If you read the last post, you know that my wife urged me to close my company and take a year off of work (a sabbatical) to figure out what God wanted to do with our family. That year ended with a Biblical model for serving the poor and our commitment to empower a group of single mothers and help them gain the skills they needed to become everything God created them to be. Now that we’re up to speed, let’s continue with this post.

Watching my grandchildren grow and their thirst for knowledge and independence reminds me of one of the first things I learned during the sabbatical. That day in April 2002 when I read Genesis, it wasn’t the first time I read the creation story. In fact, it wasn’t even the first time I had read through the book of Genesis. I had failed many times at reading through the Bible, although I would always finish Genesis before February came and I abandoned my New Year’s resolutions, but that day was different. My reading began with the same verses that most every “Read through the Bible” venture begins with.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. (Gen. 1:1-2)

The statement “The earth was formless and empty” brought up my first set of questions. For the first time, I thought about the fact that God had a completely blank canvas that He was working with. It was a clean slate. God could have made the world, and everything in it, any way He wanted to. Why did He create the things He created? Why did He create them to do what they do? Why did He say that what He created was good?

I did some research and found that the word translated as “good” in the Hebrew means that it was perfect. It was beautiful, better, or even best. He created exactly what He was trying to create, but I didn’t understand why. As I continued to read through the creation story and into chapter 2, that’s where things got interesting. I noticed something I’d never seen before.

This may not shock some of you, but it did me. I learned that God had a plan. He didn’t randomly create things for no reason. God had a plan for how He would take care of humanity and how all of creation would work together within that plan for our good. Click To Tweet My grandchildren’s desire to learn and grow is a perfect example of God’s plan at work.

We see His plan played out in the life of every child. At a certain age they don’t want us to take care of them anymore. They want to begin doing things independently. They want to care for themselves. Their desire is expressed through words that strike fear in the heart of every parent as they ring through their ears: I wanna do it. At that moment they take their stand and begin their journey towards independence.

For some reason, God created Adam with the need for a constant supply of food and water. It’s important we remember that Adam was created with a need for these things. God could have created Adam with no needs whatsoever because, remember, He was working with a blank slate and He is God and could have done it however He wanted. For His creation to be considered “perfect,” humans would die of thirst and starvation without food and water.

God provided for those needs through the garden. God also established a plan for Adam to meet those needs independently. We see God’s plan introduced in Genesis 2. As soon as God created Adam, in verse seven, His plan was put into place. God’s plan included four Fundamental Elements that are required for us to provide for our needs.

The Fundamental Elements are Resources, Opportunity, Instruction, and Relationships. With these four elements, Adam would be able to live and have a full life. In the next post, we’ll look at each element and where they are found in the life of Adam.

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