July 6, 2013 … Life Choices

Daily Berry Patch Devotions in 2013 - Day 187

Passage of the Day #1: Genesis 2: 15 [Conditional control in The Garden. ] [NLT] …
  15 The LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and care for it. 16 But the LORD God gave him this warning: “You may freely eat any fruit in the garden 17 except fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat of its fruit, you will surely die.”
============
Contextual Study involving today’s passage found in Genesis, Chapters 2-3 … Go to this link … 
============

Reference Passage of the Day #1: Romans 12: 1-2 [Christ’s command to discipleship involves death of self.] …  
1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.

Devotional Song: Go to this link -  … Today, please hear the Maranatha Singers singing, “Jesus, You Are My Life” challenging all who claim to be in Christ to give all to Him

My Journal for Today: Os Hillman begins his devotional today with an interesting comment about our human needs and desires. He states … “Man was created to have seven basic needs. Each of us has a need for dignity, authority, blessing and provision, security, purpose and meaning, freedom and boundary, intimate love and companionship. When we go outside God's provision to meet these needs, we get into trouble.” 

In THE garden of Eden, God put Adam there; and He gave the man a place to meet all his needs; but the job placement came with some self-protective limits. Yes, there was that tree out there in the garden which God told Adam, as the sole keeper and steward of the garden, to avoid because if he were to eat of that tree of knowledge he would surely die. It was then that God noted that Adam needed a helper; and the Lord created the woman to come along side Adam to have dominance in tending the garden. But in reading these Genesis passages again today, it just dawned on me that it was still ADAM’S responsibility to watch over things; and either Adam failed to get the word about the fatal tree to Eve or he just flat shirked his responsibility to be the primary tender of the garden as God had charged him to be. I believe Eve was in unwitting culprit when she because tempted by Satan; and the primary responsibility for the fall was on Adam.

This could get into a very involved and lengthy theological discussion about the responsibilities of man and woman in the world, which I’m not going to focus on here; but it does point to the reality that we ALL have choices. God has given mankind free will and free reign to make choices so that his or her faith relationship with God will be meaningful. Without the ability to choose freely where we go and what we do, the concept of faith would be meaningless. But mankind, … mainly Adam, … could not handle his (and/or her) relational responsibility; and when confronted with the opportunity to choose to obey God as tenders of the garden, we blew it. And we can read the results in Genesis, Chapter 3 [also linked above].

God has given us the ability to be His garden tenders, no matter where He has planted us to be His stewards and His shepherds; but we must choose to be His CHOOSERS … by choosing Him above all that we do. Man so often, in our work-a-day living, chooses to put all our identity in what we do, becoming “performance based” believers. And yes, God wants us to be productive and protective in His garden, wherever we’ve been planted. However, when we see our identity in what we do and not from our relationship with Christ, we have lost focus and we’ll ultimately fall into selfishness and sin just as Adam and Eve did in the garden.

So, this morning I’ve returned to the song link which I posted yesterday as my devotional song choice, asking each of us if we’re keeping our focus on our relationship with Christ FIRST and not letting our responsibilities in the garden become our identity. We are HIS … first-and-foremost; and out of that relationship will come whom we become in Christ. So, let’s make Jesus our life and what we do our way of thanking Him for that life.

My Prayer for Today … Lord, I have my meaning in You. … Amen