CHAPTER ONE

WHAT IT MEANS TO DEPEND ON GOD FOR PROVISION

   God’s creation depends on each other for growth and development, strength and longevity, fertility, and survival. Plants depend on the soil, water, and the sun for their growth and development. Herbivorous animals feed on plants for growth and to remain healthy; carnivores cannot survive without their prey. Insectivore would have been annihilated if there are no insects, and the land would have been unfertile if there is no organic waste. Behold, human beings who are the highest creatures among God’s creation, cannot survive without food (fish, animals, and plants), water, air, and light. Here, we understand that none of God’s creations is more independent of the other. From this concept I can boldly say, “They are because we are, and we make use of them because they are.” 

   Although all the creation depends on each other for their survival, none can exist without absolutely depending on God.  “You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate,” Psalm 104:14 (ESV). There can be enough manure in or on the soil, but without the Lord Who causes the growth of plants, the land will not yield its best. The land depends on God to produce grasses and plants for the use of man and animals. Job 38:41 states, “Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God for help and wander about for the lack of food” (ESV). Indeed, all the beasts of the field and the carnivorous birds can only hunt prey if the Lord provides for them. Psalm 27:1b reads, “The Lord is the strength of my life” (NKJV). This indicates that man can eat every healthy and balanced diet but it is the Lord who gives strength. Again, the psalmist says in Psalm 60:11 that give us help from trouble, for the help of man is useless (NKJV). There may be one thousand people who are in the position of helping us; friends and close relatives may show great promise of relive, but without the Lord’s intervention they will all bow out in times of trouble. Fellow brethren, we must notice that everything minus God is a failure. 

 MAN IS THE CENTRE OF GOD’S CREATION

The Creations Exist Because of Man’s Existence

   “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Genesis 1:26-27 (KJV).             

   Man is the one creature among the creation made in the image and the likeness of God, his creator. Since man is in the image of God, he possesses some good natures. For this reason, everyone, both believers and unbelievers, the saved and the unsaved have some level of good morals.

   In the biology of living things, animals have authority over plants, wild beasts have authority over other animals, and birds have authority over insects. God put man over all things. Man is the highest creature among God’s creations. Of course, he is not only the highest of all the creations, but much more all things exist because of his existence. The lives of all living things are anchored in man’s existence. In other words, human life is the pillar that holds and sustains all other lives. This does not mean that the lives of all living things are in man’s hands, it rather shows that without the existence of human life, all other living things will neither exist; else their existence is useless. To clarify this concept, I want us to carefully study Genesis Chapter 6. 

   Genesis Chapter 6 tells us how our Lord God destroyed man together with beasts, livestock, creeping things, birds of the air, and insects with the great flood.