We Are Here For A Reason
Restoring Eden - Part 2
"Don't walk into the darkness but light a candle of hope and pray. For in the shadows lingers a lion who's breath is fire that destroys the dark, where the demons hide and scream at His presence."
For decades, I thought a career or whatever I (do) defines me and gives me purpose for life. But it has nothing to do with a job or anything we try and do ourselves. I thought for the longest time I had no worth, that anything I did whether it be writing or being a father, that nothing was ever good enough and I was a total failure. I grew up wanting to die because I really thought I was a mistake and God was far off, didn't care about me, had no worth, everything was meaningless. It took me down some very dark, gut wrenching ,painful roads. I cried myself to sleep many nights, asking God if he even cared what was going on.
The thing is, I was looking at God the wrong way. Instead of thinking things I do make the person, God already established "why" we are even alive. And it has nothing to do with what we do. It has everything to do with who we "are". When God created Adam and Eve, He never saw their worth by what they did. He created them for Himself. There was no need for humans to exist but God wanted a family, to share Himself with a human family. He walked in the cool of the day with Adam. They conversed in conversation and partnered in doing things. Through the whole Bible, we see God, after everything went to hell so to speak, God is always begging humans to come back to Him. When God calls Jeremiah to be a judge to Israel, God's promise is that he already knew Jeremiah and had plans for him. It never meant Jeremiah would have an easy life cause he didn't. God even specifies this. The people will hate you for what I tell you to say. But always remember I'm with you.
Job goes through some very difficult trials in life and even at the end, though we know the backstory from the beginning, Job does not. God never told him the reason he suffered. But He was there. We often think God is distant and can't be known. We think we struggle and God draws away from us because if He cared, wouldn't He want to help us? Where did He go?
Both Job and David suffered greatly, even Elijah the greatest prophet in the Old Testament. At one point, he sat down under a tree and lamented, wanting to die. The fact is, many of the greatest people in the Old Testament suffered greatly and had bouts of depression.
I think for the Christian life, "hindsight" is a big deal. The reason is actually pretty simple but profound. It is here, looking backwards, you will see God's hand moving. It's like this with scripture. Those in the moment of circumstances didn't see what God was doing. The Old Testament can be viewed as a mosaic of ideas that can only be seen clearly in the New Testament.
When Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to the disciples, they were STILL clueless as to what was happening. They had the Old Testament in front of them but couldn't figure out how it applied to Jesus. He had to open their eyes and show them through scripture reading the unfolding of the mosaic in the supernatural and physical realm.
The same can be said of our own lives. We go through trials all the time but do we understand there's a spiritual aspect to this as well? We have two battlefronts waging war, one physical and one supernatural. Paul is absolutely crystal clear on this. We fight against spiritual forces. Their whole focus is to stall the church, to discredit, manipulate, drown us in suffering and isolation. Jesus said, where two or more are gathered, there I am also. The number one focus of the enemy is to divide the church and destroy the power of the Holy Spirit by removing the vessels, the human partners of God.
If we continually view our circumstances as obstacles and worry about them, our eyes won't focus the way they need to. The more we forget we're in a war, the better for the enemy. They want Christians to forget how much power is at our disposal. Jesus calls us children of God, heirs to the Kingdom. Do we even grasp the massive importance of this saying? God is King and as adopted children, we are royalty. That means, we are given privileges like being able to enter into God's very throne room with questions, requests of children to their father.
I don't think the church grasps how weird this really is in the text. When this is written, no other religious text comes close to this idea. Instead, they are the complete opposite.
Consider Marduk, the god of Babylon everyone knew about. He decides he wants humans to be destroyed because they're too noisy and icky. Any number of the greek gods have their own issues with humans. In essence, humanity is viewed as slaves to the gods. That is across the board, all nations of the world.
God comes along and tells Abraham, who was following after his own family god, to come follow Him. This of course, is terrifying. You just don't do this. If you break from your god, you risk the wrath of that god and much pain and death. This is the worldview of the Bible. God comes onto the picture and presents a whole different view, that is, of family. That was wild and bewildering, shocking.
From the very beginning, God wanted a human family. There has never been a plan B, only a plan A - to be part of the family business of making the world like Eden. If we look at God this way, we must look at ourselves this way as well. This is how God views us, as His imagers. We mirror His likeness as children. This is God's ultimate joy, pleasure, to watch us take part in being His family. And as a good father, does He not want good things for us?
In hindsight, look back at your lives and realize what I realized. At the time, I couldn't fathom that anything could come out of misery and so much awful pain. I went to the point of trying to kill myself with a knife many times. How can God be in any of this? How was God in the pain Job suffered? Look at the very first verses of the book. They are very, very important to the story. The adversary challenged God's authority and sovereignty by using Job. If God simply kicked the guy out of the room for overstepping, the question still remained. It was a direct challenge to God. And God had to answer because this was an audience. So God allowed Job to suffer, not because He wanted Job to but because He was challenged over Job. That's why those verses are there at the beginning. This was why Job suffered.
Is it comforting to know? Absolutely not. It's frightening to an extent. But it wasn't without purpose. And that is key. We don't exist out of a mistake. We exist out of God's want for a human family and He is eager to see us as such, not estranged members outside His lands.
Purpose, identity, the reason we exist is so that we can Image God on Earth. It has nothing at all to do with merit, how great we are in a career. None of that defines us. None of that matters as much as us aligning our position as children and heirs of a Kingdom we belong to. Our titles are royalty! That should straighten shoulders and make us walk differently. These are Jesus's words to us!
If we continue to view our career or hobby or any number of physical things that make us important or valuable, we have MISSED THE POINT of the entire Bible!
We Are Princes and Princesses! That's our title! That's our purpose! That's our reason!
"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water...If I find in myself a desire, which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." - C.S Lewis
Our greatest need in this world can never be satisfied by works of the flesh. They will never define who we truly are. In us all is a heartbeat that knows there is more and we have not attained it yet. That is because within humanity, there is this knowing that this is not all there is. There is a creator we long to touch. And in our despair, when all things physical can't make us happy anymore, it is this longing, screaming for more in desperation. It's this longing for God to hold us, like a child who yearns for the comfort of his mother.
And in this season of our life, might I remind you, Job and David had these very same feelings. Job had some horrible friends to comfort or rather discourage him. David had his writings and songs He sang to God. And not all of them are pretty uplifting. They are heartfelt and at times agonizing screams of the heart. God is big enough to let us scream at him.
He was big enough that he allowed me to do more than scream. But at the end of it all, I fell at His feet, tears dripping from my eyes, asking Him, pleading with Him to hold me. For I was lost and afraid. And He comforted me, shielded me, and ultimately healed me. My life cannot exist without knowing He saved me. My loyalty, my belief, especially in hindsight, belongs only to Jesus. And my very life is my testimony and reason for my faith.
Don't walk into the darkness but light a candle of hope and pray. For in the shadows lingers a lion who's breath is fire that destroys the dark, where the demons hide and scream at His presence.
Jeremiah 29:11-12 "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you."
-- Andrew Nusz --