1 Corinthians 15:45-49 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
On the sixth day, as the universe stood complete, God paused. One final creation remained—a masterpiece unlike any other. This being would bear His own image, a living reflection of the Divine (Genesis 1:26-27).
The Hebrew word for “image,” tzelem, is profoundly connected to tzel, meaning “shadow.” God fashioned Adam to be His shadow on earth—a living, breathing reflection of His glory and nature. From the first Adam to you and me, we are not just flesh and blood; we are living reflections of the Almighty, cast upon this earth to reveal the unseen God.
God reached down, gathered adama (earth), and molded it into a vessel. Then, He breathed His Spirit into that lifeless clay, and Adam became a living soul—a blend of dust and blood, adama and dam. And in this divine act, a profound truth was revealed: when the blood (dam) ceases to flow, life departs, and we return to the dust (adama) from which we were formed.
Centuries later, the Second Adam, Yeshua, entered the world—the visible image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15-17). Just as the first Adam was formed from earth and infused with divine breath, Yeshua was born of human blood yet carried the very breath of God Himself. And just as Adam was called to reflect the Creator, we are called to reflect the Messiah—to walk as His shadow, bearing the imprint of His life, love, and light.
Never forget: You are His divine shadow—a living, breathing reflection of the Almighty. Let His light blaze through you, that those around you may behold the One who shaped you from dust and ignited your soul with His very breath.
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]The revivalist D.L. Moody was on vacation in England from his ministry in Chicago. At one point during his sabbatical there, a local pastor prevailed upon Moody to speak at his parish church. So D.L. went to preach the next Sunday morning. That afternoon he recorded in his journal that it was the deadest crowd he had ever seen and the only thing worse than preaching to those people was that he had promised to speak again the same night.
Yesterday, my family and I had the privilege of being among the nearly 300,000 individuals at the March for Israel event in Washington, D.C. As many in the crowd stood in solidarity with Israel, I reflected on our role as believers. In these last days, we are simply called to be watchmen on the walls.
During the Battle of Britain, the German Luftwaffe rained down about thirty-five thousand bombs upon London during nightly air raids, causing terrifying fear and tremendous destruction and mayhem in large parts of London.
Over the years I’ve often gotten emails asking “Do you think revival will ever come to the United States?, When do you think it will come?” While re-reading Charles Finney’s lectures on revival recently, I was reminded that a key aspect of world revival is revival within ourselves.
Jonah the prophet ran from what he considered a difficult and abhorrent assignment from God, thinking he could escape to a place where he couldn't be found. He refused to obey the Lord and he boarded a ship headed in the opposite direction. But YHVH's irrevocable gifts and callings were faithfully resting upon His servant Jonah, and He provided the drama needed to bring his man around. He sent a great storm which rocked Jonah's boat and then a large fish which ate him! These persuasions changed Jonah's attitude.
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When the apostle Paul compared our lives to clay pots, he focused not on the earthen vessels, but rather the contents of those vessels. Jars of clay deteriorate over time, become chipped, cracked, and eventually broken. However, the real value of those ancient pots was not in the clay containers themselves, but in what they contained.