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November 14, 2016
March 21, 2024

You Made Everything - Theology Of The Song - Austin Stone Worship: Kids

Sometimes it’s easy for us to forget that God created everything.

Often, when I feel like I need to clear my head, I’ll go for a walk around my neighborhood or wander around my backyard. I always find something interesting to remind me that creation points us to the Creator. Theologians call this “general revelation,” the knowledge of God’s existence, character, and moral law, that comes through creation to all humanity. That all things in creation give evidence of our Creator.

When you think about it, there are things that happen in creation every day that cause us to delight in our Heavenly Father. Watching the sunrise reminds me that His mercies are new each morning. Wildflowers in the springtime remind us that He makes all things new. Even the radiant leaves in the fall remind us that for new life to happen, something must die and be sacrificed. This readily points us to Jesus and the new life we received from His death on the cross.

Even the radiant leaves in the fall remind us that for new life to happen, something must die and be sacrificed.

This song reminds us that God made everything, but it goes a step further to remind us that He also included us in His creation. In fact, Genesis 1:26 tells us that God created man and gave him dominion over all the earth. God created man in a very special way … He made man in His own image. God created us to be like Him and to rule over the earth. He created us for His own glory (Isaiah 43:7; Ephesians 1:11-12).

Our response to God’s creation is to enjoy it and to delight in Him for creating it. That same response is induced when we recognize that WE are His creations, made to enjoy being HIS creation and to take delight in Him for creating us. This is the thought that so easily escapes us. We are His and we are made to enjoy being His.

Thomas Merton framed it this way:

If we love God, in whose image we were created, we discover ourselves in him and we cannot help being happy: we have already achieved something of the fullness of being for which we were destined in our creation. If we love everything else but God, we contradict the image born in our very essence, and we cannot help being unhappy, because we are living a caricature of what we are meant to be.

In short, we are destined in our creation to discover our true selves by loving God, an act that brings us fullness of joy. When we discover who we are in Him, we experience a joy like no other. This brings great glory to our Creator because God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him.

As we sing “You Made Everything,” we can remember our God Who formed the heavens and the earth, Who commands the waves of the ocean and the beasts of the field, and Who created man in His image. But this song doesn’t just remind us of those things … it charges us to action. The chorus says “The breath I breathe, the song I sing … is for Your glory.” It gives action to our delight in our Creator God—with every breath, in every song, in all our words and deeds, we enjoy Him and find ourselves in Him.

For it’s not our labor to be His glory, it’s our delight. We aren’t burdened by being created for the praise of His glory, we are privileged. It’s for the love of the Creator that we’ve been created and it’s our glory to be His. Charles Spurgeon said it well in his commentary on Psalm 108:

It is my glory to be able to speak and not be a dumb animal, therefore my voice shall show forth thy praise; it is my glory to know God and not to be a heathen, and therefore my instructed intellect shall adore thee; it is my glory to be a saint and no more a rebel, therefore the grace I have received shall bless thee; it is my glory to be immortal and not a mere brute which perisheth, therefore my inmost life shall celebrate thy majesty.

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Justin Cofield
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Kids
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Austin Stone Creative
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kids worship
theology
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