STAY CONNECTED

“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Genesis 1:27

The Bible tells us that God is spirit. He does not have a body. Human beings are both spirit and flesh; we have bodies which are the houses in which our spirits live. What does it mean to be created in the image of God?

Here are three important ways in which we are like God. 1. We share His character. He made us to be like Him in the way we behave and treat other people. We can be kind, compassionate and generous because that’s who God is. 2. He also made us to be one with Him. We can love, obey, and submit to God so that we share His heart for the people around us. 3. God is the ruler of everything He has made but He gave us the task of taking care of His creation for Him.

By disobeying God, Adam chose to disconnect himself from God and live by his own rules and make his own decisions. That hasn’t worked because the world we live in is in a mess as a result. Adam didn’t only disconnect himself from God; he also separated himself from his fellow human beings. So today we have anger and hatred and fighting between people because we do what Adam did. We live in a disconnected world.

Jesus came from God to show us how much God loves us and to reconnect us with Him and with each other. He died in our place to get rid of the barriers between us. God sent His Holy Spirit to help us understand what Jesus has done, to change our hearts, to reconcile us to God and to one another and to give us the power to stop being selfish and to care about one another instead.

Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, has made us one again in His new family. Now it is up to us to protect that oneness by caring more about each other than we do about ourselves. The Apostle Paul tells us about three ways in which we can destroy the connection we have with one another. 1. We can be selfishly ambitious – always wanting to be ahead of other people and not caring about who we hurt on the way. 2. We can think we are more important than other people. 3. We can think we are better than other people.

Here are some ways in which we can protect the connection we have with our families, our friends, and our fellow believers. The Apostle Paul said we must 1. Accept one another and not try to change each other, 2. We must honour one another, treating each other with respect and dignity, 3. We must acknowledge each other and 4. We must submit to one another, working with instead of against each other.

This is the way the world will know that Jesus came, because we live together in peace and harmony.