We are created with the ability to make choices. God gave us this freedom to make choices throughout life because it is making choices that learn the clear consequences of the choices we make. We are also given a Helper from God in decision making but it is ultimately our choice to listen to Him and follow His powerful, righteous advice—or not. Throughout our lives we choose God or choose something or someone less than Him. God is a gentleman who waits nearby for our choice to be made. God shows us His best. The enemy of God shows us what looks almost the same but presents it being what we want and must have. This choice is opposite of what God gives. It is wrapped in beautiful, shiny, distracting ways, that draw us toward self-satisfaction which we learn never really satisfies our real need—the love of God.
Why, does He give us a choice? Why doesn’t God just tell us what to do and make us do it? He gives us the freedom to choose because of His great love for us. His love for us is a “not of this world” kind of Love. God’s love originates with Him who is Love. His love is holy and perfect. God’s desire, as demonstrated throughout His Word to us, is for His created to love Him back—without coercion or force—just simply love like He loves us! That is what will please God, the Father most of all!
Think about it, do you want your children and other loved ones to love you because you demanded love from them or because they decided to love you back because of their love for you?
How awesome that God’s love never changes for us. We love Him simply because He first loved us, says John. (1 John 4:19) God’s love is faithful through all generations. God’s love sent His One and Only Son who was a part of Himself, to earth to demonstrate this Love that goes beyond all others loves—to save us from our sins. What kind of love is this, we ask? Read 1 Corinthians 13 and Philippians 2 for greater understanding of this love of God. Spend time in 1 John 4 for a definition of God’s complete, unending Love.
As parents who love their children, we know there is no greater blessing than when our children from babies to toddlers reciprocate with their love and trust us without question. We gave them life. We daily sustained their life with food, shelter, clean clothes, hugs with assurances of our love for them. We love them by demonstrating our love for them. They learn love from us! There is no greater expression of this unconditional love than when your child comes running to you, excited to see and be with you. It’s absolutely beautiful to see our trusting children run to us with arms open wide, ready to smear sticky kisses all over our faces. There is no greater love than when they run to you for help, healing from scraps, and comfort in hurt. All this is the Love that originates with God and His demonstrated through us as He beloved. This is real Love, given and received, without conditions.
What happens when Love is tempted to be replaced by the love of the world? Soon, our children leave your home for eight hours a day to go to grade school, they are introduced to a new world of options. They soon discover that not all people know real love or express the kindness of love—just the opposite. (It is during this time that God’s love in you for your children must be affirmed daily!)
As our children learn to relate to others, they noticed that often love is said and used in ways for self-interest only. This kind of love keeps records of reciprocation, running records of offenses and wrongs, and rarely forgives unless it serves them. This is selfish love that teases, mocks, and manipulates people who fall their lies. Selfish love demands that others do their bidding so they can be popular and known as important. These behaviors of fake love are fine-tuned as they grow into the young adult and later adult years if real love is not caught, taught, and nourished by true believers who seek to know God and His love. But you probably know this and have experienced it. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” when it comes to living the love of God.
Given the knowledge of the Love of God, we are setting up the backdrop as God’s beloved Adam and Eve face the consequences of falling out of love for their Creator as they fall for the fake love and care from the enemy of God. Before the Fall they enjoyed a pure and holy relationship with their Creator. Imagine God walking into the beautiful garden “in the cool of the evening” to be with His beloved humans each day. Imagine the peace and tranquility they had with God in close communion with God.
But after the Fall; they are nowhere to be found. They are hiding from God. Shame and guilt have now become a part of their inner being which is not of God.
Genesis 3
The Fall
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring[a] and hers;
he will crush[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20 Adam[c] named his wife Eve,[d] because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?
I am a former public school teacher who spent many hours over my lifetime watching and monitoring kids at lunch recesses. I observed the repetitive human response when caught in the act of bad behaviors—and in this order! The guilty culprits first try to hide as the teacher comes over to evaluate the trouble. The experienced teacher typically knows who is at wrong by this action of hiding. When the offender is brought forward, they immediately shout these declarations in rapid fire:
“I didn’t do it!”
“He or she told me to do it!”
“Well, everybody was doing it!”
“Yes, I did it.”
“I’m sorry.”
On the playground or in the classroom; all the teacher had to do was keep looking into their eyes until the admission of guilt rose to the top of their thinking. Forgiveness was given. Lessons learned about acceptable behaviors and we moved forward with our lives.
On the playground of life these behaviors can be all too familiar. Adam and Eve where the first to fall to the blame game! So, our first response is to hide out, blame others, while trying to avoid honest repentance. We can face the consequences we fear with the power of God working in and through us. Learn from mistakes and shortcomings. Accept the forgiveness of Jesus. We can learn from the choices we make—good and bad. We are not perfect but we are perfectly forgiven by the God who so loved us and loves us still.
God wants us to simply believe, repent of sin in Jesus Name, and receive the newness of life with a transformed attitude—all because of His love taking up residence in our hearts, minds, and souls!
Soul-Talk
God the Creator completed his masterpiece by creating man and woman. God breathed life and spirit into his special handiwork.
Though sin entered the world, God also provided for redemption from sin. God created people with the freedom to choose or reject him. Our ancestors Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, and the consequences have been handed down to us.
What God gave Adam and Eve, he entrusted to you and me. A soul—the place where God’s Holy Spirit lives when we say yes to Him.
Entrust your soul to God, the Father! Run to the Father who created the Way for us to reconcile with Him. The Way is through His Son, Jesus Christ, who demonstrated the Truth of God’s love by willingly laying His life down for ours. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17
Believe and be saved. Then live like the redeemed—Free to love like God loves us!
This is my prayer, In Jesus Name, For His Glory, Amen!
Daily Manna (Coffee with Jesus) 