The God Storyنمونہ

Where are you?

Father God, what I know of You will only ever be a fraction of who You are. Jesus, open my mind to see You and understand the Scriptures. Spirit, move my heart from familiar to fascinated until it is set ablaze with Your unfailing love.

Read: Psalm 103:2-4

No one really knows how long God and humankind enjoyed the beauty of Eden together. What we are told, though, is that at some point another character entered the story - a crafty serpent who offered a calculated threat to Adam and Eve’s good and harmonious relationship with God.

Read: Genesis 3:4-10

Today I am reflecting on the tactics the serpent uses to destroy the purposes of God for humankind. The serpent does not try to get humankind to deny the existence of God. Rather he focuses on twisting their understanding of God in order to distort their image of Him and, as a result, to distort a true image of themselves. He is the father of lies. Adam and Eve sacrificed the identity-forming words of the Father for the self-exalting words of the serpent, and a deadly poison entered God’s good world.

Father, forgive me for the times I have sacrificed Your identity-forming words for the self-exalting words of the enemy. I ask You to renew my mind through a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of You (Ephesians 1:17).

Pause and pray

I think particularly today of a younger person struggling with a true understanding of their beloved identity in You.

Jesus, break the power of the enemy’s lies over their life and help them to see themselves again in the light of Your face.

Pause and pray

God’s desire for intimate friendship has been shattered, His original dream for humanity dismantled through Adam and Eve’s disobedience. Yet God will not turn His back. Remarkably, God comes looking for Adam and Eve. ‘Where are you?’ is the cry of God’s anguished heart resounding through the Garden of Eden. The great pursuit of lost sons and daughters has begun. Adam and Eve will run but they cannot hide from the longing love of God. Neither can I. Humankind will have to leave Eden, but God will never leave them.

Lord, as I think of the frequent inclinations of my heart to run away from you rather than to you, I pray these words of Robert Robinson’s beautiful hymn, written in 1758.

“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart Lord, take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.”*

Amen.

* Robert Robinson, ‘Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing’ (https://hymnary.org/text/come_thou_fount_of_every_blessing).