One of the amazing aspects about God’s creation is the power of instinct where God himself builds into the DNA and psyche of every living thing some innate, inherent behavior.
Birds do not go to a “bird school” for them to learn how to fly and protect and care for their young. They just do! Instinctively! Nor do bears get tutored in how to search out food and build protective caves. They do it by instinct.
Canada geese and Monarch butterflies do not study maps on how to navigate their flights to migrate to warmer locations in the winter months. But each year, before the hard winter weather settles in, they find their way thousands of miles often to the same locations as the year before. How? It is the amazing power of God-given, built-in instinct!
Human beings are not sent off to institutes of higher learning to become parents, they just become parents and follow the innate instincts God implanted within them to properly nurture and care for their young. Whether that person lives in some sophisticated urban city or in the jungles of South America; whether he has a PhD behind his name or has had no schooling at all, the parental instinct kicks in at the birth of a child. That’s how God made him – with the ability to think, reason, love and respond. (Genesis 1:27)
The Bible tells us “We have everything we need to live a life that pleases God.” (II Peter 1:3) And, “we are complete in Him.” Everything that man would need to live life purposefully and well was built into his being by a loving and caring God when “…he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” (Genesis 12:7)
HOWEVER, when birds disregard instinct, they get lost. When bears go against instinct, their young are not cared for and die. And when humans resist instinct and insist on their own way, trouble begins. At the moment a man violates God’s Word and implanted instincts and begins to replace them with his own ideas of good and bad, right and wrong, he begins to be led astray and chaos results.
Paul warned believers living in the sexually permissive and corrupt city of Corinth, “Some of you say, ‘We can do anything we want to!’ But I tell you that not everything may be good or helpful. When you eat or drink or do anything else, always do it to honor God.” (I Cor. 10:23, 31) He instructed young Timothy, “…be faithful and have a clear conscience. Some people have made a mess of their faith because they didn’t listen to their consciences.” (I Tim. 1:19)
“All of us were like sheep that had wandered off. We had each gone our own way, but the Lord gave him (Jesus) the punishment we deserved.” (Isaiah 53:6 CEV) “And God was pleased for him to make peace by sacrificing his blood on the cross, so that all beings in heaven and on earth would be brought back to God.” (Colossians 1:20 CEV)
Be blessed my friend.
Glen (Pitts)
The Barnabas Group / Loads of Love
