Genesis 1:26-27 (Amplified) tells us, "God said, Let Us (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), make mankind in Our Image (after Our Likeness), and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the (tame) beasts, and over all the earth, and over everything that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in His Own Image, in the Image and Likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them."
God's creating mankind in His Own Image, was an act of the Love that is not only IN GOD, but is the Essence and Person of God Himself. God is Love, but without someone to share and express this Love, Love couldn't be what it is. Love must have someone to express itself to, in order to complete what Love is to be. In order to be complete in Himself, God Who is Love, must have someone to show Himself to, in all of His intense desire to lavish this nature, character and Person upon.
Everything that the Father created before He created family, was His Love furnishing all that His family would ever need. The only understanding Adam had of His Father, was the Love in which his Father loved him. There was no sense of need, fear, separation or loneliness in Adam and Eve, because Love met every need mankind would have, before making mankind in the beginning. David wrote about what God created mankind to be, in Psalm 8:4-6 (Amplified), saying, "What is man that You are mindful of him? and the son of earth born man that You care for him? Yet you have made him but a little lower than God (or Heavenly beings), and You have crowned him with Glory and honor. You made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet."
Just prior to His crucifixion, Jesus prayed and communed with His Father, saying in John 17:22 (Amplified), "I have given to them the Glory and honor which You have given Me, that they (earth born man) may be one even as We are One." This is the same Glory and honor that man lost in the Garden. Jesus returned it back in the new creation man/woman. This is and always was, God's Original Intention for His family, from the beginning. Through Jesus, mankind (God's Own family) is in a place of Glory and honor and has dominion over all the works of God's hands.
1John 3:8 (Amplified) says, "But he who commits sin (who practices evil doing) is of the devil (takes his character from the evil one) for the devil has sinned (violated the Divine Law) from the beginning. The reason the Son of God was made manifest (visible), was to undo (destroy, loosen and dissolve) the works the devil has done." There's a difference between those who sin or miss it while growing up in Love and those who practice evil doing, as a lifestyle.
The only way to know God, is to begin understanding the longing and desire of His heart of Love, He has for us. 1John 4:9-10 (Amplified) says, "In this the Love of God was made manifest (displayed), where we are concerned, in that God sent His Son (the Only Begotten or Unique Son), into this world so that we might live through Him. In this is Love; not that we loved God, but that He Loved us and sent His Son to be the Propitiation (the Atoning Sacrifice) for our sins."
This Great Love had to be shared, in order to even satisfy Itself in the Father. Ephesians 2:4 (Amplified) says, "But God-so rich is He in His mercy! Because of and in order to, satisfy the great and wonderful and intense Love with which He Loved us. Even when we were dead (slain) by our own shortcomings and trespasses, He made us alive together in fellowship and in union with Christ; He gave us the Very Life of Christ Himself, the same new Life with which He quickened Him, for it is by Grace (His favor and mercy) which you did not deserve that you are saved, delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ's salvation."
The same Love Who created and brought mankind into creation at the beginning, is the same Love that gave us the Life we have in Christ Jesus and was done for the same purpose, which was to be able to share His Great Love with us. We were separated from Him in Adam, but His Love never ceased to make us one with Him again, just like He'd Planned from the beginning. Love never fails.
Many refer to 1Corinthians 13 as , "The Love Chapter," because it shows us all the things that Love does and is. We see different facets of Love being displayed through different people and Gifts. Paul says though, that "If I move in these Gifts and don't have God's Love in me, I am nothing." Did you know that Love can work through people who doesn't understand how much God Loves them? God will still meet the needs of others, even though the person He is using, doesn't understand how much He Loves them.
We must understand this Love, Who is God, in order to understand God. The understanding we have of love, is far below God's Love and leaves us to believe that, "God is sending these bad things, in order to teach me something or to test me." It's like we believe that God has more assurance in troubles and trials teaching us, instead of His Word, His Holy Spirit and His Love. We believe that God teaches us, using things that Jesus came in Love, to deliver us from. The very same trials that bring forth sickness and the other things we associate with God, are the same things satan has used to destroy us.
God's people must be able to distinguish between the earth and the world. We find the initial reference to the world, in Genesis 6:12 (Amplified), which says, "And God looked upon the world and saw how degenerate, debased and vicious it was, for all of humanity had corrupted their ways upon the earth and lost their true direction." The world here, is what satan built after Adam's fall. Through the Holy Spirit's leading, Paul calls satan, "the god of this world," in 2Corinthians 4:4 (Amplified) saying, "For the god of this world has blinded the unbeliever's minds that they should not discern the Truth, preventing them from seeing the Illuminating Light of the Gospel of Glory of Christ (the Messiah), Who is the Image and Likeness of God."
God created the heavens and the earth, but He never created the world. The world is the inventions of the warped mind of satan and the sin that made him, "the god of this world." We read about Jesus'temptation in the wilderness in Luke 4:5-6 (Amplified), which says, "The the devil took Him up to the high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the inhabitable world in a moment of time (in the twinkling of an eye). And he said unto Him, To You I will give all this power and authority and all their glory (all their magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity and Grace), for it has been turned over to me, and I give it to whomever I will." God had given Adam this authority and dominion, and Adam turned it over to satan. The world or the world system is what satan built upon the earth, with all of his ungodly demands and bondage.
The world system continues functioning in today's society, much like it did in Genesis 6:12. Paul admonishes in Romans 12:2 (Amplified), "Do not be conformed to this world (this age), fashioned after and adapted to it's external (superficial) customs, but be transformed (changed) by the entire renewal of your mind, by it's new ideals and it's new attitude."
Before being saved, we only knew the world, so we have the attitude that, "This is just how things are." It might be how things are, but it's not the way they were created to be. Jesus has returned us back to God's Original Intent, before Adam's fall. We must come before God and His Word, in order to function like we were created to be from the start. Jesus speaks to His followers in Matthew 6:33 (Amplified) saying, "But seek, aim at and strive after first of all His Kingdom and His Righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides."
God's ways of doing and being right, has not changed since the beginning, but we have. We've tried to become righteous, instead of accepting His Righteousness. We've built on the world's way of doing and being right, instead of God's way of doing and being right. Every denomination seems to have its own rules and ideas about what is of God and what is not of God. We mostly know what our denomination has taught us. Many believe that the Super-natural things of God have passed away, because we've adapted to this present age and conformed to the world, without even knowing we did so.
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