I want to share some very personal things with you. These pictures that you see on my website. They are not some pictures I grabbed off the Internet or borrowed. I took each and everyone of them myself. They are from years and years of taking photographs. I love to capture life, the Father’s creation, not just with words, but with pictures and video. The joy of the Lord can be found in his creation, if we are spiritually aware and can see it. I can take a beautiful photo of the sunset. One person could say, yeah that’s nice. Another could say, isn’t it amazing how infinitely wonderful God is to have created such a thing, and he does it constantly, everywhere you look, if you take the time and the attention off the busy life, and seek it, find it, and appreciate it. I am truly grateful to Him for having the opportunity to witness it. And the majesty in His creations never gets old or taken for granted. Or does it?
Do we get too busy? We have to seek it. We have to desire it, we have to want to find it, for some they have to need to find it. If it isn’t a need or a desire, life will just fill that void in them with something of that busy-ness, negative, dark, addictive, and evil. Satan doesn’t sleep on wanting to find and devour anyone he can. I’ve come to know he is doing “3D” things to that end: distract, deceive, destroy. However, you can decide to see the glass half full, and have faith in Him that He will fill it the rest of the way to the top and overflowing with his goodness, and the beauty of His creation. As we stop that evil, appreciate the good God has created, remind yourself to be grateful. Be grateful He also created you, and you are also beautiful, and more important to Him than the most exquisite sunrise or the most serene sunset. And, BTW, I am displaying some of my other photo’s with scriptures here also.
But it isn’t enough to want or need to find God’s beauty and appreciate it. We have to get up, change your status quo, and have and find the energy and the will to go find it. I always keep my phone and my camera with me, because you never know when that’s gonna happen, even the things that I see that others don’t because they are going 90 miles an hour past it. I’ll stop make a U-turn and go back and capture in some manner what I saw in passing. I stop to see the details, the meaning, the purpose God intended when he created it.
So as I study the Bible and I do my prayer time, the Holy Spirit reveals things to me. I find it very useful to take a scripture and overlay it onto a photograph that I’ve taken. I believe creation’s beauty and meaning complements the scripture’s beauty and meaning. It brings majesty to it. It brings additional perspective. For they are both God’s creation. It brings the every day life and every day walk of being in Jesus into perspective. Beauty can be found on a deck in a chair, or on a mountain top, or on a busy street, it doesn’t matter. God‘s creation is beautiful and we need to learn to look at it that way. I love to write about it, capture it on film, or just watch and admire and respect it, and say , wow, God is amazing. God reveals things to me by the Holy Spirit, with his living word in me, which is Jesus. He also reveals the beauty of his creation to me as I walk along city street or drive along the country road. Just as I try to be as Paul said, “sober and alert”, expecting, by faith, to see and recognize and respond to the Holy Spirit’s prompts. I’m sober and alert, not to be drunk or consumed or driven blindly by and with the world’s addictions and demands. So that I am always on the lookout for what the Holy Spirit is going to reveal to me today. Just appreciating and being self aware and being spiritually aware of what’s going on, watching God work.
Watching his creation in perfect synchrony is an amazing thing and opportunity I am grateful to be able to do, with this gift he gave me, my life. I encourage you to look every day, even all the time, for the Holy Spirit to speak to you and reveal things, to show you something, to help you see something you maybe missed before while walking with Jesus. Noticing his beautiful creation is spending time with the Lord. When, not if, you have a spirit of gratitude, you can increase your joy about living, because God is in it! He’s in so many places and so many things that we just miss if we’re too busy. Increase your faith, expect to see it, and start noticing things around you where God is and what He is doing right in front of you! If you don’t expect to see it, you wont. But if you try to see it, He will reward your faith, and show you many wondrous and miraculous things to behold.
God is in the sunrise. He’s in the sunset. He’s on the city sidewalk and he’s on a country road. He’s in the music you hear, if it brings him glory. It’s in words written, if those words come from the Holy Spirit. It’s in words spoken, if those words come from the Holy Spirit. It’s in creation everywhere we look, because he made all things! I find it’s better to appreciate creation, and, as we are inspired by his handiwork, I remember that I am also his handiwork. As he works in me and I come to Know what the Holy Spirit wants to teach me, counsel me, reveal to me, I Know that I am grateful for his attention, and his spirit in me. Those with His spirit in them, recognize the Spirit at work and in others, and in His creation. Those that don’t , don’t. Just as I take the time to appreciate His creation and His living Word in me, and thanking Him for it, that is time we are spending together in fellowship. Being grateful about life is a wonderful feeling, and I truly believe that God wants us to be more grateful every day. What a privilege it is to be able to actually thank God, the Creator, the Father of all things for having created all of it and me!
By capturing the scenes in life and being grateful for them, that he created them, and sharing them with you, it’s like sharing the Word of God. It’s sharing God because I’ve noticed him in a small thing or a big thing or a beautiful thing. It’s a witness to His majesty and greatness and love for us. His love for us is in all things, we just have to want to take the time to notice it and have the heart and eyes to see it. And if you try, and it is a nothing burger, you just don’t see it, that’s OK. Ask Him to be able to see it, ask Him for the desire to see it. The fact that you have taken the time to share your heart with Him, He will honor that, and He will draw you nearer to Him. He uses His creation to do that, until that one day when you and he will be one. Take some time today to notice the special things that God has created in your life for you to notice, amen. He created it just for you to appreciate, and to bring joy to your life.
