Hi Everyone! This post begins Chapter #2 - Why We Struggle? (Can anyone come up with a better title?). If you are just joining me here on my website…PLEASE take a look at the previous posts - preferably Post #1 - to see what this new book will be all about! This Chapter will discuss why we, as Spirit-filled Christians, can struggle so much in our strongholds, behaviors, addictions, and reactions. Chapter Two starts below:
We are complex beings. I mean, really – we are.
Next, drop our complexity into the mix of a fallen, broken, evil world currently being manipulated by an ungodly, uncaring and diabolical tyrant John 5:19, well, you have a recipe for all kinds of struggle. All kinds of darkness.
It was never meant to be this way – this hard. Our Heavenly Father created man and woman with intimate care in His very own image. The Father designed, the Son was His spoken word of creation, and Holy Spirit breathed life. As a wedding present, the Father gave the perfect couple authority over God’s creation on earth Gen. 1:26. Everything was perfect, bountiful, flourishing and ever, oh so good.
But we know the story, the fallen angel, Lucifer, was on the prowl in the form of a serpent. He did what he does best and only knows to do – deceive. And he did just that. He ensnared the woman with a lie and she introduced the scheming snake to her husband. Together, the man and the woman partook of the one and only thing their loving Father had told them not to, and they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Oh what take place at that first bite of disobedience and rebellion.
Up until that time, Adam and Eve had been free. Free, free, free.
Free to enjoy. To live in wonder. To live in perfect shalom – the Hebrew word for completeness, wholeness, peace, health, welfare, safety, fullness and prosperity. Free to love the Father in perfect communion and live in His caress, the Son’s fellowship, and the Spirit’s power, wisdom, and insight. Nevertheless, in that first bite all was lost. Literally. Though their earthly body did not drop dead on the spot, it began its journey of decay until it would eventually and unavoidably return to the dust it came from. What did die in that instant was their precious spirits. The unseen place within in them where they communed with the Almighty without hindrance. No barriers, no walls, no sin.
And their souls? In that fateful, fleeting instant of momentary enjoyment from the forbidden fruit – their souls were eternally separated from the One who had formed them. The One for whom they were created to be the object of His uncontainable, untamable love. All that gone in an instant. A great divide – an impassable chasm – between the Godhead and man and woman.