“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
– Genesis 1:1
From the very beginning of the Bible, we have a picture of a God who has existed forever, so in the beginning God. There was no one, nothing before him. He has always existed. The question, “Who created God?” Or, “How old is God?” Is holy inappropriate, because no one created him. He is infinitely old. He has always existed and he is the creator of all. Everything that exists, exists because he made it, because he fashioned it, he formed it. The rest of this chapter just flows in Genesis one with a picture of God speaking and a world coming into being. It’s nothing short of awesome. He speaks and an earth forms. He speaks and there’s land. And he speaks and there’s water. He speaks and there’s light. There’s darkness. There’s animals.
God is from everlasting to everlasting, the Creator and Sustainer of all things.
This Verse Tells Us That God Is The Creator
Genesis 1:1 tells us God is the self-existent authoritative creator of all and you and I are included in the all, which means he is our creator. For instance, just think about your body right now that’s breathing, your ears that are listening, the parts of your body that are moving. It’s all happening because he made your body. He knit you together in a Psalm 139 kind of way. He made you. God breathed life into you and not just at the beginning, like when you were born, he’s breathing life into you now. He’s not just our creator, he’s our sustainer. I mean, the only reason you and I are breathing right now, like our lungs are working, is because he is causing them to work. Were he to stop working for us in that way, we would stop in an instant. He is our creator, which means he is the one who has authority over us. So our lives belong to him. The one who created us, owns us.
Genesis 1:1 Thanks God For Giving Us Life
That just changes the way we view our lives and it certainly affects the way we pray. So we pray, oh God, we praise you as our creator. We thank you and praise you for the breath you’re giving us right now. We know that every breath we have is a gift from you that you are providing. Know that our bodies are a gift that you have provided. In other words, everything we enjoy in this world, it all comes from your hand. You’re the creator of it all. And as the creator of all, you’re the owner of all. You have authority over all things. You are our sovereign creator and our ruler, so today we just very simply surrender our lives to you. Our lives belong to you. Therefore my life is yours. Everybody who’s listening to this, our lives are yours, our breath is yours, our families are yours, our plans today are yours, our future is yours. So we want to honor and glorify you as our creator, as the one who reigns as Lord over us. We worship as our creator and we submit to you as our creator. So we pray that as your creation, you would be honored and glorified in us today, as we live in awe of you. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
