When Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden of Eden it doesn’t tell you in the Bible how they felt, but I am sure they must have been totally devastated. Because of their wrong choices, they could no longer live in their oasis where they had experienced the depths of God’s pleasure and delight and what it was like to walk each day with their creator. There must have been deep immense regret and enormous sadness in their hearts. They had lost so much and at that point so did the whole human race. We were created for Eden. We were created to have a deep and precious relationship with our God and so when Adam and Eve sinned, the Lord looked to find a way for us being able to live in the land of pleasure once more.
Throughout the years he sent many prophets to call his people back to himself, but eventually he did the unthinkable, he sent his one and only son to this earth to reverse everything that happened when mankind sinned. On the cross, Jesus made a way for us to come back into that deep and wonderful relationship with the Father. He came not only to restore Eden, but he came to make it better than it had ever been in the beginning. What wonderful news! Yet here we are 2000 years since Jesus died and rose again and so many of us live without really knowing the depth of his love, his delight and his pleasure in us! He has given us an incredible inheritance and yet we are content to live outside of his promises. Even though some of us have asked Jesus to come into our lives, we choose to live in the land of pain and rejection rather than in the oasis of delight that God has prepared for us. He wants us to experience his delight, his joy and his love. When we find the greatest treasure ever, we surely will become so intoxicated with joy and delight that nothing else will satisfy!
I read recently in Joshua 18:3, where Joshua challenges the people of Israel to take a hold of what God had already given them. He says, “How long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land the Lord, the God of your fathers has given you?” What a challenge to us several thousands of years later. How long will we wait before taking possession of the land the Lord has given us? He tells us in the Bible that he delights in us, yet how many of us live experiencing and relishing that enormous delight? He tells us in the Bible that we are valued and have been chosen, yet so many of us think of ourselves as worthless? The Lord came to bring us freedom; he secured freedom by overcoming sin, death and hell, yet how many of us live in freedom from fears, worries and concerns? How long will we regard ourselves as useless and worthless, when we have already been given a land to possess, a land where we are loved and adored? Why do we allow our fears to tie us up when we have already been given freedom? How long will we wait? Lets not be satisfied with anything less than what the Gospel offers us!
