Gotta Get Back to the Garden

So I've had this thing stewing in me for about two weeks and I just can't let go of it. I've been sitting in Romans 8 in The Message Translation and the King James. Tonight I was able to put some words down to what my eyes are being opened up to and its so freeing!

I've been through a pretty major time of transition in the last 5 weeks and now I am left with the aftermath of the transition hurricane that hit my life. Last week while standing on the beach of Lake Michigan the Lord spoke to me very clearly as I watched the waves and cried with him. He said to me "Linds, you don't have to succumb to the darkness." I could literally feel this dark cloud trying to overtake me. Instantly I knew I needed to go back to Romans 8.

In the Message Romans 8:1-4 says:

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The next verse the Lord lead me to was Romans 8:12-14: So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!

I've been thinking about that for two weeks... I don't owe my do-it-yourself- life one red cent. NOT ONE. I've been having a particular struggle with my job and taking ownership of it. This past week I've been asking the Lord for his grace. I really needed him to intervene inside of me so that I could honor him in the job that he's given me because I was headed to a very ugly and dark place.

I began to talk to the Holy Spirit about what it meant to give my do-it-myself life a decent burial and get on with my new life. I asked him, "Holy Spirit, when did we begin to live this way?" and suddenly I was transported into the Garden of Eden. I saw the beauty of the Garden and saw Adam and Eve with the Father in the Garden in complete unity/oneness. I saw the fullness of provision in the Garden for every need and the presence of Rest there. Then I watched as Adam and Eve ate the apple and were thrown out of the Garden and into the unforgiving world and I watched them struggle to get back to that place of Rest. I watched them enter the "do-it-yourself way" of living that has created such a disordered mess for all of humanity. Out of this picture I realized...

The one place that the entire world is working so hard to get back to is the Garden of Eden. The very picture of complete fullness and oneness with the Father. The only place of true rest and completeness. The Father knew that the Garden experience was something that he had planted deep within the core of every human being. Whether or not we know its there, every man and woman and child longs to be back in the Garden. They long to rest, they long to be at peace, they long to be completely provided for in every way. So they, we, I attempt to recreate the Garden with our own efforts. We attempt to create our own rest, our own fullness with our own hands and self-effort.

And what is God doing as we toil away to give ourselves something that he's already given us? He rests... and throws reminders at us that he's already done it.

One of my reminders came on Sunday. Tony made a comment that went something like this- "You can only die to what it is that you really want and then the thing that you want becomes what you want it to be." That hit me in the center of my core. I just needed to let my job die. I needed to let my expectations of what it should be or the direction that I think my job should be moving in die... dead... done with. Because if I didn't let it die then I would be trying to create my own Garden. My own fullness. My own rest. And that already wasn't going so well... so how about, I just let it die?

But if I let it die... then what? How about this-

Romans 8:9-11: But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!

If I let my plans go, suddenly I stop thinking about myself and I am filled with the resurrection life of Christ and I have complete provision inside of me, coming out of me! When I encounter Jesus in this way, I am suddenly motivated to engage with my job and the details of my every day living because I am not the source- I am filled with the life of Christ! I don't have to succumb to depression or anxiety because I am operating out of the living breath of God that raised Jesus from the dead.

Today I lived out of this place. My entire disposition changed and I had a really productive work day. I was so thankful and am so thankful. With this, I can look forward to tomorrow because Jesus is taking me out of my disordered mess, my do-it-my-own-way life, and bringing me to a place where I am living more in the reality that he and I breathe together, we move together, we see together, we are one. I am less concerned about me and can rest in the fact that he has it all under control.

This is the Garden. Resting in his finished work. He is Rest. He is the very place we've been working so hard to get to!

Guest Post
by Lindsey Mack