Care for Creation as Evangelization and Worship预览

Day Six: Everything God Made

In the world of evangelicalism, we would consider bringing people to know God, to know Christ, is our highest goal. But one issue that seems to actually push people away from God is what we say and do when it comes to the issue of creation. 

If the things that we say or do are pushing people away from God, we need to ask ourselves how well we actually know God. Is that God that we know the God that has been revealed to us through divine Revelation, or is it just an idea of our own making? 

We turn to Scripture to learn about God. We pray to communicate with Him. And Paul very clearly tells us that through creation, God has made Himself obvious to us! 

It can be easy to fall into the trap of saying that people who take an interest in the environment care more about creation than the Creator, or they call environmentalists tree-huggers, saying things that are hurtful to people who are actually looking to creation as a means of understanding God. We would always do well to remember the words of Jesus: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Matthew 7:1-3). Paul also tells us that no-one knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit within them (1 Corinthians 2:11). 

People are yearning for God and searching for Him even if they don’t explicitly know it. Now more than ever there is a great need for God in the world, a world that is filled with unbelief. Creation is perhaps the most powerful point of evangelism that we hold in our hands today. You can see and touch creation, and from the visible, you can lead people towards the invisible. Through creation we can bring people to know and realize that God does exist. 

God has revealed Himself through creation. If you look at the anatomy of a flower or an animal, seeing how all these systems are working together, how can we say that it is anything but a miracle? This world is not an accident. If the world is not an accident, each individual person is not an accident. There are no accidents with God. It’s all a miracle, and it’s all God, and we need to embrace this issue if we’re going to be effective as evangelists. 

Questions for Discussion

1. What does creation teach us about God’s invisible qualities? 

2. What are some practical ways that we can use creation as a tool for evangelization? 

3. In what ways has God revealed Himself to you? How does creation line up with or contradict your understanding of God?