Tuesday, April 18, 2023 Some material taken from More Than A Story Part 2
And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good… Genesis 1:31
God’s Perfect Design
When God created the world, He created it within His perfect plan. He had a perfect plan for the world and the people He created, and it was very good. In His perfect plan…everything was perfect.
But then sin enters...
When God created Adam and Eve, He gave them a perfect world to live in, complete with every single thing they would need, and in a beautiful garden to enjoy. He was their authority, and He gave them a boundary - they could eat of the fruit of any tree in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Genesis 2:16-17
Then the serpent, who is Satan, appears to Eve and deceives her.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You[j] shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Genesis 3:1-6
Eve accepts the explanation of Satan without question. We too so quickly trade the absolute very best things - God’s perfect plan - for what we think looks better. It may be bright and shiny, look good for a time, and even taste amazing like that apple did, but in the end, it drains the life right out of us. Satan will always work to entice our hearts away from God’s perfect plan for our lives and for our hearts, and into brokenness.
Sin enters and we reject God as authority, and in doing so, we reject existing within His perfect design. Anytime we choose sin - and it is always a choice - we are choosing to reject God’s perfect plan for us. We may still have some of His goodness within our lives, but until we reject sin, repent and turn back to Him fully, we will not have the abundant life He gives.
In our brokenness, we are fully separated from life and intimacy with God. We exist in this brokenness until we are introduced to our Savior and make the choice to be born again. We know we are broken because it is very evident to us – and obvious to others. The evidence of brokenness in humanity as a whole is evident in sickness, death, selfishness, evil actions, lying, cheating, and so much more. In this brokenness and sin, we recognize our need for God.
To have a testimony, we must be born again. For our story to be about God instead of about what we do, we must be born again. We eventually realize we cannot save ourselves and everything we have been trying to use to fix our brokenness has not worked – we are even more broken than we were. But God redeems us when we confess and repent. He takes our story and gives us a testimony in return. When we make this exchange with Him, it is the closest we can get to His perfect plan for our lives, and enjoying and living in the abundant life He gives.
