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Discipleship 1:5

God is love. 1 John 4:7

So we have received salvation through Jesus. We go to church. We attend small groups. We’re hungry to know the God we serve. We read the Bible. Then we hit a wall. The God of the New Testament does not line up with the God of the Old Testament. He loves us, or so the Bible tells us so; yet before Jesus (God incarnate) came, people were struck dead for the smallest of offenses. We still love God, still want to serve Him, but suddenly, He just doesn’t make sense. It happened here, in my home, and until this study I didn’t know how to reconcile the loving God of the New Testament with the seemingly wrath-filled God of the Old Testament.

As you recall, Adam and Eve were removed from the garden for their own good; God did not want them to live forever in a sinful state. That would have been torment. Amazingly, though He had every right, God did not break fellowship post-sin; He made His appearance. He still went to them after their relocation, and spoke audibly to Adam and Eve’s offspring. In fact, He was so intimate with them, that His voice caused no fear; and when God asked Cain where his brother Abel was, he lied with seemingly no compunction (Genesis 4:9). Even following the atrocity of that first murder, though God did not condone it, neither did He hold an account of it (Genesis 4:15).

For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Romans 5:13 KJV

This verse basically says that until the Ten Commandments came, sin was not being held against people; God held no accounts.

God did not want to introduce the Law. He would have rather we loved Him, and loved others for Love’s sake, but at the rate man was going we would have self-destructed. So the Law was delivered, and despite His appearing as a tyrant, God enforced it; He had to. God is just and God cannot lie. As His creation, and His want for relationship, we put Him in an impossible position. It had to be thus. Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to turn a kid over and spank him? Maybe even slap silly the parent who sits idly by and lets the child disrupt everyone around them with no repercussions? I have. This is what God was up against — a bunch of rebellious people who did not have a healthy respect and love for Him. Because of that, they were destroying themselves and each other.

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. Romans 7:7 KJV

Romans 7:7 tells us the purpose of the Law:

The Law was given to magnify our sins to the extent that we would despair, realizing that we could never achieve God’s high standards of righteousness outside of Him. We could not save ourselves; we had to humble ourselves before God and ask Him to do it for us. Which, He did; He still does.

If only the truth of Romans 5:8 would take root inside of us.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 KJV

God loved us while we were yet sinners. But He also loved us too much to let us there. So the Law came to show us how bankrupt we are in all ways without Him. We need Him. God went to great lengths to prove that He’d rather we changed as a by-product of Love rather than Law.

I hope you have joined me in receiving the salvation that is freely offered and that we keep in our remembrance that God isn’t keeping accounts. No, He has dumped our sins in the ocean and posted a No Fishing sign.

He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Micah 7:19 KJV

Until we meet again, remember:

God is love. 1 John 4:7

Communication is Key

Discipleship 1:4

But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden— except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” Genesis 2:16-17 NLT …

… The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”

“Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. “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.’”

“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. “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 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 ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. Genesis 3:1-6 NLT

And so it begins…

For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many… Romans 17:a

First, satan questions what fruit they must not eat. Isn’t that just like him to focus on the negative? They had a whole garden of fruits and herbs at their disposal, for their pleasure, and satan picks on the one tree that God had warned them not to eat.

Second, Eve misquotes God’s admonition to Adam saying they couldn’t eat it or touch it. (Bad game of Telephone?)

Third, satan capitalizes on Eve’s doubt. He knows he has her attention so he runs with it. He convinces her that God is withholding from them, not protecting them. He doesn’t really care about them, He just doesn’t want them to be like Him.

satan is still talking to people along these lines today. Maybe you haven’t heard it said but it’s definitely implied that we’ll never experience true happiness by staying within the perimeters God has set for us. As if people must rebel and live out of control; as if they must be drunk, experiment with drugs, engage in premarital sex; knock people down to climb the ladder of success; or indulge themselves by any means in order to be happy. God’s not wanting us to do these things is not to prevent us from having fun, but from harming ourselves and/or others and from doing things in which there might be no turning back. Has the voice of our enemy whispered in your ear? He’s whispered in mine.

You know what’s super cool? God’s displays His forgiveness and love for His creation despite their sin through disobedience by still seeking out the couple that He created.

When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees.Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” Genesis 3:8-9 NLT

Despite our sin, God is still coming to us today. How?

…But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ. Romans 5:17b NLT

Even before sin entered the world through one man, God had a plan to redeem it through one Man. And we needed redeemed.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23 NLT

And …

But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 1 John 1:9 NLT

After we accept salvation, we must be aware.

For they don’t understand God’s way of making people right with himself. Refusing to accept God’s way, they cling to their own way of getting right with God by trying to keep the law. Romans 10:3 NLT

We talked about this, remember? us trying to get right with God and then stay right in and of our own efforts? We can’t do it, it’s self righteousness, and it stinks! But if we put our faith in Jesus …

and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; Philippians 3:9 NKJV

The course I am reading did not focus on the importance of communication, but I’m going to. Looking back, where did this mess begin? God warned; satan questioned His instruction; Eve misinterpreted; satan built on that one forbidden thing and made God to not be good by withholding from them; Eve and Adam bit, literally. Boom! Distance between God and man. Did you notice something beside the fact that God still sought them out post-sin: they hid from Him.

I sometimes wonder how things would have looked if Adam, who the Bible clearly states was with Eve when all this went down, spoke up. What if he rebuked satan right out the gate? What if, as Eve was being misled, he said, “Look Babe, that’s not what God said. We’re not eating from that tree!” What if, after they ate, Adam ran through the garden calling for God, asking for His forgiveness, rather than hiding? Yeah, they’d have still been kicked out. Despite how harsh that sounds, it was actually a merciful act. They had eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and if they had progressed and eaten of the tree of life they would have lived forever in a sinful state.

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. Genesis 3:22-24 NKJV

Can you imagine living on planet earth forever in the state that it’s in? I can’t! Even His discipline is mercy extended to us.

Today’s topic is relationship and I’d sum that up by saying good communication is necessary for a good relationship.

I hope you will join me next time as we dive into the nature of God, beginning and ending with …

God is love. 1 John 4:8

Feel Good Stories

I’ve never been a big fan of mainstream news media. I cultivated a hatred for it when covid came on the scene but it was long before that that I was tempted to throw bricks through the t.v. That wouldn’t have solved anything, just added to areas where marital discord exist. However, I was compelled to seek out the news due to a recent time change — spring ahead. If you aren’t familiar with this, you’re blessed. For the entirety of my life I can not understand why we are made to physically suffer twice a year with time changes, but in most of the United States of America, (and more places in the world than I realized), we are made to do so. It was this time change, seeing different clocks with different reports, that spurred me to turn on the news on Sunday morning and discover what time it actually was. That’s when I accidentally caught one of the best stories I have ever heard — and the miracle is that I heard it on mainstream news media. I was so moved I cried. You can watch what I saw by going to the link below. This story was also featured in the Atlanta News First 12-20-23 whose headline was Mother’s last words inspire act of compassion.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lasting-friendship-atlanta-georgia-fatal-crash-nikia-cherry-staci-green-rosie-minor/

I know that mainstream media occasionally features stories like these but since so much of it is negative, I literally forgot that they were capable of reporting positive news. It does appear as though our society is following a cesspool of thought in which extreme toxic daily doses enter people’s homes through the nightly news — which can now be watched 24/7 due to glorious technology. Imagine what our world would be like if instead of crime, disease, bad politics, and feeding the great divide, the “diet” of mainstream media focused on unity, cures, the generous, the forgiving, and politicians who thought more of their constituents than themselves. What I think we’re in need of are feel good stories, news without rhetoric, the love of Jesus, and a continuous intravenous drip of God and His Word. I hope you’ll join me in making a positive deposit into somebody’s life today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acbcKrnnJAk