Life Exploding

Earlier on in the week I was reading from Psalm 33:9 “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.” Last night, at a prayer meeting, we were reading and contemplating the first chapter of Genesis. It didn’t take much for me to remember those words in Psalm 33.

The spoken word of God is creative. There was no wave of a magic wand, or dipping a divine hand into a celestial top hat and pulling out the earth and all the bits that go to make it up. God spoke things into being. The Message paraphrases v9 as “he spoke and there it was, in place the moment he said so.”

What God spoke into wasn’t small. It wasn’t limited to one or two varieties of things. The land bursts forth with every kind of grass. There are not just one or two stars but a whole sky brimming with them. The waters swarm and teem with fish and the skies fill with birds. There is an abundance of life exploding everywhere in a variety of different forms. There is more than enough. This is like God going over the top, doing more than just the minimum.

When I read the words in Psalm 33, what came to mind was a desire for God to speak words of life over me. In terms of salvation, Jesus’ words, “It is finished” was spoken over me. Sin is finished. Death is finished. The old self with its carnal nature is finished. My citizenship under the prince of darkness is finished. Any old allegiances are finished. I live in the good of what Jesus accomplished.

But I do believe that there are other words that God would like to speak over me. Just as in the creation story there was bursting forth, brimming, swarming and teeming – I think that is for each and every individual life too. As I said last night – I feel very little is happening a lot of the time and long for some kind of spiritual explosion.

I have been in the kind of church that lays hands on people and imparts a blessing. People prophesy over other people. To some extent I fall into the trap of thinking that if the church leader says something then it carries more weight than if I say it. This is so not the case. It is lazy thinking – letting someone else shoulder s responsibility that I can take on for myself.

It is also dangerous thinking. I don’t need to look many years into my Christian history to see people that I was encouraged to think heard more clearly from God. I am not saying that some people are not gifted with discernment and words of knowledge or whatever, but sometimes it is too easy to surrender up that responsibility solely to people in leadership.

I am not a baby Christian. I am well capable of hearing God. That I don’t always trust that I what I hear is from God – that’s a different issue. As much as I would love to take the “easy” option and encourage someone to lay their hand on my shoulder and tell me what God is saying – what I really need to do is to by-pass the middle man, to have God say what he want to say to me directly!

And God will say it!