We have a dog which my wife rescued from the street. One day when she came home from work Charmain noticed a dog outside of our gate. The dog looked very frail, weak, and dirty. When my wife approached the dog, it did not run away it allowed Charmain to pick her up. The dog was brought inside of our home. It was so weak it could not even stand on its back legs. The back legs were so weak I thought she was paralyzed in her rear. After about three days she began to lift herself up and walk around. We advertised a lost dog in the media for a number of days but no one claimed her. We initially thought we would offer her to be adopted but very quickly my wife fell in love with her and she has been named Peggy-Lee. To cut a long story short Peggy has been with us for one year now. She is an Africanis which as a breed has transitioned from the wild African Golden Jackal (Canis Lupaster) and cross bread with ridgebacks, terriers, and other pedigree breeds to its now domestic form. It is an indigenous African dog. When people ask us what kind of dog she is, my wife says that she is a street dog but I refuse, Peggy-Lee is not a street dog she is an Africanis. Very intelligent, loyal, and obedient. Above all, she adores my wife who saved her from street living.
Before we entered the world as human beings God knew us. God has only good thoughts of who we really are.
Psalm 139:13-16 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Before we were born. God had wonderful thoughts of who we would be, God’s thoughts are more than the sand much more numerous than we can mention.
But did you know any of it? Can you remember anything before you were conceived in your mother’s womb? Can you remember God telling you His plan for your life, do you remember why He was sending you to earth?
Before God formed you, He knew you. He knew your spirit and who you were going to be physically on earth.
Ephesians 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,
Do you remember God speaking to you? Do you remember what it was like in the presence of the Father before you were born?
Do you remember being chosen in Christ, promised the kingdom and everlasting life? Did you have any idea that you were predestined to be a manifest son of God? Do you remember the beginning of your life?
Genesis 2:7-8 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. 8 The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.
Genesis 2:15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
The garden that Adam was taken out of where the Tree of Life was situated and the angel with the flaming sword was is not a physical place on Earth. The “Garden of Eden” in the original Hebrew language, is the term Gan Eden which means Paradise of delight. No one has ever found it. It is the state of being that man was in when he was first formed from the dust of the ground by the hand of God and placed upon earth. It represents man in the presence of God, a man walking in fellowship with God, a man living above sin, sickness, fear, and death, man a keeper of Eden!
Adam was in a perfect garden with the potential for corruption and death. Within man was the perfection of God. A paradise within and a paradise without.
It is a world within a world. Peace and joy within the human heart and living in an environment of peace and joy in the garden.
Then Adam was deceived and disobeyed and sin, death, and corruption destroyed the environment of peace and man became ashamed, dirty, and lost.
Genesis 3:23-24 Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 So He drove out the man, and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
Humans were created to be in the image of God but on account of sin, they were locked out of the Kingdom to live in a world of chaos and darkness. In a dreadful state of sin conciseness and guilt. Limited to the confines of a mortal body. With no fellowship with the spiritual world from which they came and to which they belong! Blinded to the things of the Spirit.
Genesis 2:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”.
Once you die your spirit returns to Him and your body back to the dust from where he formed you.
Ecclesiastes 12:7 Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, And the spirit will return to God who gave it.
But this was according to God’s plan. It was God who planted the garden eastward in Eden and placed all these things strategically in it! But God had both a purpose and a plan!
Titus 1:2 in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began,
When God spoke of creating man and then formed man from the dust of the earth, God already had salvation in mind. God created the circumstances for Adam to choose life or death.
How awesome! We were born into this world with a promise from God — the promise of Life in Christ a promise of salvation from the corruption that would enter the world and destroy everything good.
John 10:10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.
This promise of salvation and living more abundantly was given to us before the world began!
Romans 8:28-29 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
God knows all things, He is the Alpha and Omega, and He knows the beginning and the end. God is eternity. Everything that has been created was created through Him, nothing existed without Him.
John 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
God’s plan was to create you in the very image of His Son. God knew this long before we were born. He pre-thought it and planned our life. He had a definite outcome for our life. God then uses all things to work together for good so that the desired outcome will be fulfilled.
Our Father has booked our seat in Christ Jesus in heavenly places. Each person's seat is pre-booked. No one else can take your seat.
We are predestined to inherit the Kingdom of God
Matthew 25:34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
Each of us was born into a physical body into a material world of darkness, sin, and death.
We had no idea what God had prepared for us. By His Holy Spirit, he began to reveal to us His plan. Not even the prophets and priests know what we were destined to receive from God. Slowly God has revealed His mystery to those who will listen.
Colossians 1:26-27 the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. 27 To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
I Cor. 2:7-10 7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, 8 which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” 10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.
God loved us, knew us, and chose us according to His purpose before the foundation of the world. My origin was in God!
I thought my life began when I was born. The truth is my life began in God in eternity! It didn’t begin in time. It began before the ages were framed.
Our Father — the One that sent us here, the One who has watched over us, cared for us, blessed us, helped us, and wooed us with His love even when we did not know Him, He was already our Father!
Colossians 1:13 [The Father] has delivered and drawn us to Himself out of the control and the dominion of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,
And in Jesus, He came to lift and redeem and restore you us to Himself and His kingdom. Where we were in darkness and were blind unable to see Jesus. Jesus the true light came to shine into darkness and reveal God’s heart to us.
John 1:9 That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
Ephesians 5:8-9 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth),
Proverbs 20:27 The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord,
Now the candle that was not burning is lit by His Spirit, there is awakening, illumination, and comprehension, and we begin to see into realms the mysteries that God prepared for us.
We could not know these truths before.
1 Corinthians 2:16 For “who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
The Father has purposed that He will rule the universe by His image of man, the many-membered Christ, whom He has chosen, possessed by the Father’s mind! The new man is being renewed in knowledge, that restores to us the consciousness of God’s image and likeness. And now, He comes in many sons to reveal His heart of love to the whole creation and restore all things. We are the manifest sons of God.
Adam Lived in Eden in perfection with the potential to bring about chaos. We now live in a world of chaos with the potential to bring about perfection.
God has taken us from the streets of darkness, sin, and death and is restoring us to the image He had of us before we were Born.
Psalm 139:16-17 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book, they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. 17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!
