Romans 1:18-22

"(18) The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, (19)since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. (20)For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (21) For although they knew God, they neither glorifeid him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. (22) Although they clamied to be wise they became fools (23) and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles."

Most churches teach that God is a loving God - and he is. He loves each and every one of us, but there is another side and that is the wrathful God who is against the wickedness of men, but we'll get back to that. Paul talks about how God made himself clearly known through what he has made which is this beautiful world around us. Personally, if we really think about the complexity of our bodies, ecosystems, and universe it would be hard to think that it just randomly happened, that we just randomly evolved from goo that was swirling around in the ocean. I firmly believe that we were created by an eternally powerful God. It would be really hard to deny that He exists because we can't cut ourselves off from the natural world - we see it all the time. But people did and people do deny that he exists by putting other things before God. Back in Paul's day they created idols that looked like the world they were familiar with to worship. Sure God created the world, but the THINGS in the world were not created to be worshiped. The creator was supposed to be worshiped. Now don't look down your noses at the people in Paul's world because we do the same thing. We put THINGS like money, food, jobs, power, family, worries, etc. before God. Maybe we don't bow down and worship or worries, but we definately put them ahead of God when we let them consume us so that we cannot think about anything else. Remember that God is wrathful plus he created us and this world, so please pray that you won't put anything above God. More on this tomorrow :-)