This series of brief messages on life and service are being given for the purpose of training the saints. You need to pray much to get yourself into these messages, and even to get these messages into you. Merely to repeat what is here in black and white will be a kind of dead speaking of knowledge according to the dead letter. These messages may be considered as groceries, which you need to cook in a living way through much, much prayer. You have to pray yourself into the message, pray yourself into a burden, and pray that the message will become your personal message in a living way. These are just the materials, but you have to cook them. You have to labor on all these points, and you have to pray until you yourself get into these messages, making them your own messages. Then you will speak not my message but your message, and you will speak out from your being with much exercise of your spirit. Then whatever you speak will be living, will be personal, and will be with the living impact. I do hope that we will not carry out this training in a light way but in a way full of prayer, full of the Spirit, and full of life.
In this first lesson on life, we want to speak about the creation of man. We need to read all the verses cited in the Scripture reading above and be impressed with the main points of these verses.
The Creator of man is the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Man's creation was wrapped up with the Divine Trinity. It was not merely God who created man but it was the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. This is based upon Genesis 1:26, which says, "God said, Let us make man in our image." Here the plural pronouns us and our are used, indicating that the very God who intended to create man was triune—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. According to Genesis 1:26, it seems that before God came in to create man, the Triune God had a kind of "Godhead conference," a kind of conference among the Trinity, to make a decision about how to create man in His image and after His likeness. The decision to create man was made by the Triune God, indicating that the creation of man was for the purpose of the Triune God. The Trinity of the Godhead is not for theological doctrine, but for the dispensing of God Himself into man according to His divine economy. Thus, at the very beginning when God intended to create man, God decided to do so in His Trinity. This is why He said, "Let us make man in our image." God's intention in creating man was to carry out His economy for His dispensing of Himself into man.