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Intention
From the creation to the present day, God is for life. He hates death and loves life, and so we should have the same heart for life that he does.

Scripture

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them… Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.—Genesis 1:27; 2:7

Reflection
God is for life! This truth is evident in one of the most well-known verses of Scripture. God’s love for the world resulted in Him giving “His only begotten Son” so that “whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus Himself declared that one of the purposes of His coming into our world was that “they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

But even at a more foundational level, God is for life! God’s work in creation was about creating life. As God embarked on the process of speaking the universe into existence as recorded in Genesis 1, He was intentionally establishing the conditions that were for life—that would allow life to exist, to be sustained, and to flourish. Our planet, as the central focus of God’s creative work, abounds with a vast array of living things, and it is obvious that this is not just chance. The odds of life occurring randomly are so infinitesimally small as to be impossible. Life has been designed!

And after creating the land-dwelling “living creatures” on the sixth day (Genesis 1:24-25), the three-in-one God intentionally declared, “Let Us make man in Our image…” (1:26). The origin of human life is the deliberate creative work of God! It is not a cosmic accident. It is not the outcome of chance random process. Human life has value at a foundational level because human life is God-designed and God-created!

Genesis 2—which is not a contradiction of Genesis 1, but rather an expansion of the details of the creation of the first two human lives—reveals that God utilised two ‘elements’. He took the “dust of the ground”—the same substances of which the matter of the universe consists—to fashion a physical body through which human life would relate to the physical universe. And He breathed into that physical body “the breath of life”—the ruach, breath, wind, spirit—to facilitate the capacity for human life to relate to the spiritual realm. And “man became a living being”—a nephesh, or a soul. Humans are “living beings”; we are living souls who have a beginning but are designed to live forever.

God is for life! Yes, the Fall introduced death into the world, but we must never settle for death. It is common, but it is not natural. The God-designed natural condition is life. Anything that results in the death of human life or diminishes its value is not of God, and is to be prayed against and worked against. We affirm life!

Prayer
Thank You, Lord God, for the gift of life—both physical life through Your creative design, and eternal life through the sacrifice of Your Son. We pray for the people of our nation, asking that the brokenness and emptiness of life without You will lead to a deepening hunger for life and life abundantly. We ask for Your forgiveness where we, as a nation, have devalued and disregarded life and have embraced death as a solution to the difficulties of life. We pray against a culture of death. We plead for the lives of the pre-born, the terminally ill, the disabled, the vulnerable, the mentally troubled, and the suicidal. We ask that we would be a society that values every human life. And we take captive to the Lordship of Jesus Christ every anti-life, death-is-better deception. Through the Spirit’s power, we proclaim that life matters. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Prayer Points for October 2020
1. Pray for a Breakthrough for LIFE, specifically an end to abortion and euthanasia in our nation. Exodus 20:13
2. Pray for a Breakthrough for INDIGENOUS LIFE, specifically an end to high youth suicide and premature death due to ill health. 3 John 1:2
3. Pray for new POLITICIANS for LIFE, especially pray for the upcoming elections in Queensland (31st October), ACT (17th October) + USA (3 November) & New Zealand (17 October). Proverbs 29:2
4. Pray for the Revitalisation of SPIRITUAL LIFE, namely repentance, renewal & transformation, that our nation might return to God. 2 Chronicles 7:14

Brian Robertson is a Baptist Pastor in Queensland. He also has a passion for Christian schooling and was instrumental in the establishment of a Christian College in the community in which he lives and is the President of the Bundaberg Branch of Cherish Life Queensland. Brian has complete confidence in the truthfulness and trustworthiness of the Bible, and seeks to enable people to understand the reality of God and to apply this worldview consistently in their lives.

We invite you to join the daily 1-hour Zoom video National Prayer Call every night:
DATES: 1st– 31st October 2020
TIME: 8pm-9pm AEST
ZOOM URL LINK: https://zoom.us/j/776881184
ZOOM MEETING ID: 776881184
See Zoom tutorial here.

Daily devotions brought to you by the Canberra Declaration.