Studies In The Kingdom Of God

Volume 1: Chapter 9: Beauty Of God: The Only Wonder Worthy Of Our Fascination

"One thing I have asked from the Lord that I shall seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple." Psalm 27:4 (emphasis mine)

"...he will dwell on the heights, his refuge will be the impregnable rock, his bread will be given him, and his water will be sure. Your eyes will see the King in His beauty, they will behold a far-distant land." Isaiah 33:16-17 (emphasis mine)

We were created to be fascinated! God created us with tremendous spiritual, mental, emotional and physical prowess so that we could experience, respond to, and interact with Him and His creation at the highest possible level. Our physical senses and soulish desires were in perfect harmony with and in subjection to our spirits, which was in intimate fellowship and communication with God. When we experienced God and His creation, we experienced them as God intended for us to experience them and to receive the best possible benefit from them, as He intended it to be. When God completed His creation, He said that it was "very good". When God says something is "very good", it is awesome!

When God created human beings, He created us with our entire being aligned perfectly with the will and purpose that God had intended for us – nothing was out of place or "misaligned". God created us to enjoy, rule over and subdue the earth as His regents but God created us to be fascinated with Him and Him alone. We were fascinated with God until we turned our eyes from the beauty of God and onto ourselves. We thought that we could be just like God. In one sinful act, we became fascinated with ourselves and turned our eyes from the only person we could ever, truly, be fascinated with - God.

Since the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden, we have been trying to discover something or someone who could, once again, fascinate us. As much as we have endeavored to maintain our fascination with ourselves and our achievements, we always seem to come up short of our expectations. We believed a lie to begin with. We believed that we could fascinate ourselves but we were wrong...we are, still, wrong. Some of us have come to the stark realization that we will never be able to fascinate ourselves but the great majority of us still believe the lie and are going to great lengths in an effort to fascinate ourselves with our own devices.

God never intended for us to be fascinated with anyone or anything but Him. We were created to gaze upon Him with fascination and amazement. He created us with such advanced attributes and capabilities, nothing was to amaze us and fascinate us like only God can. He was to be the only wonder worthy of our fascination. The fact is, He still is...that hasn't changed. As much as we endeavor to discover other creatures or manufacture other things to fascinate us, everything else comes up short. We keep inventing and authoring and developing new things, hoping that they will bring us the fascination we so deeply desire and long for. Yet, nothing seems to satisfy that longing.

In 1977, the original "Star Wars" movie was released. It has been said that in that moment, in the opening scene of the movie when the large space ship slowly entered the screen from overhead and seemed to fill the entire room with its presence and sounds as it pursued the much smaller ship in front of it, moviemaking and the movie "experience" changed forever. People seemed to finally experience what we had all hoped for - we were finally fascinated and amazed, or so we thought.

Even though we thought we were fascinated, we kept clamoring for more; better cinematography, better sound, and a better physical interaction with the movie. This desire to be even more fascinated brought the Dolby Surround Sound experience. Yet, that wasn't enough. Next came the 3-D experience, where the characters and action seemed to leap off the screen and include the audience in the action.