91. In the Beginning: The Power of the Faithful God

G' day and welcome to Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

Dave here, it's the first episode of 2026 and to celebrate the beginning of the year, we're gonna start by looking at the beginning of the world.

That's right in the Bible book of Genesis.

We're going to go back before there were any armpits, before there was any ice cream, even back before there were any grandparents.

We're going right back to the beginning.

Before we travel back though, I want to give a big shout out to Clifton in Texas and his mum Patty.

Clifton was the very first person to send in some colouring, which you can now see at the website faithfulgod.net on the page for episode 90.

Thanks so much, Clifton, and thanks for listening.

If you'd like to get your colouring on the website, click on the link in the show notes, choose your episode picture to colour in and send it through to me.

Or if you want to create your own drawing for an episode or make a scene out of Lego or anything else, get a grown up to take a picture of it and send it to me@daveaithfulgod.net that's daveaithfulgod.net if you do that, I'll send you some videos as a thank you.

Be careful though, don't try and make a picture of God.

He's asked us not to do that.

Okay, on with the show, we're gonna find out just how powerful you are.

I want you to hold out your hand, make sure there's nothing in your hand.

If you're with someone else, make sure they're holding out their hand.

And there's nothing in their hand either.

Okay, now on the count of three, I want you to say these words.

You're going to say, let there be an elephant in my hand.

Are you ready?

1, 2, 3.

Did anything happen?

I'm guessing not.

Maybe try it again, but with a really deep voice like this.

Let there be an elephant in my hand.

Go.

Anything.

What about the other people around you?

Did they make an elephant?

Of course not.

You and I just don't have that power.

There is someone who does though, and he's going to use that power to do amazing things.

Get ready for our next episode of Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

So what happened at the beginning?

I don't mean the beginning of the year or the beginning of your life or even the beginning of your country.

I mean like the beginning beginning, the beginning of the whole world.

Well, Genesis chapter one, verse one says in the beginning, God Created the sky and the earth.

What?

The whole earth.

Everything in it and everything in the sky.

He just made it all.

How?

Well, the rest of the chapter tells us at the beginning, everything's dark.

So dark you can't see a thing.

Not even the hand in front of your face.

And everything's wet.

There's water everywhere.

Water down below, water up high.

But above the water, something's stirring.

Someone is moving about.

The someone is God's holy Spirit.

Because God is about to do something amazing.

God speaks.

Not secret, magical words, just normal, everyday words.

Words that you or I can say.

Of course, when we say them, nothing happens.

But when God speaks.

Whoa.

In verse three, God says, let there be light, and bam.

Light everywhere.

Brilliant shining light.

Light that's come from nowhere, from nothing.

There's no light bulb.

There's no torch.

There isn't even any sun.

The light only exists because God's word is so powerful.

When he says, let there be light, the light has to obey and suddenly come into existence.

God looks at the light and he's like, oh, that's good.

He separates the light from the darkness.

He calls the light day, and he calls the darkness night.

Evening comes, then morning.

And that's the end of the first day.

The first day, like ever.

Day two.

God speaks again in verse six.

He says, let there be something to divide the water in two.

He doesn't mean let there be water on the left and water on the right with something in between.

No, he means let there be water up and water down and something in between.

He gives the something in between a name.

He calls it sky.

The water up above is the clouds.

Next time you're in front of some water, you try telling some of it to float up into the sky.

See how that works out.

Now think about all the water in all the world.

All the oceans and seas and rivers and lakes and all the clouds up above.

The cute white fluffy ones that look like bunny rabbits, and the dark black ones and the wide grey ones and the long streaky ones.

God just spoke some words and they all went into their place.

Evening passes and morning comes.

The second day is over.

Day three.

God speaks again in verse nine.

He says, let the water under the sky be gathered together so the dry land will appear.

Can you imagine looking out on a planet that's all ocean?

There's just water as far as the eye can see.

And then God speaks.

And a mountain shoots up through the waves, climbing higher and higher, and then valleys and hills and flat land.

Suddenly there are whole continents all around the world, God's told the water, you can only come this far, but no further.

If you go to a beach or a cliff and you watch the waves crashing in and then stop, that's because God's told them, nope, you can't come here.

That's the place for dry land.

You have to stay over there.

He calls the water sea and the dry land earth.

He looks at it all and he's like, oh, that's good.

On the same day, God makes something else.

Verse 11 says.

Then God said, let the earth produce plants.

Some plants will make grain for seeds.

Others will make fruit with seeds in it.

Every seed will produce more of its own kind of plant.

And it happened.

The earth produced plants.

Some plants had grain for seeds.

The trees made fruits with seeds in it.

Each seed grew its own kind of plant.

God saw that this was all good.

Think about the tallest of tall trees and the tiniest blade of grass.

Think of the fruit trees, the apples and oranges and pears and melons and mangoes and strawberries and raspberries and peaches and plums and nectarines and cherries.

Think about the wheat and barley and rice and oats and potatoes and corn.

And think of the beautiful flowers, the tulips and roses and irises and orchids and gerberas and sunflowers.

And we've barely even begun to scratch the surface.

All these amazing plants, thought up, designed, planned, and then made to exist by our amazing God.

Evening passes and morning comes.

The third day is over.

At the end of the third day, we're halfway through God making everything he's made.

Light and sky and seas and dry land and plants.

Now, in the next three days, he's going to fill all those places, starting with the light.

In verse 14, God says, Let there be lights in the sky to separate day from night.

These lights will be used for signs.

Seasons, days and years.

They will be in the sky to give light to the Earth.

The lights in the sky are the ones we see.

The sun, the moon, and the stars.

Just think about the power of God to make them.

The sun is really hot, 15 million degrees centigrade in the middle, and it's really, really big.

You could fit 1.3 million Earths inside the sun, and it just popped into existence because the powerful God told it to.

And the stars, which are all suns, just really far away.

God didn't just make one or ten or a hundred.

If you want to know how many stars scientists think there might be, Write the number one, then put a zero after it to make it 10 and then put another 24 zeros.

That's one septillion stars all there because they obeyed God when He told them to exist.

God really is amazing.

He looks at the sun and the moon and the stars and he's like, that's good.

Evening passes and morning comes.

The fourth day is over.

Now it's time to fill the sky and the sea.

And, boy, does God fill them.

Verse 20 says, Then God said, let the water be filled with living things and let birds fly in the air above the earth.

So God created the large sea animals.

He created every living thing that moves in the sea.

The sea is filled with these living things.

Each one produces more of its own kind.

God also made every bird that flies, and each bird produces more of its own kind.

The biggest animal in the ocean is the blue whale.

It's as long as two and a half buses.

It's the giant of the ocean.

God designed and made its giant heart, its giant body, its giant mouth.

He put everything in place.

He also designed the tiniest fish with their tiny scales and tiny brains and tiny eyes.

He made the birds soar through the sky like the mighty albatross whose wings can grow up to 3 and a half meters or 11 and a half feet.

On all the birds big and small, he perfectly placed every colour and every feather to make the perfect pattern for each kind of bird.

And when he made them, he kindly blessed them.

In verse 22 we read, God blessed them and said, have many young ones and grow in number.

Fill the water of the seas and let the birds grow in number on the earth.

And that's what we see now.

The world is filled with birds and sea creatures.

Evening passes and morning comes.

The fifth day is over.

It's time to fill the dry land.

Just like he made lots of sea creatures and birds and blessed them.

Now God does that with land animals.

Verse 24 says, Then God said, let the earth be filled with animals and let each produce more of its own kind.

Let there be tame animals and small crawling animals and wild animals and let each produce more of its kind.

And it happened.

So God made the wild animals, the tame animals and all the small crawling animals to produce more of their own kind.

God saw that this was good.

Have you ever watched a dog sniff the wind?

Or seen a cat balance on a fence?

How about an elephant mother caring for her child?

Or a koala sleeping in the fork of a tree?

Have you seen a grizzly bear catching fish?

Or a colony of ants walking in a line to the Food.

Think about the shuffling of a mouse in the forest at night, or a worm winding its way through the dark earth, or a lion crouching in the grass.

Or penguins huddling together through the long Antarctic night and the blast of the icy winds.

Think about the beauty of a reindeer, the strength of a gorilla, the wisdom of a spider as it weaves its web.

The howl of a wolf, the sleekness of a cheetah.

The voracious hunger of a caterpillar.

The gentle, constant chewing of a cow.

All imagined, all planned, all designed and made by the powerful word of the Creator, God.

Now there's just one more type of creature left to make.

In some ways, this creature's going to be just like all the other land creatures.

It's going to have a lot in common with cows and mice and chimpanzees.

But in one really important way, this creature is going to be completely different.

Different because this creature is going to be made in God's image.

An image is a picture.

If someone takes a photo of you, that's an image of you.

It looks like you.

When people see it, they know it's an image of you, but they also know it isn't actually you.

Sometimes you might put an image of yourself on something to show that you own it.

Maybe your grown ups have a driver's license with their image on it.

It belongs to them and the image proves it.

This creature God's going to make in his image won't exactly look like him, but it will be like him in some really important ways.

And it will be there on the Earth to prove that God owns the Earth and to show the earth what God is like.

The creature is us humans.

In verse 26, God Let us make human beings in our image and likeness and let them rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky.

Let them rule over the tame animals, over all the Earth, and over all the small crawling animals on the Earth.

Humans are made to rule the world, not in a mean, nasty way, but in a way that shows the kindness and love of the God who made the world.

If we don't do that, we're not being very good images of God.

We rule on God's behalf under God's authority.

And we should rule the world like God wants us to.

God makes every human in his image, and he makes us all together in his image.

We can never say we're more or less important than other people or that we're worth more or less.

We also can't say we don't need each other because together we're made in God's image.

I need you, you need me.

We need everyone else.

Really importantly, men and boys need women and girls, and women and girls need men and boys.

Sometimes men and women don't treat each other very well.

Or we act like we don't need each other or like one is more important than the other.

That is not what God says.

Verse 27 says, so God created human beings in his image, in the image of God.

He created them.

He created them, male and female.

God blessed them and said, have many children and grow in number.

Fill the earth and be its master.

Rule over the fish in the sea and over all the small crawling animals on the earth.

And then God blesses humans.

He's really kind to them and gives them heaps of good things.

He says in verse 29, Look, I have given you all the plants that have grain for seeds, and I have given you all the trees whose fruits have seeds in them.

They will be food for you.

I have given all the green plants to all the animals to eat.

They will be food for every wild animal, every bird of the air, and every small crawling animal.

And then it's done.

The sky and earth and everything in them is finished.

God looks at everything he's made, and he doesn't just think it's good.

He's like, that's very good.

Evening passes and morning comes.

The sixth day is over.

And on the seventh day, God rests.

Not because he's tired, but because all the work is done.

God's made the whole world in just six days.

In fact, we're told in chapter two, verse three, God blessed the seventh day and made it a holy day.

He made it holy because on that day, he rested.

He rested from all the work he'd done in creating the world.

It's really amazing how God made the world.

It's amazing how powerful His Word is.

It's wonderful how good he is and how he made the world so good.

When Jesus came into the world, at first no one thought he was God.

They just thought he was a regular human.

In fact, they thought it would be impossible for God to become a human.

But then they saw what happened when Jesus spoke.

When he told the wind to stop, it stopped.

When he told waves to be still, they were still.

When he told sick bodies to get better, they got better.

And when he told dead people to come back alive, they came back alive.

Only one person's word has that much power.

The God who created the world.

And that's who we meet.

In Jesus back at the beginning of the world, God's told us lots of good things, but he wants to give us more detail, especially about how he made the first man and the first woman.

But that's a story for next time.

Hi everyone.

I hope you enjoyed the episode.

I'm really looking forward to looking at the first few chapters of Genesis with you.

In the show notes.

I've put a link to a short video I've made, a video that shows lots of the life God's made.

I think it's really fun and I hope you enjoy it as well.

It goes for about three minutes.

Don't forget you can do some colouring from this episode.

Just follow the link in the show notes or send me a picture of the scene that you make with your own stuff.

You can send it to daveaithfulgod.net grown ups if you want to think more about the creation story, head on over to the Stories of a Faithful God podcast.

I've done an episode there where I talk about some of the difficulties people have with this chapter we've just looked at and how I approach them.

For now, don't forget to watch the fun video.

It's right there in the show notes.

Click on it straight away.

Keep trusting Jesus and we'll talk again soon.