CREATION FORCE

THE FORCE OF CREATION

Genesis 1: 1&2 "In the beginning God created the heavens and earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters".

Here the Holy Spirit was hovering over the whole creation and at that time there was a deep that was dark. In fact, there are three words used here - it was without form, void and darkness. These are words that are normally associated with chaos. Now the word - without form, void and darkness speaks of chaos, a very confusing situation and in that situation we would be very panicky but here God was not, and the Holy Spirit seems to specialize in the area where there is confusion. There seems to this key where there needs to be an element of a void without form and not really what we called darkness but a depth that is so deep. It is more the darkness of the creative womb of the universe and it is in that atmosphere that God's Spirit was hovering over that place, that creation came forth.

What was the Holy Spirit doing? Here in verse 1&2 we see that is the Holy Spirit hovering. Let’s combine two other scriptures.

Proverbs 3:19 "The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; By understanding He established the heavens."

V20 "By His knowledge the depths were broken up, And clouds drop down the dew."

There is a foundation of wisdom and by His understanding He established the heavens. Wisdom speaks about the foresight of God, the plans and the purposes of God. Understanding speaks about His laws that govern the creation after it was created. See wisdom talks about the plan. Understanding talks about the system that is designed after the plan has been accomplished. It is just like example building a $100 million complex or skyscraper. You have only one part but then you must not forget the other part, how much it will cost to maintain such a building. Imagine the services, how would the building be used - if one part were offices - what kind of needs would the offices have and if the other part of it were condominiums - what kind of facilities and what kind of needs would the people have. All that goes in to maintaining it. You could finish building the building beautifully and if you have no understanding following after that the whole building will be reduced back to chaos. Can you imagine living in the Petronas Twin Towers (the tallest buildings in the world located in Kuala Lumpur) without any system? Before long it would be a pigsty even though it may be beautiful at the opening ceremony.

So when Proverbs 3: 19-20 talks about God founding the earth by His wisdom and establishing the heavens by His understand, we talk about the laws of preservation operating together with the laws of creation. By wisdom, He creates. By His understanding, He preserves. He has to! Right now this planet earth is spinning round the sun and the sun, and the solar system is spinning on its own power around its very place in the galaxy of the Milky Way. If all the planets were out of synchrony, we would just go straight into the sun and get burn up or if the planets just decide to be topsy-turvy and move any direction they want, we would be hit somehow by another planet and that would have been the end of our whole world. So the system is also designed in such a way that it self-propagates and that's what it means by the heavens established by His understanding.

The third scripture for the introduction in the Book of John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. V2 "He was in the beginning with God." At the beginning of the creation of the universe, I wonder how all these three words fitted together. Since it says the Holy Spirit was hovering over the earth and then it says that in the beginning was the Word? That was the Lord Jesus Christ. By His wisdom He founded the earth. As the Holy Spirit was hovering over the void that was there, the nothingness that was there - there was completely nothing. It was like God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit was there. Every work of creation and everything that God does from Genesis to Revelation, He always does with all three playing a role. There was never a single time in the Bible when one Person does the work where the other two were not involved in anyway. Even when Jesus died on the cross, He gave Himself through the Holy Spirit and God the Father accepted the sacrifice and Jesus died on the cross. There was still a Triune work at work in our atonement. In a creation three Persons were at work, the Holy Spirit was hovering and that's easy to see.

What was God the Father doing? What was God the Son doing? Surely they were not also floating about or hovering. What were they doing'? God the Father must be on His throne. And Jesus, what was He doing? "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God." The second phrase gives us the clue and that Word was with God. So Jesus the Son at that time His name was Jesus the Word. The Eternal Word and God the Father were doing something. What were they doing? There was the Holy Spirit hovering in a creative way and God the Father was functioning by His wisdom. By His wisdom, there was something flowing forth. That was like His plans. God the Father has always been a Planner, the Source, the Beginning. Jesus has always been the One who is executing the whole thing and the Holy Spirit has been the One who has always enforce the execution. So God the Father was reaching forth into the depths of His wisdom. He was Wisdom and the wisdom was flowing out from Him. God had to construct the whole universe, the human being. No one could be His consultant according to Paul because He is all wisdom. His plan was been laid out and He was really stretching forth Himself. God was stretching forth His Being.

Sometimes all we have the image of God just sitting on His throne and then He just said, ”It would be nice to have the world. "Light Be!" on the spur of the moment, that’s what we were thinking and as He was sitting around with the light that He created and then He said, "Let the heavens and the earth separate. Let the water recede to one side and let the land appear as if He just sitting there and at the spur of the moment. Yes, human being can do that because they have a finite mind and we who have finite minds is quite hard to imagine how God works. This is what I could see in my spirit that God stretched Himself. He stretched His Being. He encompassed His whole creation - the whole beginning of the heaven and the earth, and of Adam and Eve, and the world's creation. The planet Earth was only one tiny part. God is stretching Himself over eons and ages; it covers even the beginning of the angelic age. It covers the time of Adam. God stretched Himself because there was nothing. Gen l: 1 There was nothing. Gen 1: 2 - One small executive part of the whole plan of God. We only see when we read verse 2. It is just like taking an electron microscope and looking into that just one tiny little molecule and you know how many zillion of molecules there are on the planet Earth - in the air itself! From verse 2 is one tiny aspect of that so I could imagine God the Father just on His throne stretching Himself forth -- His plan and his purposes.

And what was Lord Jesus doing'? "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God." Jesus was like the executor. He was possibly involved when verse 3 came into being, the speaking of the Word because He was the Word. Jesus was the Word. By verse 3 Jesus was involved. Now He was involved partly in the other ways that we could not comprehend fully but at least for us to see His involvement is very clear. Somehow in that speaking forth of the Word, Jesus was intricately involved when God said. Hebrews 11:2 says, By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. Jesus, the Word of God, was involved in the framing of the creation while the Holy Spirit by hovering over the formless void was enforcing these forces of creation together.

When we stretch ourselves sometimes our muscles get tired but God does not tire and He does not tire Himself. God neither slumbers nor sleeps. God never feels tired at all. Because He is Eternal and His strength is Almighty. But God did stretch Himself. When God created the universe we must have the picture of God stretching Himself because God rested when He finished. Now if you think about rest the way we think about it, you think that God got tired but it is not theologically sound because God is never tired. He neither slumbers nor sleeps so He is never tired. To think of God getting tired is heretical. The closest definition you can find to why God need to rest is He has stretched Himself. Something from His Being has come forth and by the time He created Adam and Eve He placed a part of His Spirit into Adam and Eve. After He created all His animals, in that six days He created man perfect but there was still no life in him. Only when God took something of Himself and breathed into man that Adam became a living Soul again here. We are showing that He is stretching Himself. So God, we could safely and theologically say in simple layman's term without using any big bombastic word that God stretched Himself. He stretched into His Inner Being and stretched all over. And so when He finished, God stopped stretching Himself. That's what it mean when it says God rested.

God work and when you work, what do you do? You stretched yourself, whether you stretched yourself mentally or physically. Today in our modern civilization, some types of work are more mental than physical. But yet work is work, whether you stretched your brains and your neurons or you stretched your muscles or ligaments, you do stretch yourselves. As long as your body is concerned the same stretch is there and you need to know how to rest in God.

Genesis 2:2 "And on the seventh day God ended His work...." Imagine God the Father has work and He worked hard. Man has not even discovered the limits of the universe yet. His work was so massive. It is timeless and we cannot even measure it. If we ever measure it, possibly in our time it could mean millions and billions of years. We cannot comprehend because time was not measured yet. There was no man, no Adam, no Eve to measure time. How long did God stretch Himself in human earth's hours or years, we never know. I could only quantify that it could possibly be billions and millions of years stretching Himself in His wisdom. When God finished, in verse 3 "Then God blessed the 7th day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made."

It is not God the Father who was stretching only. God the Father stretched in Himself and stretched outward in His Spirit. Jesus in Himself stretched to His fullness. The Holy Spirit was hovering over the fullness of nothingness. Good thing the word God is plural so it refers to all three Persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit can now say, "It is done." For us we will say, "Praise God!" but they are God themselves and they say, "It is done!" That is why they create all these others creatures to say, "Praise God!" for themselves. What an interesting thing! But truly they have stretched themselves and that is where we are talking of the depths of prayers. In there lies one of the deepest reasons for the success of prayer.

Prayer is a drop in the ocean of experiencing that stretching process of God when God first made the whole universe but it is a powerful force if we understand it. If we understand the force that God used when He created heaven and earth, we would understand that that is the same force of prayer. By prayer I mean every realm of prayer - all kind of prayers. The depths of prayer - Paul in Gal. 4: 19 "My little children for whom I labor ... (Greek word for labor is also work.)" Now when he said labor, he is not talking about holding a 9-5 job. He is talking about work, "whom I labor in birth again" (Here he used a special Greek word too that includes the picture of a woman giving birth) "until Christ is formed in You." Verse 19 "My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you," Three pictures given; 1) Work 2) A woman giving birth 3) from the word, “Agonia” - agonizing.

The English word for agonizing expresses someone who yields utterly to emotions. Paul said, "I agonize for you until Christ be formed in you." What are we seeing here? Paul was doing some stretching exercise. Where was the chaos? Galatians. The Galatians were not doing what God wanted them to do. They have fallen from grace, Paul said. They have gone back into the works of the law and not by the works of grace. Paul said, "I want to restore you." Restoration is not just by works. Restoration is involved in stretching. This is the law of God. Somebody, somewhere has to do some stretching in order for some progress. No stretching no progress! Somebody, somewhere must pay the price. The stretching process must be done.

The thing about it is this that after the creation God has delegated that stretching to the human race for the human race. That is why it takes so long because we are not that good stretchers. If God would to do it again for the whole human race, it would have been fast. The whole world would have been perfected in less than an atomic second. Can you imagine it took Jesus three years and it is enough to finish His whole ministry because He was perfect. He was perfect in His works. He understood the laws of God and He knew how to stretched Himself. Did You notice how much Jesus stretched Himself in Gethsemane? And what does it mean to stretch into that realm of the Spirit - in that realm of prayer? When you stretch and when you give yourself to something, it will involve your spirit, your soul and your body, and by that we mean your emotions are involved. Your mental concentration is involved, your desire is involved, your will is involved. Everything that you could consciously harness is involved, if you really stretched yourself. If you do not, it is not stretching.' You are just doing a hobby and prayer for some Christian is a hobby because they do it when they want or when they like it. If your work has no seriousness of time and discipline allocated, there will be no work done. Of course we learn to enjoy the work done but we know the difference between the work and the hobby. The hobby is something you do if you have the time and when you have the time. But work is something that when you get up in the morning whether you feel like it or whether your body is sleepy or riot, you know you got to get to the office by time. And you do it because of your discipline involved, you are stretching yourself into that.

So Paul said he is willing to stretch himself. And it seems that in the Kingdom of God, nothing is done without stretching. Somebody, somewhere has to stretch. Sometimes certain things take a short stretch, some things take longer stretch. The thing about it is there are many people who are old rubber band too long in the sun and is dried up, and when they are stretched only, they would break!" They are not like fresh rubber bands you could just pull it, let go and it still remains strong. The ability to stretch forth in the realm of the Spirit is important and we must understand those laws.

And there is a time and a season, and all those normal law of prayers apply. Sometimes the Spirit will tell you, you know what you should do when you give yourself to them. For example if you are planning a missionary or business trip to a foreign country, there are certain things that are very urgent and need to be done like getting the visa from the embassy of the foreign country. You can't just go by "Halleluiah" all the time. Things are not spiritual all the time. Got to be balance. What need to be done naturally, you do it, like passport, permit, phone calls to be made. Right in the supermarket the Holy Spirit may impress your heart to do some stretching. There is urgency. What is stretching? Stretching in this realm of the Spirit is praying for creative force. We have done our previous homework. There are some things that you planned and done, and is carried but there are other things that you need to have a personal touch here and there. We have all the angels been send out very much earlier. The night before the angels were all specially called upon and reminded unto our prayers and everything, and they are dispatched. Unless we do some stretching in the Spirit, there is no miracle or circumstances. There are things beyond our control physically, you can only do some things to a certain extent physically. You could do anything legal, do everything within the boundaries of the law legally but we all recognize there are circumstances you cannot control and there are circumstances you can control.

But here is a miracle, when you understand the depths of prayer and the art of stretching in the realm of the Spirit, it is so powerful because the same forces were at work in Genesis l and 2. And the power that is inherent in our intercession or prayer in the spirit is so powerful that it literally controls 100% of circumstances. There is no error, there is no accident, and there is no coincidence. Here is something we are talking about that works 100% of the time, there are no circumstances that is hindering you if you are walking in the perfect will of God where you reach the point of maturity whereby you are not one who rushed ahead of God not one who walked behind. Not one who is too fast. You are neither the mule nor the horse. You are a sheep. You matured to that level where you do not desire anything but to serve God and to do whatever God wants you to do. You have died to the lust of the flesh to the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. And you are really doing God's will and listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit all the time. This area of stretching becomes powerful. You literally reached a position of being at the right hand of God. Where all, at any time as you draw into the realms of your authority at the right hand of God and the area of understanding how God stretched Himself in the Spirit, and as you stretched yourself, intercede from that realm, it is a powerful release of a supernatural force. That's the force of prayer.

When Paul was talking about the Galatians Christians he is talking about the same force. Jesus stretched Himself in that area. By that time Jesus finished Gethsemane He actually had finished all the things. The rest is just execution only, walking through, everything has been planned, all like clockwork, there is nothing to be done. Just the understanding part left, all the wisdom has been gone before that. Colossians 4: Our resources are not just our finances, our resources are not just our ideas; our resources are not just our physical contacts and friends. Our resources are not just our talents and gifts. The most important resource we have is Almighty God and the wonderful thing is that the Almighty God has made us in His nature. And this Almighty God has caused us to be born of the image of Christ. He has made us liken unto the second Adam, Christ Jesus. He has brought us to the position of been seated at the Right Hand of God. And that position of the Right Hand is the position of authority and we exercise the spiritual realm of authority so powerfully that when Christian get back to heaven, they are going to regret that they have not made use of their authority in the realm of spiritual power when they were on this earth. Lot of us when we get to heaven are going to regret that we have not used our spiritual authority and spiritual weapon and we find that many Christians are going to go back to heaven and find that half the time or even three quarter of the time, they are relying on their own strength and not on the strength of God. It's too late. That's not the way God wants us to work.

When there is a tremendous resource the depths of prayer is powerful! Col.4:12 "Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God." There is a realm of prayer called fervency. James 5 also said that the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. The word "avails much" in Greek speaks of someone stretching himself and drawing every ounce of strength and energy to get the objective to be brought forth in the spirit. Now you understand why a lot of people cannot get what they want in prayer because their energies are dissipated. When they pray they don’t have faith, they have fear. Fear takes about half their mental capacity. They meditate on them and perhaps their desires are divided. Maybe covetousness is inside, or maybe selfishness is inside or maybe unforgiveness is inside. These eat up more portions of the emotional strength and their desires. So their capabilities to zoom in and concentrate, their capabilities to concentrate in the Spirit is so divided. It’s so divided that the energy of their broadcasting station can only go one kilometer but actually there are radio stations that have been built to broadcast for example about one hundred kilometers. Part of their energy has been channeled to power a video player here. Another part of their energy has been channeled to operate a Sony walkman or some other instrument feeding a different desire in their life. So their energies are all so divided that when it comes to broadcasting in concentrating on those things that God has commanded them, they had only that little power to broadcast. They do not have much power in their ability to move the invisible realm in the Spirit.

That's why it’s important for us to be able to harness everything within us. No wonder fasting is involved. Do you know that fasting is part of the stretching? Because when you reached the stage that you want something so much and every human being in this life have at certain times got interested in something or were doing something so fervently that they forgot to eat. It could be something in the natural, something in your own work. How much more in the things of the Spirit! This is in the area of stretching and fasting is the drawing, the harnessing of everything within you, your desire for food is also shut out to get those things. Everything is harnessed to stretch yourself completely.

Our ability to stretch and encompass in the Spirit realm is limited. It’s tied up to dominion. Genesis 1:26 "Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." When all of us think of dominion we only think about a king sitting on a throne, or a soldier having delegated authority or in some form in that area. But dominion covers many other aspects for example, when God gave Adam dominion: 1) That dominion is universal. Universal means that it stretched to cover all area. Sometimes some people are given dominion over one area. But Adam's dominion was given universally. Perhaps we could call it cosmological dominion that was given to him. In other words whatever he does is going to affect a lot of things. For example, if you are head over a whole city - you are the mayor, you have dominion over that city. One error of yours in that city is also going to affect the whole city. One right judgment in that city is going to affect the whole city. Supposing that you were planning that city in that area and you plan for all the housing estates but you forgot the roads. Five years later we all regret because of your mistake but if you have succeeded in your planning over that one city and you have build up such fantastic planning including almost everything foreseeable. 5 years later we taste the rewards of your planning. We are living in one of your housing estate in your city that you are a mayor of. We taste the fruits of your judgment in that area. So a dominion is universal positive or negative.

That's why when Adam fell, fell affected heaven because God gave him so much authority. The Book of Psalms said that God gave him so much authority that he could easily have approached God. In the Book of Hebrews, when the Lord Jesus Christ died, His Blood was used to cleanse the whole heaven and the whole earth. That is how much dominion Adam had that was there before. When Satan approached God in the Book of Job 1, he approached God based on Adam's dominion. That is how much a dominion Adam had that he gave over to the devil because Satan has no dominion at the creation of Adam and Eve he was already judged - he was zero but when he left the Garden of Eden, he took everything from Adam.

If you make a mistake in your life and you are a family man, it may affect your children and if it is a very big mistake, it may affect your children and your children’s children. We all come from different backgrounds, some are born with a golden spoon, some with a silver spoon, some a diamond spoon and some with no spoon. Why is that so? Because if our forefathers and we can't blame them. We can work our way up in any situation by the help of Christ. It is not necessary a spiritual blessing because many have died or drowned in silver. We realized where you are physically today is a result of your parents' decisions to certain extent. If you were born, for example in Malacca somehow or rather your parent must have decided to go there. Let’s say most of us who are here, your parents migrated from another countries 2,3, 4 generations ago - some of you from India, some of your forefathers came from China. To trace further back is a bit more difficult but we all know it all ends up with Noah. But our been born in this country was the decision of one man long ago who decided to take a step of faith who did didn’t know God yet; so it is with human faith that he packed his luggage and at that time luggage was not invented yet. It was a piece of cloth tied on a string climbed into a small fishing boat faced the sharks and the whales, reached this shore safely, worked their way hard, married, give birth and married, give birth. Children married, give birth and there you are. Imagine if they didn't decide to come here, you would have been still in China. Some of the things we do, our children are affected. Inherent in each one of us i.e. in the natural we could see it.

But the principle in the spiritual is even more powerful - very powerful. If one man is right with the Lord , he can influence the world in a different way. We all know it is true of Jesus Christ but the Bible has many of such stories. We just quote a few: because of Abraham and what he saw in his spirit all the time, the rewards were tasted in Moses' time. God met Moses, "I have come because of the covenant. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” We know He could say I am the God of Noah but why did He say, "I am the God of Abraham." Because it started with Abraham, something that Abraham did with God. It was because of Abraham's stretch. A stretch is universal.

Secondly, a stretch is eternal. Adam's dominion was universal and secondly, eternal. That is why it is so difficult that Jesus has to come down in human flesh to undo it because He gave it to man, to humankind. If you do the stretching right in God, it has an eternal quality. It's the Lord Himself who said that the righteous and the wise shall shine as a star. There's an eternal quality about it and we are able, deep within our spirit, we have the ability that was inherent in Adam that is made possible in Christ. We have the inherent ability to eternally and universally affect the planet earth. Of course, through many generations of human race and the fall of sins and the degenerations of sin in man that quality is not realized. Every time Jesus made a statement all things are possible to those who believe, He is pointing back to that quality. Every time Jesus said, All things are possible to him who believe, He is pointing to that inherent quality He has given man. And when Jesus walked on the water, He knew that it was something He could bring into human being. He didn't walk on water because He was the Son of God. He walked on water because He was the second Adam walking with God. To prove that when Peter said, "Called me to come on the water." And Jesus said, "Come!" As long as Peter stretched himself and will not allow one tiny distraction and put all his spirit, soul and body and being into that command "Come", he too ran walked on water. But the moment that concentration was disrupted, he started sinking. There is inherent in man that quality.

That is why when Jesus spoke to that fig tree, "Let no man eat fruit from you ever again!" It died and the next day when they walked by that way they saw the leaves dried up. Peter said, "Master look, the leaves, all dried up." And Jesus made this astounding statement, "If you have faith you could do just what I did." He is again pointing to that dominion that was given to Adam. The God-man, He has created Adam to be. That is the inherent quality of dominion that is inside our spirit. That is what we need to realize that your total success never, never depend on your circumstance. It depends on what's inside of you because whatever is inside you can always move all circumstances when it is channeled in Christ Jesus.

No wonder John screams in his epistles in the spiritual realm with that fervor of the Lord said, "Greater is He in me than he that is in the world." That's inherent in us that is eternal and universal. If you could just live your life, just one month/ year, you absolutely stretched yourself like God, stretching Himself with the creation of the universe. You could give everything you have to whatever God has desired in your life for you. And you would move with every thought, every emotion and every part of your being into them. That one year would have an eternal effect on all of mankind. We may not see the effect immediately on mankind but they say the work of the righteous follow after them. Works of those who love God follow after them. It could be an achievement you did out there in the secular world by God’s help. But the most important thing is to discern God's will, discern what God is saying. And tapped on that dominion that God has given to us, seated on the Right Hand of God is that same dominion that He is referring to but a higher kind. If we could stretch ourselves from that realm of dominion in prayer, we could achieve much.

Paul knew that was the key and the whole success of Paul's ministry lies in his ability to stretch him self. He testify that he had been faithful to that vision that he saw of the Lord Jesus when He appeared to him in the Book of Acts 26 & 24. I could imagine Paul, day and night, all he could think about is what Jesus has told him to do. In 2 Corinthians 11, the burden of the church was on him and he was always thinking, dreaming, visualizing. All his thinking is the vision, the call; all he wants to fulfill is there. He knew what God's will was and he stretched himself into that realm.

Abraham in the Book of Hebrew 11 tells us he did not look for a city made by man. Inside him, Abraham kept seeing the city of God. When he wandered from place to place, inside him for years and years - what was he doing? He was stretching with an inherent dominion given to man. Every word you say has an eternal effect positive and negative. Every thought you think has an eternal effect positive or negative. Every action you do has an eternal effect positive or negative. Think about how evil the world has been. Do you think the world can be that evil without the help of man yielding to their thoughts and desires? No. How come there’s such sin in the world? Because someone somewhere imagined it and brought it into being. How come there are many big places that draws the money of the world into gambling, into all kinds of wrong, illegal games? Because someone dreamt it up, imagined and put everything they have into that. All it started was in the head of somebody - the idea. All the evil in the world is in here. The thing of the future is not yet. It is still fluid. Even though man may plan, God may disposes but we have to add to that proverbs that now God disposes and preplans with His people. See the future has not yet been lived, the past has been and the present is. The future is now fluid.

Right now as people of God we can rise and change the future not with the works of the flesh, not with the arms of the flesh, not with our hands, not with our own ability and strength. We do it by prayers. We do it by stretching ourselves now like the Holy Spirit hovering over the chaos and we in the Spirit could rise and ascend and stretch ourselves, stretch our vision, stretch our love, ability and compassion that encompass the world. And let our spirit hover in that position - stretching, stretching and expanding to cover a city, to cover a nation, to cover the world. It all start as we pray that is the most creative force that you could ever release and the most powerful creative force that God released in the universe.