Carol J German

Our time from birth to death is a journey. One which has been ordained by God before the world was even created. While each of our stories are unique and different, they are very much the same. Every birth since Adam and Eve has been a part of the greatest redemption story. There has never been anything greater nor will there ever be.

It started in the Garden with Adam and Eve. One bite of an apple caused a separation to occur. Man and God cannot live in harmony any longer. Disobedience brought on sin. Because of sin, God had to kick His kids in the butt and say, “Depart from me.” Even in God’s judgment, He tended to them. He clothed them and showed them how to cultivate the land. Although His children made a troublesome error, God never changed His mind in the love that He had for them and it hasn’t changed over 2,000 years with over 6 billion people. He loves us. This is an undeniable fact.

One would think His love would wane and He would give up on us but His love is everlasting. I would think His love deepened for His first born children. So much so that from the moment Adam and Eve left the Garden, God had a plan to buy His children back. It was an agonizing plan which involved His Son. What crazy love!

His Son would have to become one of us short-sighted, dim-witted humans just so we had a way back into the loving arms of God! The only difference with Jesus is that He never sinned while in his earthly shell. He kept Himself pure and holy. None of us can boast about that.

We are all separated from God. Originally, we are meant to have unbroken fellowship with Him but that got erased by disobedience. Now, we all walk around insecure, lonely and needy. We all have this in common. How we are different is how we each handle these maladies.

It is helpful to understand that every person deals with these three woes. Don’t we think that we are the only ones suffering but in reality we are in good company. No matter the method of choice in covering them up, this fact remains, we need God. And until we let Jesus become our Healer, our Sustainer, our Savior and Lord, we will suffer for our sins. To make matters worse, we make others suffer too. Just look at the divorce rate, neglect, abuse, slavery, broken systems, dishonesty, addictions, to name a few.

The day that Jesus rose from the dead is the number one event that changed our position. We can now be washed clean from contamination. The blood of Christ secures us within His bosom, He never leaves our side and we inherit all the riches of heaven. We are no longer insecure, lonely and needy. We are back to regal status, like Adam and Eve were in the Garden.

What keeps us from living like royalty is this thing called free will. Despite it though, each person must come to the cross and receive their washing. There is no other way for man to be redeemed. Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” We need salvation. We are lost without it, doomed to perish along with God’s adversary, Satan.

Once a soiled life becomes white as snow, God will lead how He sees fit. We are created to fit into His design. Today, in 2020, God has a purpose for each of us. As each day passes, we are getting closer to Jesus returning. He’s coming back to claim what is His. This is you and me. We must have His blood upon us though. Without it, you will be seen as an enemy.

What needs to be done before His return? Many are without hope. Many remain living in enemy territory and we are called to be His light and tell others about Christ. God wants no one to perish. Read 2 Peter 3:9. God’s love is so immense. The death and resurrection of His Son demands that we repent and change from living soiled to living redeemed. We are to share with others what God has done for us.

We get so boggled down by the trappings of this world, don’t we? We lose our focus, our way, our reason for being here. What happens then? We live upside down and wonder why we can’t shake the loneliness or the feeling of ineptness within our souls. We fill our lives with empty fluff which causes us to teeter too far over into work, work, work or fun, fun, fun. It’s difficult to find the balance.

Let’s dig a little in God’s Word to gain clarity on why it’s so easy to live unbalanced. Look at Romans 1:18-32. I’m going to warn you, God gives an unpleasant picture of what happened to man when the apple was bit. Jesus is our only hope from escaping the reality of these verses. We see that sin is simply not following God. Adam and Eve went against what God told them, thus they bit into the apple.

I found it interesting when studying these verses that God abandoned people to their foolish ideas. He lets man do what he wants. And by these verses, what does man want? They traded the truths about God for lies. They worshiped and served the things God created instead of God Himself (verse 25). Because God abandoned them to their foolish thinking, what became of their lives (see verse 29-32)? You would think this was written in 2020.

Sin is ugly. Sin is vile. Sin is self-centeredness. Sin left unchecked results in a multitude of ways that we cover up our insecurities, we numb the loneliness and we live with expectations so we don’t reveal our needy hearts.

But praise God, we are learning! We are learning how to live in the graces of His mercy. We are attaining wisdom as we look to Him moment-by-moment for direction. For we know that we are not made for this world but for the one to come. We are trusting. We are believing. We are laying ourselves down at the foot of the cross and allowing God to have His way with us. And no matter what this world throws at us, whatever our lot is, we will continue to look up and say, “Yes Lord”. And we become, little by little, grace by grace, His child, no longer abandoned.

This is the journey I want to be on. I know you want to too. Living God’s way, we will become a people united in love. The world won’t know what happened to it but we will know though, won’t we? And soon the world will know too.