Thursday June 22, 2017

 

It was perfect until…

 

In the beginning, it was perfect. There were no worries, crying, no pain, no sin, and no death. Adam and Eve were in charge of everything. God trusted them fully and they enjoyed righteous standing with Him. That was until the day Adam and Eve elected to distrust God and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which God had previously warned them no to eat from.

 

Genesis: 3: 1-6 NLT

The Serpent: “Did God really say, you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”

 

Eve: “Of course we may eat from the trees in the garden, It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’”

 

The Serpent: “You won’t die! God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

 

The Author: The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So, she took some of the fruit and she ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it too.

 

At that precise moment, Adam and Eve created a mess of unimaginable proportions and sin entered the world. The mess was so big that no matter how hard they tried; they were never able to correct the ill consequences of their distrust. Because God is compassionate, He began the monumental task of cleaning up the mess; His starting point was with an intensely flawed man called Abraham to whom God had made a promise. God promised to turn him into a great nation, to make him famous, and to bless all the peoples of the world through him.

 

Abraham and his wife aged, they were an elderly couple and Abraham had yet to become a great nation; on the contrary, Abraham and his wife didn’t have one single child. Abraham was no closer to becoming famous than the day the Lord made him those promises. Furthermore, that promise about being a blessing to the peoples of the world, if the day the Lord made the promise it was improbable, at this old age it was surely impossible.

 

Impossible! That was precisely God’s point; God was about to start the cleanup process. God was not just going to clean around the surface of the mess, He was going to dig and begin to clean at its root cause. So God appeared to Abraham at his old age and said:

 

Genesis 15: 5,6 NLT
“Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can. That’s how many descendants you will have!”
And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.
God’s first step in cleaning up the monumental mess that mankind had made was not to find a good and perfect man as there were none. What God needed in order to start cleaning up the mess was simply someone who would trust him. Why is trusting God the first step in the cleanup process? Because the root of our problem IS NOT SIN; the root of our problem is distrust. Adam and Eve’s sin was preceded by distrust therefore the first step in solving the problem was to find someone who would trust.

 

Just like Adam and Eve, sin has ruined many areas of our lives and has distanced us from God, and no matter how hard we try we cannot fix the problem. However, God is compassionate. God wants to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. In order for God to address the root of your problem, you are going to have to TRUST Him. Trusting God is the starting point that leads us to a right standing with our Heavenly Father.