Praying All of Scripture: Genesis
Author: Daniel Owens, PhD
June 13, 2025
First in a series.
Genesis 1:1, 31a
1In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…. 31And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Genesis 3:15
15“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Genesis 12:1–3
1Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Genesis 50:20
20“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
What kind of stories do you tell when you are sitting around talking with friends and family? Most of us tell stories of our experience, perhaps of funny moments in family lore or wild events from time with friends.
My mother is fond of reminding me of a time when a woman in our neighborhood visited our home and asked me, “So, Daniel, what’s your story?” She just was trying to spark conversation, but being young and very concrete in my thinking, I disappeared and brought back a book for her to read for me! I was all about particular stories, especially the fun kind.
Most of the stories we tell are particular stories, not stories that impact all of humanity. In the eponymous movie, Forrest Gump proves to be a compelling, if not entirely plausible, character due to the naïve and straightforward way he stumbles onto all kinds of big events and persons in the latter half of 20th century America. But even he is limited to his time and, mostly, to America.
But the Bible begins with a book that is both a family story and a universal story. It begins with God creating a good world (Gen. 1:1, 31a), and it ends with God rescuing a family of brothers from famine, bringing them to Egypt to keep them alive, despite and even through their best attempts to do harm to one of their own (Gen. 50:20).
In between is the universal story of human rebellion, begun by one man and one woman (Genesis 3). God calls one man, Abram (later renamed Abraham, the meaning of which is that he would be “the father of a multitude of nations”), to take his family to Canaan, receive God’s blessing, and become the means by which God will address that human rebellion for the good of all families on the earth (Gen. 12:1–3). The book is clearly concerned for a family, but it is also concerned for all the families descended from the first man and woman. And that concern aims to see God’s blessing extended to all nations through Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:8).
How can Genesis guide us to pray? In its breathtaking scope, Genesis taps into one family’s story to tell us the story of God and humanity. And so we can pray,
God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, who gave us a good world that we have since corrupted with our disobedience, from the time of Adam and Eve until now, we confess that we, just like our first parents, are worthy of death. We thank you for the promise of the seed of the woman, who would trample on the serpent’s head and be the source of blessing to all humanity. We praise you for Jesus, who lived as we do, with temptations to sin and rebellion, yet walked with you in righteousness. He willingly offered himself in our stead, to taste death for us and at our hands according to our scheming to break him. This was all to rescue us from death and preserve us for relationship with you. Help us to believe in you, that it may be credited to our account as righteousness, through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
Daniel Owens is NCC’s Pastor of Discipleship.
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