"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).
This verse is the doorway to the entire Bible. I suggest that you really won't understand anything else in the Bible until you understand this. You can't get to any other part of the Bible unless you go through Genesis 1:1. If you believe that, then the rest will be easy for you. Jonah and the whale? Piece of cake compared to this. If you can get this verse down, then the floating ax head of Elisha, Jesus walking on the water—all of it is a walk in the park compared to this glorious, majestic first act, the first uncaused cause. God created the heavens and the earth.
Do you realize that you can live your life with great confidence and stability if you believe this?
Consider this: scientists have discovered that the earth is situated perfectly to sustain life. People say, "Well, it just so happened." Okay, it just so happened that the earth is 93 million miles away from a sun that has a surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. If we were as close to the sun as Venus, we'd burn up, but if we were as far away as Mars, we'd freeze. And it just so happened that the earth makes 365 revolutions as it journeys around the sun. If it only made thirty, the days would be ten times longer and there would be alternate burning and freezing. It also just so happened that this revolving sphere is tilted on its axis perfectly in relation to the sun to give us four beautiful seasons. And it just so happened that if our oceans were half their present dimensions, there would be less than a quarter of the rainfall we now have on the earth; if the oceans were just one-eighth bigger, the earth would flood.
"This all just so happened. It was a wonderful accident." No—it's a marvelous design by a Creator. And we are the center of the universe as far as life is concerned. It's a pretty big universe. If you travel 186,000 miles per second, it would take you 100,000 years to get from one end of the Milky Way galaxy to the other end of it. And even then, you haven't left the front yard, because there are 100 billion more galaxies beyond our own. But God is interested in the earth. Now how does that make you feel?
In Acts 4, after Peter and John had been arrested in Jerusalem and the heat was on, do you remember how they prayed? "Lord, You are God, who made heaven and earth and the sea, and all that is in them" (v. 24). That's how they began their prayer. They went on to pray for a pretty hefty thing, but they couldn't have prayed for that unless they made that beginning statement. "You created the heavens, the earth, and the sea, and if You did that, then You can certainly answer this. Before I bring my issue, my problem, to You, I'm recognizing who You are." And if you believe that that's who God is, then you're going to find faith comes quite easily. When you have a relationship with the One who made the heavens and the earth, the sky is the limit.