Unplanned our Life
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 12:2), that is why it is said in the New Testament to “Wake up you O Sleeper!”
If we filed 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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