The Holy One calls to me this morning. This time of year and the celebration of the birth of the Savior Christ Jesus,always causes me to look back to the beginning of history and the garden of our origins.
The Holy One stops my nostalgic journey back through time and provides a provoking thought, "The Garden was a divine set-up". It is easy for me, in all my flesh failure, to look at original sin with frustration for the weak-willed woman and her oh-so-manipulated partner.
For those of us on this side of the cross, living in the grace and with the continuous presence of the Holy Spirit, Who convicts and empowers us to step away from temptation, we may find it hard to understand and then forgive what led to our eviction from paradise at the fall. If only the pair had just obeyed that one rule. However, as I process His statement and retrace my way through God's Word I begin to see the "fall" from a different perspective.
With the story of creation layed out before me, I realize how we usually look at the account and our Creator in one of 2 ways:
A. We see God taken by surprise, almost wringing His hands at his "perfect pair" gone wild, and severely disappointed by their rebellious actions, Or....
B. We see God as the hard-hearted judge, full of fury at the regrettable but (to our human minds), slightly explainable violation of the rule.
As believers we can walk on the surface of the Divine, refusing to go deeper, but for me, I choose to take the plunge and head for the depths to better understand what Holy Spirit wants to show me. That's when He points to things in His word that I never noticed before.
In Gen 2:15-16, after the Lord God did all the creating except for Eve, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, "you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you eat of it you will surely die."
When I recall that scripture in my mind I did not noticed that God said "when you eat of it", not "IF" you eat of it. "When" designates an inevitability that "if" leaves as a possibility.
It is easy to attribute to the Sovereign, the limitation in knowledge that we humans suffer. But God is all knowing. God knew all the players in the garden before they met up and He knew in advance what each would do. Nothing takes God by surprise: not our sinful depravity or our human efforts to please Him and not even the intervention by the serpent called Satan.
We can be assured that if God knew what would happen in the garden, God also had a plan from the beginning that factored in man's rebellion and restoration back to the original love relationship with Himself. Otherwise an all-powerful Sovereign could have and would have destroyed the disappointing humans.
To see the end from the beginning is God's perspective. Outside of time and space He awaits this grace period to end when He will gather up all those who desire to be in fellowship and community with Him and with others who feel the same way. Paradise lost was only the beginning and the call for the created to search for the Creator.
We are given a little glimpse of Paradise to stimulate our desire for it. Just as the life of our Lord gave us a little glimpse of the relationship with God to stimulate our desire for it. From beginning to end, the plan was to make Heaven and the unity with our Creator available to those who would truly desire it.
Desire is made evident by a choice and a decision to pursue it. Difficulties in pursuing desire make evident the passion for the desire and even test the desire itself. We can say we desire to know God but not take the time or make the effort to read about Him from His word or talk to Him through prayer and conversation. Our will must be equal to our passion or our passion will burn out, our desire will chill out and we will lose out on the delightful relationship He offers to all who call upon His Name.
From Genesis to Revelation God's plan is to share eternity with His beloved and the only catch is that we must accept the Kingdom of Heaven as His. We are invited to come in, not as a right but a privilege. Free will is ours, to make that decision and accept the invite that is sealed by the blood of Jesus given in payment of our debt. After that, free will ends and our lives become a matter of surrender, privilege replaces right and desire for relationship with the Lord becomes reality.
The garden really was a set-up, quite necessary in the eternal schemes of things. Rebellion was exposed and free will tested. Heaven is a closed community and only those who love the Lord and are willing to surrender to His will and His way will enter His Kingdom. Rebellion brings chaos and will not be tolerated by the God of order. Heaven is a kingdom and not a democracy. Jesus is a King and not a president. The road is narrow that leads to life and the map has been given for us to follow.
Funny how people are willing to accept the toxic fruit hanging on the forbidden tree but reject God's antidote hanging from the other one.
The Spirit is calling. Can you Hear Him?
The Holy One stops my nostalgic journey back through time and provides a provoking thought, "The Garden was a divine set-up". It is easy for me, in all my flesh failure, to look at original sin with frustration for the weak-willed woman and her oh-so-manipulated partner.
For those of us on this side of the cross, living in the grace and with the continuous presence of the Holy Spirit, Who convicts and empowers us to step away from temptation, we may find it hard to understand and then forgive what led to our eviction from paradise at the fall. If only the pair had just obeyed that one rule. However, as I process His statement and retrace my way through God's Word I begin to see the "fall" from a different perspective.
With the story of creation layed out before me, I realize how we usually look at the account and our Creator in one of 2 ways:
A. We see God taken by surprise, almost wringing His hands at his "perfect pair" gone wild, and severely disappointed by their rebellious actions, Or....
B. We see God as the hard-hearted judge, full of fury at the regrettable but (to our human minds), slightly explainable violation of the rule.
As believers we can walk on the surface of the Divine, refusing to go deeper, but for me, I choose to take the plunge and head for the depths to better understand what Holy Spirit wants to show me. That's when He points to things in His word that I never noticed before.
In Gen 2:15-16, after the Lord God did all the creating except for Eve, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, "you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you eat of it you will surely die."
When I recall that scripture in my mind I did not noticed that God said "when you eat of it", not "IF" you eat of it. "When" designates an inevitability that "if" leaves as a possibility.
It is easy to attribute to the Sovereign, the limitation in knowledge that we humans suffer. But God is all knowing. God knew all the players in the garden before they met up and He knew in advance what each would do. Nothing takes God by surprise: not our sinful depravity or our human efforts to please Him and not even the intervention by the serpent called Satan.
We can be assured that if God knew what would happen in the garden, God also had a plan from the beginning that factored in man's rebellion and restoration back to the original love relationship with Himself. Otherwise an all-powerful Sovereign could have and would have destroyed the disappointing humans.
To see the end from the beginning is God's perspective. Outside of time and space He awaits this grace period to end when He will gather up all those who desire to be in fellowship and community with Him and with others who feel the same way. Paradise lost was only the beginning and the call for the created to search for the Creator.
We are given a little glimpse of Paradise to stimulate our desire for it. Just as the life of our Lord gave us a little glimpse of the relationship with God to stimulate our desire for it. From beginning to end, the plan was to make Heaven and the unity with our Creator available to those who would truly desire it.
Desire is made evident by a choice and a decision to pursue it. Difficulties in pursuing desire make evident the passion for the desire and even test the desire itself. We can say we desire to know God but not take the time or make the effort to read about Him from His word or talk to Him through prayer and conversation. Our will must be equal to our passion or our passion will burn out, our desire will chill out and we will lose out on the delightful relationship He offers to all who call upon His Name.
From Genesis to Revelation God's plan is to share eternity with His beloved and the only catch is that we must accept the Kingdom of Heaven as His. We are invited to come in, not as a right but a privilege. Free will is ours, to make that decision and accept the invite that is sealed by the blood of Jesus given in payment of our debt. After that, free will ends and our lives become a matter of surrender, privilege replaces right and desire for relationship with the Lord becomes reality.
The garden really was a set-up, quite necessary in the eternal schemes of things. Rebellion was exposed and free will tested. Heaven is a closed community and only those who love the Lord and are willing to surrender to His will and His way will enter His Kingdom. Rebellion brings chaos and will not be tolerated by the God of order. Heaven is a kingdom and not a democracy. Jesus is a King and not a president. The road is narrow that leads to life and the map has been given for us to follow.
Funny how people are willing to accept the toxic fruit hanging on the forbidden tree but reject God's antidote hanging from the other one.
The Spirit is calling. Can you Hear Him?
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