Carol J German

God loves His people to the point of risking Himself. Ponder this. With what you know about God and His love, does this makes sense? Whether you know little or much, understanding the risk that God took will be a game changer in your faith! In a few weeks, we will be going into the Christmas season and celebrating the birth of Jesus. He came in love and He left in love. He came to save us from sin that separates us from God. So, how can that be a risk to Himself?

It is called free will and it is deadly. It has a great cost attached to it. In Matthew 7:13-14 Jesus talks about this high price tag. “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad and its gate is wide for many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult and only a few ever find it.” God gives each of us choices, choices in how we want to live our life. This means that people may or may not choose His Son. We now have options. This opened the door to many vices and voices. Jesus states the severity of it in Matthew and He still chose to come to be our Savior. That is an incredible love!

It would be helpful for you to read Genesis 3. It’s the story with three characters, Satan, Adam and Eve. Since Genesis 3, we are descendants of the first two humans and the choice that they made means we have to deal with Satan, like they did back then. If you want a challenge, read the last book of the Bible, Revelations, to see God’s plan for Satan. This is still future events waiting to be fulfilled.

In the Garden, Adam and Eve walked in harmony with God and they had every luxury under heaven but they couldn’t touch one tree, the tree of wisdom. Satan greatly dislikes harmony and God so he went straight for Eve and danced with her emotions and intuitions. “Don’t you want to be like God?” Satan wanted to be like God and he knew he could never be. So, he pulled down God’s most precious creation, man.

It is tempting to have a question like the one Eve had dangling in front of her. Who wouldn’t want to be like God and know all things and have great wisdom? Without a bat of her eye, she ate some of the fruit that God told her not to. Then she turned to Adam and he ate some. Something dreadful happened when they ate an apple. Something irreparable that deserves a change in course from God’s original design. Thus, God sent Jesus to earth to save us from our sins. He came to die. In death, He obliterated it so we can arise into eternal life! Unity is restored because of His resurrection.

There is an ugliness to free will. The buffet of choices that lay before us each day causes us to bite an apple. Like Eve then Adam, we are seduced by Satan as he dances with our emotions and betrays us into loving shallow things. He lures us to other infatuations so we will idolize anything but God. Satan loves to occupy our senses so, like Eve, we will bite quickly without thought.

With God’s Word at hand, we are to live alert, clear-minded and aware of the enemy that is out to devour and destroy us. Jesus battled the enemy with scripture to wither his puny power and schemes. Read Matthew 4 and Luke 4 and see how Jesus did it. We are to live the same way. Scripture and praise deem the enemy powerless. Thus, living out the Bible and praising God will keep us on the right path. Who is with me to stop eating apples and live for Christ? If you savor various types of apples, are you willing to throw them out and follow the leading of the Lover of your soul?