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Genesis
3:16
To
the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; In pain,
you shall bring forth children. Your
desire shall be contrary to your husband. But he shall rule over you.”
As a consequence of Eve’s sin that caused Adam to disobey God, the
Lord cursed Eve: (1) in pain she shall bring forth children and (2) her desire
shall be contrary to her husband.
Lay
Outing of Plans unto God
In the New Covenant, Christ is our husband, while we are the bride
or the wife of Christ as a Church.
As a consequence of Eve’s sin, her desire shall be always contrary
to her husband and she will have hardships on child bearing. Same way, as an
inherent consequence of our sinful nature is to have desires in contrast to
God’s, which is why we find it difficult to bear fruit of faith in our lives.
True to these words, having desires different from the Lord’s is a
sin. Sin is always contrary to what is good in our life (See Genesis 4:6).
To avoid this type of sin in our life, we have to personally
discover God’s design and plan for us, and surrender our original plans to Him.
This lesson is actually pertaining to a life of total surrender –
to live is Christ and to die is gain. (Please read 2 Corinthians 2:15-17; much
better if you read the whole chapter).
Eve committed sin because her desires took over her love for God,
her rationale mind over consciousness of the Spirit of God. What are these
desires? Everything that she (we) sees in her (our) eyes. (See Genesis 3:6-7)
Once that our personal selfish desires swallowed up our own desire
for God, we will be susceptible to committing sin. This is the reason why we
have to fully surrender our life to God – including our own dreams, decisions
and plans.
True
Faith
Side by side with a life of
surrender is faith. We have to trust God’s plan for us and fully submit to that
plan.
How can we know God’s plan? One of our latest discussion inside
the Church is in order to know God’s plan, we have to know first what God’s
burden is for us inside our own hearts. You know, in Exodus 25:2, the Lord is
talking to Moses like this, ‘For every man whose heart moves him, you shall
receive contribution for me’ and in Exodus 35:5, ‘whoever is of a generous heart,
let him bring the Lord’s contribution. . . ‘Meaning to say, our burden to serve
God comes from our own heart. In other translations like King James Version,
this goes like this: ‘to anyone whose heart God had touched.’ This only
explains that it is still the power of God who is touching the hearts of his
people to see what is needed in the ministry or in the Body of Christ. The
equivalent passage of this topic is on Philippians 2:13 ‘For it is God who
works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.’ Our desire still
comes from the power of God that stirs our heart to see what the need is and
what is lacking in the works of God, and as we act according to that burden, we
are acting on our calling.
How can God move inside our hearts? Simply. We have to let Him in.
How? All God’s instruction for righteousness, holiness and His overall will is
always in the Bible and it is very much available and closer to us more than we
could ever think of. (Please read Joshua 1:8, 2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:3)
Assurance
of Salvation
Our only assurance of salvation is in Christ, so we have to
conformed into His life (Romans 8:29). This should be the ultimate goal.
One way to conformed to Christ is to give up our own desires of
the flesh, in exchange for accepting God’s desire for our own life. Remember,
on the time that Jesus is about to die, while praying on the Garden of
Gethsemane, Jesus also gave up His own will by saying “Not my will, but your
will be done.” This is also the very reason why Jesus is telling His disciples
that those who wish to follow Him must denied himself, take up his Cross and
follow Him. This is also just same as what Paul is telling us today, “Follow me
as I follow Christ.”
When
to Start?
In Genesis 5:21-22, it says : “When Enoch had lived 65 years, he
fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300
years.”
Meaning, Enoch only began to serve God at the age of 65 – probably
after he had realized that he is already done with sin and the affairs of this
life. And who was Enoch? A righteous man who walked with God on his 300 remaining
years and he never experience death for God took him.
The thing here is, it does not matter who we are or what age we
are in. It does not even matter what our past is. What matters is once we are
done with sin and once we give our life to God, we must make it a commitment to
walk with God and live for Him with the rest of our lives so that we will never
experience eternal death. Doing so, God will do the rest for us. All we have to
do is to have faith.
How
will we know if we will truly receive God’s promise in the Bible?
Similarly, Abraham asked God the same question (Genesis 15:7)
After Abraham asked God that question, immediately, God tested Abraham’s
character – that is patience (patiently waiting for his burnt offering to be
consumed by the fire of God). However, Abraham failed the test, which is why
the promise was delayed.
Similarly, for us to receive God’s promise depends on our
character of patience. Are we patiently waiting for God’s plan to be fulfilled?
For God to make the move? For God’s go signal?
One significant evidence that we aren’t is if we decided on our
own just because we couldn’t wait for our prayer to be answered or just because
God is silent. Is He really? Well, I do think that during the times that we
cannot hear God, it is either of the two reasons: (1) we are currently in the
test, or (2) we are not sensitive on the Spirit.
Deciding on our own is sin in itself that is why God’s plan for us
will be even more so be delayed.
Another angle on this story is this:
Remember, Abraham is offering a burnt offering to God. When he
fell asleep, he failed to guard and protect his sacrifice to God, so for 430
years, the enemy snatches away his blessing.
Same way, in the new covenant, our life is our living sacrifice to
God (Romans 12:1), that is why it is said in the New Testament to “Wake up you O
Sleeper!”
If we failed to keep our guards up, the enemy may snatch our very
sacrifice – this life, thus snatching away our eternity to God’s Kingdom.
One way of keeping our guards up is to fix our fences, just how
the Jewish people builds the city wall of Jerusalem in the Book of Nehemiah. We
have to segregate ourselves from the outside influence of sin (probably by
surrounding ourselves with Godly people and building our personal devotion and
relationship to God) and cloth ourselves inside the protection of Christ (See Galatians
3:27) – that is building and securing our relationship with Him – no breeches,
no leak.
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