If We Only Knew {& Movie Ticket Giveaway}

It was all very good. They’d been gifted Eden. Placed amid perfect beauty we cannot imagine. They walked with God, blessed and flourishing.

Nothing about God changed, but they changed. They listened to their Father’s enemy, the enemy of their souls. He deceived them, by accusing God of impure motives.

The deceiver accused, and creation listened, touched, consumed, worshiped. Then they realized what they’d done and felt shame. So they hid.

God didn’t walk away. He came to them and asked, Where are you?

Of course He knew.

What is this you have done?

I could read this a lot of different ways. I know what the enemy says. He says God is like an arresting officer. He came to uncover their wrongdoing, kick them out, and curse them. But the enemy lies.

God came broken-hearted.

Loving Father came to His own babies, for whom He’d gone to great lengths to prepare something better. He held in His heart the truth of their response to Him. They did not obey Him; they did not trust Him. They followed someone else–His greatest enemy. He grieved.

God longed for their love and fellowship. He wanted them to stay within His motivated by love boundaries. He wanted them to enjoy beauty He’d made for them, and to enjoy relationship with Him. But they went a different way.

He sent Jesus many years later, so that all, through Jesus, might believe. Jesus lived among human beings, and suffered here, to make the One true God known to His creation.

Before Jesus laid down His life to redeem us, He wept over Jerusalem, His beloved city, confirming God’s heart toward the disobedient, the unbelieving.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,

But you were not willing. (Matthew 23:37)

Jesus came because our Father in heaven is not willing that any of {us} should perish. (Matthew 18:14)

The enemy opposes God’s redemption plan. He cannot overcome the light of Jesus, but he fights it hard. Along with rulers of the darkness of this world, He maligns God and deceives His creatures. The enemy hopes to keep us from knowing God’s true heart and character. To hold us back from fully understanding God’s love.

For God’s love, mercy, and kindness lead us to repent and know God’s heart.

Praying for myself today, and anyone who reads this, that we’ll grasp {more fully} the width and length and height and depth of the love of Christ. That we’ll walk with our Father, blessed and flourishing, never turning away to deception, never hiding.

** I have 4 tickets to the movie, Son of God, to give away to 2 commenters. To be entered in the drawing, leave me a favorite verse from the book of JOHN in the comments. I’ll choose winners Friday at midnight. Movie opens Friday February 28, and tickets can be used through May.

**Update: Congratulations to Mike D. and Amanda S.–you have won the movie tickets! Look for my email!