You Are Not an Accident: Discovering Your Image-Bearer Identity
This post is part of Blackbird Mission’s 2025 Summer of Sermons series, featuring Daron Earlewine’s most impactful church messages.
Have you ever felt like sending God a text that just says “TL;DR”? You know, too long, didn’t read? Maybe you’ve looked at the Bible—all 66 books spanning thousands of years—and thought, “This is way too intimidating. I’ll just leave this to the professionals and hope for some bite-sized wisdom on Sundays.”
I get it. The Bible can feel overwhelming, complex, and honestly, a little scary when people tell you it’s “holy” and you might mess something up if you read it wrong. But what if I told you that the very first words of the Bible contain the most life-changing truth you’ll ever discover about yourself?
In the beginning, God created
Those five simple words at the start of Genesis aren’t just about cosmic history—they’re about your identity, your purpose, and your incredible worth as a human being. When the Bible says “In the beginning, God created,” it’s telling us that nothing in this universe is random, accidental, or meaningless. The Bible is literally God saying, “I am the architect, and yes, you can speak to me.”
You Are Made In God’s Image
After creating everything else—light, land, seas, plants, animals—God reaches this pivotal moment in Genesis 1:26: “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” This isn’t just another step in the creation process. This is God saying, “We’re going to do this one differently.”This isn’t about trying harder to be a “good Christian”—a word that appears only three times in the New Testament. The word “disciple” appears over 200 times. Jesus came to make followers, not Christians.
Being made in God’s image gives you several incredible qualities:
- Spiritual and moral resemblance.
- Relational and intellectual capacity.
- The power to create the future.
- Relational nature.
- Dominion and stewardship.
- Inherent dignity and worth.
The Broken Mirror Problem
Here’s where things get complicated. When God created everything, it was like looking into a perfect mirror. Humans could see themselves clearly in God’s image, understanding their purpose and identity without confusion. But then something happened that shattered that perfect reflection.
Now we live looking through a broken mirror with missing pieces.
This is exactly why so many people struggle with questions about their purpose, worth, and meaning. We’re trying to figure out life through broken fragments instead of seeing the complete picture of who God created us to be.
Your invitation to transformation
You don’t have to live another day wondering if you’re just an accident in a random universe. You don’t have to keep looking through the broken mirror, trying to piece together your identity from fragments. The architect of everything—the One who imagined you, designed you, and created you in his own image—is inviting you into a relationship where he reveals himself and helps you discover who you were truly meant to be.
The questions that keep you up at night:
- Why am I here?
- What’s my purpose?
- How do I love well? How do I find peace with God?
These aren’t mysteries you have to solve on your own. The answers are waiting in the pages of the book that seems too long and intimidating. But what if this year, instead of saying “TL;DR” to God, you said, “Okay, I’m ready to see the complete picture. I’m ready to discover who I really am” …
How would your life be different?
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To connect or learn more about joining a Rogue Collective band, visit RogueCollectiveCoaching.com or email me directly at daron@daronearlewine.com.
Episode Summary:
If the Bible feels confusing, irrelevant, or overwhelming—this message is for you. In a world full of distractions and half-truths, Daron challenges us to reframe Scripture not as something too long or too hard, but as the mirror that restores clarity to our identity, purpose, and relationship with God.
Key Takeaways:
⚡️ You were created in the image of a creative, intentional God
⚡️ The Bible is God’s way of restoring clarity to our broken world
⚡️ Human beings uniquely create the future
⚡️ You were made for love, relationship, and purpose
⚡️ Five minutes a day in God’s Word can change everything
Notable Quotes:
⚡️ “In the beginning, God created… and that includes you.”
⚡️ “What humans uniquely create is the future.”
⚡️ “You bear the image of the Architect—and yes, you can speak to Him.”
⚡️ “The Bible is not TL;DR—it’s your mirror to a clearer, more purposeful life.”
⚡️ “We’re not trying to check a religious box. We’re trying to see clearly again.”
Episode Resources:
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Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
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TRANSCRIPT
Hey, welcome back to the Daron Earlewine podcast. Daron Earlewine, your host. And hey, one thing I love to do in the summer is shake things up a little bit, right? You got four seasons and everyone’s a little different, and I like to change things up in the summer, and that’s what we’re going to do here on the Daron Earlewine podcast.
So here’s what we got for you. You know, we do a lot of purpose development stuff, whether it’s at schools, the purpose paradigm with what we’ve been doing now, and kind of communicating the future of Rogue Collective as we’re doing purpose and personal development in the marketplace. And one of the other things that I’ve been doing, well shoot, now for like I don’t know, since I was 16, is going to churches or being a part of faith communities and sharing sermons out of the Bible.
And so what we’ve done this summer is gotten maybe some of the greatest hits over the past year or so of me speaking at local churches, and we’re going to put them together. We’re going to share them with you here on the podcast. And here’s what I hope: I hope they inspire you. I hope they help you understand how much God loves you. I hope they help awaken within you the fact that God is near you, right? That God is for you. And as we say every week on the podcast, that God has created you on purpose and for a purpose.
So lots of different topics that’ll be coming this summer, but hopefully just great content that’s going to inspire you. And we always love to hear from you. Very easy way for you to do that: just email me, Daron, D-A-R-O-N at daronearlewine.com. We’d love to hear what you’re learning, love to hear questions you have. Maybe there’s a topic you’d love to hear us jump into on the podcast. Please reach out: Daron at daronearlewine.com and enjoy the 2025 summer of sermons.
Tagline: Created on purpose and for a purpose.
Mercy Road Northeast, so good to see you guys in a new year and a frozen year it has been so far, huh? Yes, I love the winter to the depths of my cold, cold bones. We’re making it through. My name is Daron Earlewine and I get to be one of the teaching pastors here at Mercy Road Northeast. And joy to be with you guys this morning, and we’re in this series called TL;DR.
Since you last saw me, I had a birthday, got a lot older. Starting to realize now why older people in my life prior to this were always like, “I don’t really like birthdays anymore.” I get that now, very deeply. But I had a moment where I felt super old because I came into the whole planning meeting for the sermon series, and I was like, “So what’s the series for January?” And Ken was like, “Well, it’s called TL;DR.” I thought for a minute. I was like, “I have no idea what that means, Ken. I don’t get that at all.”
And it was in that moment I felt super old and not hip at all, because I have three, well, two teenage sons and a son that’s 20. And so I thought, you know, I’m getting kind of caught up on different text shorthand. You know, I’ll get a text from my kid and I’ll be like, I go and get a cracker jack box and get my secret decoder ring, and then I decode out what it is that my son is saying to me. “Oh, okay, I understand.” But I had never heard this one until last week.
So now I’m really cool. So whenever somebody sends me a text, it could even be like just “Okay,” I’m just like “TL;DR” asterisk. So what it stands for is “too long, didn’t read.” Somebody sends you a long text or it’s a big post, you just put that on there like, “Hey, this was too long, I didn’t read it. Just want you to know I skimmed it. Wasn’t really tied into it.”
And I thought this is such a great title because if there’s any response that we could give to most of our emotions about the Bible, it’s like, “Hey God, I’m sorry bro, but TL;DR.” Too long, didn’t read, really intimidating, confusing. So like, I’ve done some skimming. I take it in little bite-sized chunks, but it’s just, I mean, look at it. It’s all of these words, and it’s all the way from the beginning of humanity through thousands and thousands and thousands of years. You got 66 books in here, 66 books authored by multiple different authors, spanning thousands and thousands of years.
And then if you’re not real familiar with the Bible, then people that are really familiar with the Bible are like in church, right? They’re like, “This is holy and this is the word of God.” So then you’re like, “Now we’ve really upped the ante because not only do I need to read it, but if I read it wrong or whatever it may be, I’m messing with the almighty God. So I’m just going to leave this to the professionals. Give me a couple spoon-sized bites of sugar I can take to help the medicine go down, because this is just too much, too intimidating.” TL;DR. You ever felt like that? Yeah, me too.
It would be cool, you know, and maybe you’ve done this. I’ve noticed this with my kids: they’re getting very good at AI, right? So maybe you just go into ChatGPT and you know, “Hey Chat, what are the main things I need to know about the Bible?” It’ll give you the whole thing. Try to apply some of those. No reason to really get into the nuts and bolts of the Bible.
But what if actually diving into and becoming a student of the word of God could actually transform your life? Like, you don’t have to go everywhere to find it, but it’s right here. I mean, the questions that we have, these are big questions: Why are we here? What’s life about? What is actually my unique purpose as a human being? What happens after all this is done? How do I actually love people? Where do I find the actual motivation, the ability to forgive people? What should I do with money and my relationship to money and how I give it and how I spend it and how I save it? These are big questions. How about this one: How do I effectively live my life with God? These seem like big questions. These seem like questions that if you don’t know the answer to them, or you don’t know that you’ve gained whatever answer you have currently from a trusted source, could be problematic.
But what if it was here and you could read it, and it could in some ways read you and unpack the life you were created to live?
Here at Mercy, we actually believe what the Bible says about itself. It says that the word of God, in Hebrews chapter 4, the word of God is active and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow, and exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. We believe that the word of God is living and active. And even though it was written by multiple authors and it’s 66 books, we actually believe that God himself inspired and oversaw the writing of these scriptures.
And this is my go-to Bible at home. It’s an NIV Bible. It’s called the Quest Study Bible. And my parents gave me this Bible when I was in high school, right after I felt called into ministry. And I’ve spent a lot of time in this Bible. I love this Bible. It’s the Quest Bible because on every page, the most asked questions about any portion of the Bible, the answers are here on the side. And I’ve gained so much from living in the pages of this book.
And you don’t have to use a real Bible, although maybe because I’m getting older, I’ve kind of gone old school. In the mornings, I like to bring out a real Bible and touch the pages and have it in my hands. You don’t have to. The cool part is on this device, you can get an app where you can get every English translation of the Bible ever done, right here on your phone, which is in your purse or back pocket or in your hands probably 24 hours a day. You can even push a button on this device and it will read the Bible to you. You’d be amazed how much Bible you can read between here and Keystone.
And so this year, we’ve declared it 2025, the year of the word, here at Mercy Road Northeast. And our goal as a community is to read through the New Testament in a year. And if that’s something new to you, you may be like, “Whoa, the entire New Testament this year?” Yes, the entire New Testament this year. Here’s the good news: It’s going to take you about 5 minutes a day. And at the end of 2025, somebody could ask you, “Have you ever read the whole New Testament?” Like, yes, I have.
And I promise you this: if you dedicate yourself to that and you dig into the word of God, your life will begin to change. Throughout the next 365 days, your understanding of Jesus and his character and his teaching and his love will not be something that you heard a rumor about once, or that you trust us to give you little bite-sized pieces for 30 minutes every Sunday, but it’ll start to become part of the fabric of your thinking, of your decision making, of your emotions, of your relationships.
So once again, we’re inviting you to join us in this process. And I get to start at the very, very beginning today. So Genesis, it’s the first book of the Bible, all the way back at the beginning. And here’s the first point of the sermon, and probably the last point of the sermon. I could probably just quit after this. The first phrases, the first sentence, the first five letters of the Bible say this: “In the beginning, God created.”
In the beginning, when it started, God created. So this is a really big statement for us to understand life and earth and what we’re doing here. In the beginning, God created. So this God that the rest of the Bible unpacks for us, right from the beginning, what we realize is that he was central to everything we see and know. And he is creative. Everything we see and experience came in its essence, proceeded from the imagination, from the power, from the authority, from the creativity of this God.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
What does it mean to create? Let’s define it. To create means to bring something into existence that did not previously exist. It involves using imagination, skill, and effort to produce something new or to transform an idea, concept, or raw material into a tangible or conceptual form. Ultimately, to create is to exert influence over the world by shaping something that is unique and new.
To me, that gives me a lot of comfort to know that that’s the kind of God we get connected to in the first five letters of the Bible. That this world we live in is not random, is not accidental, did not just magically appear by just random chance, and we just live in a ball floating around in space that got here randomly. We don’t know how it got here, we don’t know who started it, we don’t know where it’s going. And so try to find some type of meaning from your life because you live in a ball of chaotic randomness.
If that’s your core belief, I think it would be difficult to get up and do anything on a Monday. Like, why should I do anything? Because I just live in a cosmos of absolute accidental randomness. But if it’s true, then no, I actually live in a world and in a universe that by the power and by the authority and by the imagination and by the order and by the design and by the intelligence of God, I find myself in a cosmos and on a planet and in a body that was fearfully and wonderfully and powerfully and creatively made.
I was watching an award show a couple months ago, a country music award show, and Kacey Musgraves sang a song. Her songwriting is, I dig it. It’s very poetic. I love the way she uses words. Just a beautiful voice. And as she began to sing this song, my ears and even my spirit began to open up because I think these words encapsulate how a lot of people feel.
I think that song encapsulates the feelings of a lot of people that you live next door to, that you work with, that you go to school with, that you live with, and maybe you yourself. You look at everything that goes on in this life and you just go, “Man, is this happening by chance? Is it fate? Is there design? Are there blueprints to this?” And I’d love to speak to the architect.
What we get in the word of God is God himself revealing, “I am the architect.” And here’s the beautiful thing: Yes, you can speak to me, and I will speak to you through the written word of God, through Jesus Christ the living word of God, through the still small voice of the Holy Spirit that can live within you. We have the ability to live our life day in and day out knowing the architect, being connected to the architect, and being able to join the architect in what he’s creating. I don’t know about you, but that gives me a lot of peace and a lot of hope, a lot of comfort.
In the beginning, God created. Then we go through chapter one. The first day he says, “Let there be light,” and there was light. The second day, let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water. The third day he says, let the water under the sky be gathered in one place and let the dry ground appear. God called the dry ground land and the gathered waters he called seas, and God saw that it was good. Then he said that the land produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants and trees on lands that bear fruit with seed in it according to their various kinds, and it was so. He produces all the vegetation on the earth on the third day.
The fourth day he says, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them serve as signs to mark sacred times and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” He creates stars and planets on the fourth day.
The fifth day he says, “Let the water teem with living creatures. Let the birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created great creatures of the sea and every living thing which teems in the water and that moves within it according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good on the fifth day. God is creating by his word.
Sixth day, God produces, God creates: “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds, the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, the wild animals, each according to its own kind.” And so it was. And God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground. And God saw that it was good.
And then God gets to this point and he says this: “Let us”—Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the Godhead—”let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they…” You’re running purpose and design and who are you as a human being. The word of God, in the very first pages of it, unpacks this for us.
“So that they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. And God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’
“Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.”
It’s chapter one of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the first chapter of the Bible. In chapter 2, we get the very first part of it, we get the seventh day where God rested, giving us an image of the idea of the balance and the rhythm between work and rest. And then the rest of chapter 2 basically is a more detailed breakdown and understanding of how he created humanity. These are the first two chapters of the Bible. It’s how it starts.
What does it mean though when it says that we’re made in the image of God? This is really important to know. If I’m a human being and the Bible is telling me how we got here, that God made everything—we just talked about it, right? He made the seas and he made the skies and he made the planets. He made the animals that fly, that swim, that run. He made it all. And then he got to this point and he said, “Okay, we’re going to do this one a little bit different. I’m going to make human beings in my own image.” What does that give us as human beings?
I want to walk you through a few of these points. First and foremost, here’s the second point of the sermon if you’re taking notes: In the beginning, we were created in the image of God. In the beginning, we were created in the image of God.
First and foremost, it gives us spiritual and moral resemblance. What this means is that being created in the image of God, we’ve been given the ability to love, to choose between good and evil, to form relationships. It means that we as human beings are uniquely capable of understanding and pursuing morality, justice, and righteousness because they come from the core of God’s being.
It’s why it’s not immoral for a lion to eat a zebra, but it would be for you to eat your neighbor. That make sense? You go, “We’re just all animals. We’re all the same. God just created stuff. There’s no difference between us and humanity.” Just like a lion, right? But this week, go try to eat your neighbor and see if you don’t spend the rest of your life in jail. And when anyone hears the story of someone trying to eat their neighbor, something just—you know, eat your neighbor was not in the notes at all, probably shouldn’t have made it, probably should have been edited—but the feeling you would have, that feeling you have within you when you hear about those kind of things, something deeper than your thoughts, something to the depths of the essence of you as a human being calls out from inside of you and says, “That’s wrong.” What is that?
Because I was watching on Instagram—I love wildlife videos, once again not on the notes—and people were on this safari, you know, where they ride in the open things or whatever, the little jeeps around wherever you do safaris. And there were these lions that had killed something and they were going after it. And then all of a sudden some hyenas showed up. And then lastly, a huge crocodile or alligator—I don’t know which it was, but this thing was big. And as this crocodile/alligator thing is making its way up, the lions and the hyenas were like, “See you, bro. You can have it.” Right? They were gone.
And what I noticed is that in the commentary, I didn’t hear the hyenas being like, “Bro, why are you killing things and eating it?” Right? They just did what they did as animals. But see, you’re a human being. You are created in the image of God. And when you sense that in your soul, it should be a clue to you that there’s something unique about you as a human, that you bear within your soul the image of God.
It also means that you have relational and intellectual capacity as a human being. You can think, you can make decisions, you can problem solve, you can create art, you can build societies, you can engage in complex communication. God’s wisdom and creativity are within you.
That’s why when I go and teach in the corporate settings like I do often, I ask people—and as a way to kind of, I do all I can when I speak corporately to say everything that the Bible says but do it in such a way that they don’t know that I’m saying that it comes from the Bible. Because even if they don’t believe in Jesus, what I know happens as I’m speaking is their soul is going, “That’s right. And I don’t know why.” And then my goal is to be able to be there for the next conversation of, if you’d like to know, I’d love to tell you.
I ask people this: What do human beings create uniquely over any other creation? And usually people’s first answer is other human beings. Incorrect, right? Horses create horses. Dogs create dogs. Birds create birds. That’s not unique, to create your own kind, to reproduce. Here’s what human beings uniquely create: the future.
You see, you take all the human beings out and just leave planet Earth to the animals. Guess what you don’t have in a thousand years? Societies, art, communication, future. Every story that fills the pages of every history book ever written, all of that was created by humans. Why? Because God gave us the capacity to design, the capacity to create. We are made in the image of God.
We also have a relational nature. God said, “Let us make man in our own image.” I say it like this: You were created for and by love. It’s the great mystery of God that he is three, but he is one. He is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And they were all there from the beginning. And so what we see is that the reason you are drawn to relationship the way you are is because that is little bits of the reflection and the essence of God within you as a human being. You are created in the image of God to be relational.
You are created to have dominion and stewardship over creation. There is a responsibility and a stewardship that we have as humans to take care of this earth. And we’ve lost this in some ways because I think we’ve gotten too preoccupied with the last pages and certain interpretations of the last pages that say eventually, you know, we’re just going to get raptured in a moment and God’s going to burn all this earth anyway, so who cares how we take care of it? Except that dismisses the very first thing God told us to do and gave us responsibility for. I put a lot of care and concern and beauty and majesty in how I created this earth, and I need you as those created in my image to steward it and to take care of it as we co-create together. That gives us so much value and purpose.
We’re given creativity and co-creation from the beginning. If we were to read in chapter 2 of Genesis, God invites Adam into the process and says, “Hey Adam, check it out. All the animals don’t have names. Why don’t you and I partner up together and name everything?” As a human being, you are invited to be a co-creator with God of the future that’s currently under his design. What an amazing privilege you have every day you wake up and you’re alive. Why? Because you’re created in the image of God.
Lastly, we have dignity, value, and worth. Every single human being that you meet, regardless of financial, racial, sexual, whatever the design of that is, they are an image-bearer of God. And it’s our privilege and our responsibility to give them the value and the dignity and the love that God made them like he made us. It’s huge. This is the breaking it—this is the breakdown of the very first understandings we need from the Bible.
But here’s the problem: Currently, we’re looking through a broken reflection. You see, when God started, it’s like this: When God started everything, the mirror was perfect, right? And we were created and it was like we could see ourselves in God’s image. “Oh, it’s perfect. It’s put together. I can see you and I see me, and I can see what you’re doing. That’s what you do, and I do the same thing you do, because I can see very clearly and I get a great understanding of actually what’s around me because I can see it in the perfect reflection of what God has done. I get what creation does. I get what humanity does. This all makes so much sense. And all the time I can come back and go, ‘That’s right, I’m created in the image of God. I love, I’m relational, I’m creative. I don’t have any questions about my purpose because all I have to do is look back at the perfect reflection that I’m created within.'”
Now, next week Ken’s going to talk to you about chapter three of the Bible. Chapter 3 of the Bible breaks down for us what we call the fall, where brokenness and sin and separation from God enter the equation. Now here’s the problem: Now this is the world that we live in. It’s broken. It’s fragmented. There are missing pieces from the reflection. And so you look at it and you go, “Uh, whoa, I didn’t know I had that many dimensions to my face, right? Do I have a shoulder? What is a shoulder? I don’t know, because I’ve never seen this part of my body. I just know that this thing is out here and it seems like it’s connected to this part, but I can’t see that part because it’s missing. And then I don’t know, like, I think I have a knee. I don’t know how these legs move because there’s whole parts missing. And then I take and I try to get a handle on what was happening in creation. And I’m like, ‘Man, they said this was like beautiful and wonderfully made and amazing,’ and I, but I can’t, I just can’t see it.”
First Corinthians 13 says this: “In the same way, we can see and understand only a little bit about God now, as if we’re peering at his reflection in a poor mirror. But someday we’re going to see him in his completeness, face to face. Now all that I know is hazy and blurred, but then I will see everything clearly, just as clearly as God sees into my heart.”
You see, here’s the deal. Let me give you the Bible story: In the beginning, God created, and it was perfect. And then it became broken. And then from chapter 3, which we’ll get to next week, through the entirety of the Bible is the story of God putting these pieces back together again until one day it’ll be perfect again.
You know why it’s important to read the Bible? It’s important to read the Bible because what happens as you read the Bible is you take these black spaces, these broken spaces, these missing pieces. As you engage the word of God, what happens is you begin to fill in the missing pieces that you don’t understand. You say, “I’m up here at the top and I just can’t see, I can’t see it.” Okay, well, what I want you to do is I want you to begin to read and study the book of Genesis. And then God will restore for you the understanding of what it is.
“I don’t understand how I’m forgiven. I don’t understand how I can have peace with God.” And as I look at here, as it’s gone down in the story, there’s these missing pieces. “I know. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to read and study the book of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John. They are the story of Jesus’s life and ministry and teaching, and it will unpack for you and unlock for you and begin to bring clarity to how you’re forgiven and what God is doing.”
Here is how we betray ourselves in this process, though. Friends, what we’ll do and the way that we modern day read the Bible is we will take this little shard of glass like right here. Can’t even see it, can you? This is called your morning devotions, where you get a verse or two completely out of context of the book that it’s in and what the author was saying and what was going on and what was God doing. And you take this little shard of glass and you go, “Oh, that was cool for today.” “Hey, do you know how that fits into what God was doing here?” No. “What about how this was fitting in what God was doing here?” No. No idea. “What about how that little shard actually fits into this entire message that God was bringing to these specific people who had a specific problem to be specifically fixed?” No, I have no idea of any of that, but this was helpful. I’m thinking about getting a bumper sticker: TL;DR.
You know, “God, I know what you wanted to do was help me see you and me and my mission in this life with clarity. But I’m sorry, it’s just too long. I’ll just take my chances wasting my life through the broken mirror.”
What we’re trying to do this year is put some pieces back together. 2025, the year of the word. Five minutes a day. And in the next 12 months, you will have read the entire bottom half of the mirror, at least for the first time in your life. And all of a sudden, there’ll be pieces that come together, and all of a sudden you’ll say, “Oh, I have knees, and they actually help me live my life and move. This is neat.” And what you’ll actually begin to see is a clearer picture of the beauty, the love, of the genius of God whose image you bear.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for this truth. And God, I thank you for your grace that you understand that it is intimidating. It is tough for us to understand. And I thank you that you are so compassionate in this process with us. But God, I pray for us as a church that we would take this seriously. We wouldn’t do it because we feel guilty, but God, you would stir within us a desire to know you, to know ourselves, to know our world, to know what you want us to do with this precious life you’ve given us. And I pray as we get into the word of God this year, we would meet you in it. We would meet ourselves in it. We love you. You’re the best. In Jesus’ name, amen.