Here we go back to the very beginning of the story of God in relationship with the people that He created. I am particularly impressed as I look at the things that we see and hear on the evening news and I realize that no longer do we live in a perfect world. Yet, God clearly created the world to be perfect and I often wonder how this perfect world got so terribly out of control. The simple and short answer is that
sin entered the world due to human disobedience to God’s divine intention for his creation. But I think that perhaps the more profound question is "why can we not return to the original intention for God’s creation?” That is, why do people still have to live in sin and brokenness and endure the suffering of the sin of humanity? The answer to that question is "I don’t know". However, this should not give us license to continue to live in and thrive upon the brokenness of the world. Rather, because Christ has come to us, we can rise above our brokenness and pursue a life of power in the presence of God. We can in many senses “return to the Garden”.
Perhaps the most common problem I hear voiced
regarding the brokenness of the world is when I hear people talking about dissatisfaction in their work or career. I know from personal experience that when one is merely seeking a paycheck that one is not fully living up to what God is calling them to be.
How many of you have heard people complaining about the job that they are forced to do? I know that this is the case in many people’s lives. More than any place I have ever worked, and there have been a few, When I was working at the prison in Hillsboro, I was constantly in touch with people who did not feel that their work provided for a completeness or sense of fulfillment that they thought should be provided by employment. In many ways the guards and other staff
didn’t want to be there any more than the inmates did. The result was that many of my co-workers were bitter and hateful people who were just doing the job so that they could buy the things that made them happy during the other 16 hours a day that they were not forced to be at work. I am not pretending for a moment that I was any different than any of my co-workers, at least for a while. However, after I saw what God wanted me to do with my life by serving him in
Christian ministry I began to see that God could also use me in my present situation while at the same time, that situation could provide for me the financial backing to accomplish my goal of getting back to school to gain the education necessary to devote myself to full time Christian ministry. It is amazing, the transition that took place in y own attitude when this realization came across me. I was then able to carry a positive attitude with me on a daily basis and the world became for me a much more pleasant place to be.
The simple fact of the matter was this. I was blinded, as are many of the people that I worked with there, to the fact that God can use us and make nearly any situation into a garden of Eden in our lives. Several facts about the garden of Eden might be helpful for us to consider at this point:
1) It was perfect and without sin...
2) God lived in perfect communion with the creation...
3) People were intended to live in communion with God and with the earth...
4) The work that was set before humanity was to be the most fulfilling task on the planet making them more complete as individuals and more complete in their
relationship with God...
So, where did it all go wrong? It all went wrong when Satan, the tempter, came to them and talked them into breaking the one simple rule that God had given them to live by. The rule was very simple and not at all difficult to follow, but Satan was able to convince them to break it anyway. I have heard people question as to why it was so important that they not eat the fruit of the tree that God forbade them to eat. And what was such a big deal anyway about eating a piece of fruit? I don’t think it was the fruit, or even the apparent insignificance of the sin that was at stake in this situation that mattered at all. Rather, what mattered was that God had made known to them that there were certain rules that they were expected to live by in order to live in the garden that God had created for them. And they broke those
rules so the punishment that they suffered was fitting
because they did the one thing that God had explicitly
forbidden them to do.
God created that which was perfect and Man interrupted that perfection by trying to serve himself rather than God. The same holds true today and this is why there is brokenness in the world. There was one rule for life in the garden that was... "Don’t eat the fruit" Man messed up and ate the fruit anyway. There is one rule for life in the world today... "Do what pleases God and God will make your life full" Mankind still tries to please themselves and their own
selfish desires and the result is that we do not do what pleases God.
This is what has happened to our garden. God has given us a garden in which to live and we have done virtually everything in our power to mess it up. Greed and corruption are the hallmarks of human interaction today and this is blatantly contrary to the will of God. We are all far to busy pursuing our own desires and not seeking God’s will. As a result very few of us are living full and God-honoring lives.
The garden is a miserable place to live when God is not the one who is in control of it. We have tried to take control of the world from the hands of God. As a result, we live our lives constantly held in tension between what we know is right and what we feel the rest of the world calling us to do.
The call today for each one of us is to pursue the will of God by living in such a way that we know we will please God. The Garden is still very much God’s desire for his children today, but many of us are still wondering in the wilderness looking for the garden ourselves.
The garden of God’s intention for our lives can be attained, but we must be willing to let our own desires and agendas fall aside in light of what God is calling us to do.
God calls his children to several things... First, there is the call to faith that we have responded to as God’s children. That we place enough trust in God through Jesus Christ that we admit that we are not in control and let God have absolute control over our life. This is not to say that we cease to have individual dreams or ambitions. In fact, it is even more liberating because we are then free to do exactly what God is calling us to do. Secondly, there is a call to radical obedience to God’s call upon our lives. God has issued a call to ministry that each of us must either accept or reject.
Some people pass over a call to ministry because it is not seen as personally fulfilling, but there is little in this world that is half as fulfilling as when one decides to faithfully live out that which God has called you to accomplish. It may not be from the pulpit of a church, but you are called to share the faith that you have in Jesus Christ with a world that
desperately needs to hear of salvation.
Own the fact, friends, that God has called you by name and offered you a place in the garden to call your own. A place where you may labor with the gifts that God has given you to serve God and others so that life for you will be complete... Now and forever.
Slow down... Take a deep breath... That is the smell of a far off garden that need not be very far away. That is the scent of God working in communion with the ones who would be called his children making their place in this world the place that God intended it to be... The scents of that far off garden hang heavy in the air all around you... and if you open
yourself to God, He will reveal to you what that Garden is to be in your life... Even today, pick up the tools that God has given to you to cultivate the garden of your life so that God may be made known to you and you may be made known to God... God still sees everything that he has made and it is still indeed very good... open your eyes so that you can see it too!
