Adam and Eve were the representation of the whole of humanity. Each individual alive today has the same two options. Most people choose to live by their own authority. Like Adam and Eve, they put more faith in their own autonomy (self) than they put in the will of God. Also like Adam and Eve, each of those individuals comes to the same hard realization: not only have they plucked from the wrong tree, they've also bitten off more than they can chew.
The story of the Garden of Eden is a parallel to our reality today. We do not dwell in the midst of God's authority because we insist upon our own. We live by our own rules, our own motivations, and our own hand. None of them as capable, productive or selfless as God's law, motivation and Hand. Because our own ways are often misguided, we experience resulting fear, failure and anxiety.
We struggle to do what is effortless for God: sustain our spirit, and maintain order in our lives.
We struggle to do what is effortless for God: sustain our spirit, and maintain order in our lives.
- TEMPTATION IN THE GARDEN
The serpent ignited temptation in Adam and Eve and they chose to forfeit their relationship with God to pursue those desires. Suddenly, starkly, they realized that they were naked. They were shocked by their new state of vulnerability. The realization of their own ineptitude to deal with the knowledge they newly acquired. They took for granted the absolute protection God had provided. For to forfeit our relationship with God is to divest ourselves of the spiritual vestments we need to thrive. To feel safe. To feel whole and covered.
The serpent approaches each of us in the midst of the world, he/it materializes as the voice of pride and fear, greed and lust, anger and selfishness. It lies yet persuades us that we can compensate for our insecurity with popularity; that we can satisfy our desires by futile means; that our anger can be assuaged by hatred and vengeance. Lies. Lies. Lies. Each is a temptation like the serpent, trying to convince us that our own way will yield more results than God's will.
When our own ways fail, we feel the same vulnerability and ineptitude as Adam and Eve. In addition to the emptiness and discontent we feel, we also begin to feel hopelessness, uselessness, impossibility and apathy. Even if that is not quite the extreme of our lives, we will never operate within our lives as efficiently as God is able to. He braids the details of our lives into order; He is so capable that we can actually trust Him not just with our lives but with our day. With our hour and minute. With our lifelong dreams and daily needs. Those minutes, hours, days, dreams and needs... life, will not overwhelm us when we place them into God's hands.
- WITHIN THE WILL OF GOD
The Garden of Eden was a representation of the life God planned for us to live. He chose what surrounded Adam and Eve. He knew specifically what nourishment their bodies and souls needed. Our lives in the midst of the world have become more complex, consequentially because of humanity's subconscious and conscious insistence on separate from the will of God. We separate ourselves from what our bodies and souls truly need. But God possesses the fine motor skills to intricately engineer solutions to the complexity within our lives with divine precision.
To have access to God's efficient organization, we submit to His will. We discontinue our efforts to force things, situations and people into and out of our lives. We learn to allow Him to lead; we become familiar with the subtle movements He makes that divinely alter, correct and align our life. Through trust in Him, train yourself to accept and appreciate God's "no's" as much as, perhaps more than, His "yes's."
We must learn to disconnect from our temptations. Our emotions and desires should not be the driving force of our life. Faith should be. We must learn to accept what is delivered to us and to pursue, exclusively, the Kingdom of God. The Book of Matthew tells us that when we pursue the Kingdom of God, all things will be added to us (6:33). We are not, therefore, supposed to try to fill our own needs. The serpent convinced Eve that it would be a kind of privilege to control her own life; he said she would be god-like. Yet in the midst of the world, we each quickly learn that freedom in God is more valuable. Submission to God therefore is not a prison but a release. It is a release of the temptation and pressure that humans simply cannot resist on their own.
- RETURNING AUTONOMY
We may (at times) operate our lives successfully, but we never operate them flawlessly. Adam and Eve were overwhelmed by the consequences of control. So many stumble and blunder their way through life but we do not have to "live" that way. One with dead faith never truly lives at all. We do not have to live an incomplete, chaotic, problematic, purposeless life. To derive the most productive meaning and purpose fulfillment out of each day, we must surrender our lives to the flawless operation of God's will within our lives. We must return our autonomy. We must choose a different tree, the other tree: the tree of Life, God's will.
The only thing we need only to control is our relationship with God, our pursuit of His kingdom. Suddenly we will find ourselves not naked but dressed with the ability to spiritually proceed in any situation or relationship, despite any emotion or temptation. When we wonder how to respond to a specific element of life, our consistent reliance upon the kingdom of God reminds us that the appropriate responses have already been written and demonstrated in scripture.
To apply this to your life, pursue the kingdom. In every relationship. In every decision. In every conversation and situation. Align every emotion and reaction and response with that which has been modeled by Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Jacob, David, Elijah, Jesus and those in between. For from them we learn that obedience and trust in mandates made by God over our lives result in justice, joy, peace and life. God weaves those precious things into a life of fulfilled purpose. His work is comprehensive.
Just like He did in the Garden of Eden, God anticipated our needs here in the midst of the world. And offers provision for them all. For us all. And thus life is, from the moment we inevitably choose the wrong tree, a lifelong journey of returning our autonomy to God. Day by day and moment by moment we submit further to His authority since we failed to wield our own. It is our spirit's natural state to exist in the midst of God's authority, His perfect, intricate will.
Let there be a thread throughout your whole life. A prayer, simple but emphatic: for the will of God over your life while you are in the midst of this world.
Let there be a thread throughout your whole life. A prayer, simple but emphatic: for the will of God over your life while you are in the midst of this world.