It all started in the Garden

Pete and Nick, two of the guys I have been privileged to walk this out with

We often look at the battles from a short term perspective. We believe that the things we struggle with are the battles that we face. It is easy to say I am overweight and then make my appetite and desire for food to be the battle. The problem is that we will always face those battles. We will always be able to find areas of our lives that seem to not be what we want them to be or a particular sin that we struggle with. While it is true that we want those things out of our lives and we want to walk in freedom on every level, making them to be the battle will never help us overcome in the way that God is calling us to.

Let's look at the first battle that man faced. The setting was in the Garden of Eden and we all think that we know the story well but I believe we have misunderstood what was happening and the true nature of the temptation that Eve, and in all reality, Adam faced. We have come to believe that the temptation was to eat a piece of fruit. That is the thing that God commanded them not to do and it would certainly be disobedience to do it. It would lead them to separation from God. The devil did tell them to eat but Eve was not immediately tempted to eat. She probably could have withstood the temptation to eat because the tree had always been there in the garden. The devil's real goal was to get her to be tempted to believe that God did not have her best interests in mind. He made her doubt the love of God and His intentions toward them. Once she doubted the goodness and love of God, even a little, eating the fruit was a forgone conclusion. Man will usually act in what they believe is their best self interest. If the one leading them does not care about them, they will follow others or run after wanton desires.

The second temptation was to flee in shame and cover themselves. Once Adam and Eve figured out that they were different and their minds were open to understand the nature of sin, they felt ashamed. Shame drove them to hide. It caused them to play the blame game and try to push the responsibility off on another. Shame became a new robe that they wrapped themselves into to try and cover their nakedness to God and to each other. It caused areas of their heart to close off to love and caused their spirit to lose fellowship with God and cloud the control of their thoughts and emotions. Essentially, as God told them, the day they at of the tree they died. Their body continued to live for several hundred years but heir spirit died and they were cut off from that close fellowship that they had experienced with God and with one another.

At the cross, Jesus came to restore right relationships to God and with other people. He gave us the ministry of reconciliation. He prayed that we would be one with each other and with Him just as He and the Father were one. He made our spirits alive again in Him. He gave us the authority and the ability to carry out His will and to walk free of the influence of the devil. He told us that the devil was defeated and gave us a plan to live free of the influence of the devil. Jesus has won a total victory over death and sin for us. He has empowered us to walk in it.

The devil, though powerless again, just as he was in the garden before the fall, comes to us with lies and tries to get us to walk in them. He tempts us with the same temptations that Eve heard. God is not that good. He is holding you back. There is more for you than He wants you to have. On top of that, he piles on all of our past sins and failures. He not only attacks God's goodness but our worthiness to receive the love of God. He comes at us with enough to make us feel hopeless. Knowing we could never earn God's love, he tells us that we are on our own. Even Christians usually live like they are not loved by God. They want enough Jesus to get to heaven but do not want Him to get too close where He can see the blemishes. He might say things I can't handle or He might reject me for not measuring up.

Once we have bought the lie about God, our relationships with people suffers. If God will reject me for these things, then surely people will to. Our relationships become shallow. We want intimacy but we are not willing to be transparent in order to have it. We do not want exposure because that just gives people the ammo they need to reject us or belittle us. We allow shame to be the driving force in most of our human interactions. Our hearts close off to intimacy because we are afraid to pay the price of being exposed.

Once we close our hearts off in any area, those areas start to produce death in us. It is like a heart attack. The area that blood cannot flow into begins to die. That death pushes us to the things we associate with sin. We can then be easily led into all kinds of entrapments by the enemy and these only deepen our sense of shame. The list is long and I could not begin to make a dent in what these things are but here are a few so you get the idea: Overeating, misuse of alcohol, recreational drug us, pornography, sexually deviant lifestyles, making work a god, ministry, and materialism. These are common but there are many more. Anything that we use to comfort or fulfill us that hinders our relationship with God or people would fall into this category. Also you will see that anything that attempts to replace God or people in their rightful roles in our lives also would fall into this category.

The battles that we fight are both for
the heart. First we are fighting to believe the love and goodness of God and that He desires to direct them at us. The second battle we fight is to believe that people are worth out time and energy and that we should pour ourselves into our relationships with abandon and not worry about the possibility of hurt or betrayal. These two battles will determine the legacy that we leave. They both require us to know we are loved and fight from a position of love and not for love. We are loved and we have love to give. We must fight to keep our hearts open to love so it can easily flow in and out of us.

In the garden, these are the two things that the devil attacked. He used the first to get Eve to disobey God and the second to drive men away from each other. We need to consciously fight against these two attacks. We need to be proactive and deal with them before they come at us. We must live in an attitude of praise and thanksgiving to God, continually reminding ourselves of His goodness, love and kind intentions toward us. We must seek out His heart for us and move past our fear of rebuke to know He really loves us and desires fellowship with us. Then we must actively pursue people and demonstrate the love of Jesus toward them. We must fight to show people love because of who Jesus is in us until people are able to see themselves as lovable. We must live like we have never been hurt and that requires healing. These are the battles that we must fight and win.

When we win these two battles, we can begin to walk victory in the battles that Jesus has already won for us. He defeated the devil. He defeated the world. He defeated every enemy that could attack us. Then He asked us to trust Him with our hearts so that He could lead us into freedom in the areas that we so often think of as sin. Rev 3:20 is not just a salvation verse. Jesus is standing at the door of your heart to unlock all that He has placed in you. He wants to move freely about with full access to you. If we open every area of our lives to Him, He will occupy it and teach us to live in love and He will feast in love with us.

The choice is yours. You can continually fight to be free of the things in your life that are hindering your relationships with God and people or you can fight to open your heart fully to the love of God and let Him fill you to overflowing. If you open up your heart fully to His love, He will begin to remove the desires and break the addictions that hold you. It is who He is.