28

God spoke: "Let us make human beings in our image, make them
reflecting our nature So
they can be responsible for the fish in the sea,
the birds in the air, the cattle,
And, yes, Earth itself,
and every animal that moves on the face of
Earth." God created human beings;
he created them godlike,
Reflecting God's nature.
He created them male and female.
God blessed them:
"Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take
charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the
air, for every living thing that moves on
the face of Earth."


What a great command! What great expectations! What a wonderful purpose! And to think that God not only gave us those responsibilities, but He gave them to us with the expectation that we would do them well!

So are we! Do we believe that God desires the best for our lives? Doesn't the best reflect well upon God? Do we recognize and fulfill both our expectations and the faith of the one who delegated the responsibilities to us?

Isn't He amazing? Our Creator? Isn't He amazing? The one who loves us and believes in us more than anyone else? No, I don't deny that we are tainted by sin, but maybe we need to stop stopping there and move on and "be all that we can be" in God's army! In God's creation! Maybe, we need to stop letting the fall pull us down, and embrace the fact that we are new creations, the old has gone and new has come! Maybe, it is here, in the moment of creation, combined with the moment of salvation, that we can give the most authentic and true motivational speech ever written.... oh wait, God already wrote that motivational speech - right here in Genesis.

Be moved my friends - God created you to be excellent and good. He created you to propser and bear fruit! He created you to do well at taking care of His creation! He created you as His best!

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