Functional Saviors

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness’” Genesis 1:26a.

As a mom, fewer things make me happier than hearing someone say one of my children look just like me.  It has nothing to do with how I think I look (because I don’t know many women who are satisfied with that!).  It is more about the love and shared fellowship I have with my children as they represent my family.  ‘In our image’ means the ability to share in similar joys and grow together in our own uniqueness.  God didn’t make us as robots but individuals with different likes, dislikes and personalities.  Because we cannot understand at this point what the image of God (and the Trinity) really is, we must assign God’s heart to the creation of man/woman.  His desire to create us was rooted in love and established in the hope that we would return His love with intimacy…just like we did when the decision to have children filled our hearts.  His initial creation was for us to be in the image of God, representing Him within creation.  My Bible Study asks the poignant question, ‘How is mankind doing at representing God on earth?’  Steadfast Love, Lauren Chandler, p. 18.

She writes, “Even if you love God and seek to worship Him, it’s a struggle to resemble, represent, and relate with Him in a way that honors Him, isn’t it?  The image of God was marred and all creation suffered.  Adam and Eve’s choice to believe the serpent over God resulted in a fracture that makes resembling, representing, and relating to God in the way He intentioned impossible on our own.”  But that is the beauty of God…through Him all things are possible, and He never leaves us on our own.  Martin Luther once wrote that ‘whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God, your functional savior.’  That is why we must pursue holiness through the example of Christ, who is our Anchor, and keeps us from floating towards the image of the world.  Everyone is holding on for dear life to something as we walk out our lives.  In this broken world and with broken hearts, we cling to false anchors all of the time.  A false anchor is anything to which we turn to gain satisfaction and contentment other than God.  A false anchor promises but never delivers.  A false anchor takes more of our soul than what it gives.  A false anchor keeps us in broken relationship with God who created us to be in relationship with Him.  The author of this study ends today with a beautiful prayer which I will leave with you.

‘My prayer for you is that you will let God use the seasons of pain, struggle, and uncertainty expose the false anchors.  And in exposing the false, you are able to see, cling to, and confide in the true Anchor – the God of steadfast love.’