THINGS WE KNOW BY INSTINCT -- Devotional for March 11, from "Good Seeds"

That which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.. (Romans 1:19,20)

We say we are glad not to know the future, for such knowledge would either tint or taint each of our decisions and actions, and we could not find joy in simply living in and for the present. Yes it is not only a promise from God, but a blessing, that He has our future well in hand, and that we need only trust Him moment by moment for divinely appointed direction and provision (see Jeremiah 29:11 and Matthew 6:25-34). And yet, it seems God DOES want us to know certain things about our life. He has chosen to reveal these things to us through one of two sources: Creation, or Revelation. When God made the first man, Adam, it says “He breathed life into him so he became a living spirit” (Genesis 2:7). It also says that He made man “in His own image” (Genesis 1:27). As God brought mankind into being, He put into us not just the breath of life, but certain basic realizations about life. He built into the warp and woof of our very nature certain understandings. Consider two such understandings: 1) Self-awareness. Other living things seem not to know what they are, or even THAT they are, but a man instinctively knows a) he resides in a certain place, taking up a certain space, and that b) he exists, not in some eternal now, but in the context of time that also includes the past and future. He seems quite aware of his humanness, without needing to be instructed. Few people today would disagree with this assumption regarding man’s instinctive self-awareness. But many would take exception to this second assumption regarding our instincts, though it is just as valid: 2) God-awareness. Though some refuse to admit the existence of God, they would have to assassinate their brains into order to explain the existence of orderly design in the universe apart from an Orderly Designer! They’re left with the nonsense theory that the world came about by mere accident, and then went through processes of self-improvement over millions of years by millions of mutations – flukes of nature – to bring about a world filled with beautiful, intelligent, civilized and creative human beings as we see today. It is no more logical to expect a world to have a World-Maker than to know that to have a violin, there must be a violin maker. How can those who would agree to the second so vehemently deny the first, and reject the fact that the argument is identical? You tell me!