Real-Life Devotions by Lysa TerKeurstExemplo

A Grace Place

I once wondered if God ever got tired of my issues, those recurring failings and sins I couldn’t ever seem to conquer. Throughout my lifelong struggle with emotional eating, I worried I was going to use up all my grace with God.

That is until I read the “first story” of God’s grace with fresh eyes.

Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating from the forbidden tree, and they ushered sin into the world. God handed down the consequences of their actions, which included banishment from the Garden of Eden.

Whenever I’d read that story, I’d thought they had to leave paradise because God was tired of them. But I was wrong. Their relocation was not a place of abandonment; it was a place of grace.

You see, there were two special trees in the Garden of Eden. One was the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” This tree was the one with the forbidden fruit. The other tree was the “tree of life.” This was the tree that gave Adam and Eve perpetual life.

And this tree of life is why they had to leave. For if they’d been allowed to stay, they would have eaten from the tree of life and lived forever (see Genesis 3:22)—wallowing in sin, wallowing in all the brokenness sin brings with it. And God couldn’t stand that for the people he loved.

So it was his love that made them leave. And allowed them to die. So that they could experience the resurrected life his Son would one day provide.

God did not run out of grace at the dawn of humankind. And, he will not run out of grace for you or for me.

Taken in part from Lysa TerKeurst’s book, Made to Crave: Satisfying Your Deepest Desire With God, Not Food