Not Ashamed Magazine ~ Issue 10 ~ My Lowly Pen, Micah David Bechard

Issue 10 - March/April 2003

My Lowly Pen

by Micah David Bechard

I have never met someone who denies a creation of some sort. Whether it is divine or chaotic, people have a natural need to claim to something "bigger" than them, and a point of origin. To deny being created is to claim deity, which requires proving (an obvious impossibility); and it makes the world a very unstable place to be. Human beings need the security of a creator of some sort.

But we are Christians. We believe in a God who created everything from nothing. From what was not He made what is. One thing we don’t think about very often is how this affects us. Beyond the secure feeling we get from knowing that this world was made from more than a spontaneous combustion, we don’t think much about the act of creation.

To acknowledge a Creator requires a similar acknowledgment of a responsibility to that Creator. We are creatures, bound by the very act of creation to do the bidding of God, our Creator. But, at the fall, man disobeyed God. From that time on, every man in history, except One, has been born at odds with his Creator. Now here comes the awesome part. Despite that one of His most glorious creations, humans, took all He gave them and threw it in His face by sinning, God, from before the beginning of time, planned to send a redeemer. But not just any redeemer.

The first four verses of the gospel of John are some of the most incredible verses in the Bible. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." John continues to say, ten verses later, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:1-4,14)

Jesus Christ was the Son of God, the creator. He came to redeem those who the Father would give to Him. He was the only man who was not born at odds with God. Yet at the end of His human life He placed Himself under the full wrath of God, His own Father. This is our glorious history. In six days the universe was made. Two thousand years later God the Son came to earth as a man born of a virgin, and He sacrificed Himself for our sins. This is our hope for the future. It all points to the day when Christ will come again, and judge His people, and say to those who are found with His righteousness in them (not their own, for we have none), "Good and faithful servant" and He will usher them in to His kingdom.

Those who deny the Divine creation, deny God and they deny the fall of Adam into sin. In denying God, they deny His Son, and the redemption. In denying Adam’s fall, and therefore, the fall of mankind, they deny the need for that redemption and for Christ. They cannot believe the truth of history, and they lose all hope for the future.

But as Christians we acknowledge these things, and in so doing must realize the responsibilities we have. They say when you become a Christian you become free. This is true. Before becoming Christians we were enslaved to sin. Now, as Christians, we are free to do the will and purposes of God our Father. We were dead, now we are alive. Let us act like it! There is a world to be changed, and it will not be changed by our cool t-shirts. You want to be like Jesus? Then study His life. Not just the snappy answers and the big moments in the synagogue. Think about how he ministered, personally, to the poor, and spent hours on end praying to His Father. How everything He did was not for Himself, but for the will of His Father. How He constantly was denying Himself and, ultimately, taking up His cross. That is how we are to imitate Him. Not by reaching big crowds, but by living a simple life wholly committed to doing the will of the Father, for the good of those whose lives we touch. By giving ourselves, each moment of our lives, to the task of denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following Christ.

Micah David Bechard is 22 years old.

You can write to him at: 13700 Athens Road, Conway, MO 65632 or e-mail him

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