Just as God intended at creation that Adam should share in a partnership in which he was to tend the garden God had made (Gen. 2:15), so we as redeemed sinners can experience the dignity of being partners with God.
We can be in partnership with God in tending and preserving the rest of His creation, subduing it with a sense of stewardship and exercising dominion over it without abusing, exploiting or destroying it. This week we explore some further aspects of this remarkable truth that God made us to be partners with Him. What higher role can we aspire to occupy than being God’s fellow workers?
God’s creation instruction was that His image-bearers would partner with Him in procreation, filling the earth with descendants. Scripture states, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it’ ” (Gen. 1:27–28). To the end of the procreation of the race, gender was one of God’s good creation gifts to humankind that enables us to bear and raise children.
Making Him known
Furthermore, as bearers of God’s likeness, humans are partners with God in making Him known in all the earth. The explanation given for humans like Paul and his companions engaging in missionary and evangelistic outreach is simply put in 1 Corinthians 3:9: “For we are God’s fellow workers.”
In addition, we partner with God through prayer. Of all the creatures God made, only human beings hold the high privilege of joining with God in prayer. No fish, fowl or beast ever engages in prayer for their needs or those of others. As the redeemed children of God, we hold the high honor of fellowship with Him through prayer. We petition, God responds. We intercede, God answers.
While God could do as He pleases without our partnership in prayer, He has determined to do some things only in answer to believing prayer. Hence, the Bible frequently invites us to come to God as a beloved child would approach an earthly father. Often divine intervention awaits human asking. It is as the Bible says, “You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2).
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