Galleries

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.  Gen. 2:24  ESV

It’s easy for parents to feel that their children will always be under some measure of their authority.  The control they once held is not released easily.  No wonder leaving and cleaving is such an issue for newlyweds.  Jesus also modeled leaving and cleaving to show us how it’s done.  He didn’t leave his parents to cleave to a wife but He did leave his family to cleave to His Father, a higher authority.  This emotional clash was, at times, stressful for his parents.

In John 2, Mary presumed upon Jesus’ divinity at the wedding feast but Jesus exalts his sonship to His heavenly Father above his sonship to his mother.  He had a radical allegiance to God’s will above his mother’s will.  He also felt a burden to make clear, not only to his mother and his brothers and sisters but to all the rest of us, that no physical relationship on earth controlled him.  His mother and his physical family would have no special advantage to guide his ministry or even receive His salvation.  His miracle that day in Cana, the one of water turning to wine, was at his mother’s bidding.

Jesus had to work against the assumption of his day that his physical family had an inside track.  I recall the time in Luke 11 that a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to Jesus.  ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!’  But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’

Jesus said, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and his wife and children and his brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.’  Luke 14:26 Hate in this context doesn’t mean emotional hatred.  Hate means preference, deferring to the one who takes priority.  As adults, we are to leave the ways of our parents if what they expect of us conflicts with the voice of our Father.  Leave and cleave.  This is not an easy way to live but necessary for all disciples.  When we struggle with the tension it often brings in relationships, we are comforted that Jesus knows what it’s like and He’s walked this road before us.

Oh, the pressure to keep peace with family.  Teach me, Jesus, how to live!  In Jesus’ name, Amen

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.  Gen. 2:24  ESV

To pledge myself completely in marriage is to forsake former allegiances.  I vow to make my spouse’s welfare my priority after my relationship with God.  Parents of newlyweds will feel the shift.  Mothers will feel a sense of loss over sons who have pledged themselves to a bride.  If the relationship was close, the sense of leaving and replacement will be profound.

Fathers will feel a lump in their throat as they walk their daughter down the aisle to give her to another.  He knows she is on the cusp of leaving – and then cleaving to someone new.  She will dwell under the umbrella and shade of a new man.  Her quest for wisdom, protection and encouragement will all fall on her groom.

I remember the morning after our daughter’s marriage ten years ago.  Her bedroom was strangely empty.  I knew in my gut that she wasn’t away at college or on a weekend trip out of town.  She wouldn’t be back to sleep in her twin bed again.  Our house was no longer her primary home.  I felt the ache and it was magnified by an unfortunate case of pneumonia.  That just intensified my emotions.

When a groom doesn’t leave his parents emotionally, he can’t cleave.  When he’s consumed with bowing to his parent’s wishes and feels the pressure of them breathing down his neck, he will be too intimidated to take a stand when his bride needs to know she comes first.  Feeling threatened, she will ask him to choose in a thousand different ways and if he is not strong enough to know God’s ways in his new marriage, he will cause his wife to feel he can’t be trusted with her heart.

When a wife can’t leave home, she can’t cleave either.  Her security still rests with her father, or mother, and pleasing them takes priority over her husband’s wishes.  Feeling threatened, he feels his leadership has eroded.  He feels disrespected, betrayed, and rejected.  If she cannot cut the apron strings, he will feel he can never earn her respect.  He is not allowed to be a man.  He will feel like a child, her parent’s child.

Leaving and cleaving are found throughout scripture, and it expands beyond the boundaries of marriage.  I am to leave and forsake the kingdom of darkness and cleave to Christ.  I am to dwell under His umbrella and live under the protection of His household.  I bear His name and my identity is forever changed.  I am to let Him lead me no matter how different His ways seem than the ways of my former life.  He loves me enough to lay down His life for me and I love Him enough to respond wholeheartedly with my unwavering allegiance.

Strengthen marriages today.  Teach husbands and wives how to navigate new boundary lines with wisdom.  Amen

Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.  Genesis 2:19  ESV

It is far too easy to starve our God-given imaginative gifts, believing that sacred dreaming is reckless.  A few might believe that it even borders on witchcraft.  Does it?  I draw in my breath at the mere suggestion.

God formed the dust of the ground and made cows, cats, dogs, monkeys, and antelope.  Then he nudged each one to go to Adam so they could be named.  I love how Genesis describes this part of history.  “God brought them to the man to see what he would call them.”   God enjoyed watching as Adam tapped into his creativity. “What shall I call something soft, furry, with a tail?” 

I am made in the image of God.  He, the one who imagined the earth before He made it, infused me (and everyone else) with the same desire to dream and create.  How can I know if my imagination is safe to use?  I take Isaiah’s advice.  “Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?”  Isaiah 40:26  If my imagination is brought captive to prayer and scripture, then it is a gift.  A Spirit-filled life is a canvas just waiting for vibrant paint colors.

I believe one of the reasons our prayer meetings and personal prayer times are so dull is that we fail to use our imagination in prayer.  What happens when we take a scriptural principle and develop how it might look in the desert of human need?  The possibilities are endless.

• Perhaps God would kiss a heart of stone and transform it into a heart of flesh when I pray Ezekiel 36:26 creatively.
• Perhaps God would turn my speech into sharp arrows of truth as I ask Him to give me words like Jesus, from the prophetic words of Isaiah 49.
• Perhaps God would stand on the waves of my personal storm and say, “Peace!  Be still!” as I pray from Mark 4:39

Just as God brought the animals to Adam to name, he brings opportunities my way to engage my mind in ways that more resemble play than work.  Adam wasn’t a child when he thought up names yet I picture him having the time of his life as each animal came into view.  He pointed, perhaps laughed, and then exclaimed in amazement over God’s creativity before imagining a name for each one.  I’ve lived long enough to know a sense of his joy because many days, writing in the morning is like playtime.

Because Adam walked with you, his imagination was holy.  Help me use my creative gifts with more confidence.  Amen

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.  Genesis 2:16-17  ESV

I remember my first encounter with death as a child.  My grandmother died when I was 13.  One minute she was there, the next minute, she was gone.  The kitchen was quiet, and when we walked in the door, the aromas of her Swedish baking were absent.  Her two Siamese cats no longer greeted us.  The change from her existing to not existing was a physical and emotional ‘thud’ to my gut.

I felt this shift again when my mother died.  I was thirty.  Yes, I knew she was dying; she had terminal cancer.  But even as she grew weaker, the understanding of death could not be fully digested.  I could still bring her flowers, make her coffee, sit on the edge of her bed and talk with her.  But one day while visiting, she breathed her last and I looked death in the face.  The shift was swift and radical.  One moment she was with me.  The next, she was not. She would no longer stand at the kitchen window when I drove in. Her laundry, washed with a detergent made of her favorite soap shavings, wouldn’t be hanging on the line.  One can never quite prepare for death’s finality.

I don’t know if Adam knew what death meant when God warned him and set the only parameter he would have to follow.  He could enjoy everything God made and partake of it but there was one tree that was forbidden.  Should he disobey, there would be instant spiritual death and a progressive physical death.         

Adam and Eve set a disastrous course in motion when they disobeyed.  Initially, the shift they felt was a spiritual one.  There was no more transparency without shame, no longer the anticipation of fellowship with God.  In a moment, the shadows of distrust, fear, embarrassment, and perhaps even anger, visited their souls.  Innocence was history.

Every person born encounters a moment when the spiritual death of Adam makes itself known in a way that is defining.  It is that moment when innocence dies.  You are probably sifting through your memories to remember the exact moment it happened to you, that instant when your view of life changed forever.  For any who grew up in the best of homes, the awareness of spiritual death was more subtle, but over time, just as devastating.  Bullying at school, competition between siblings, angry words spoken by a parent for which there was hopefully an apology; these series of events reveal an imperfect world and bring the gnawing feeling that no one is completely safe and perfectly loved.

The overarching plotline of the Bible is that mankind fell ~ then God sent a redeemer so that mankind could be saved from his sin.  With that rescue, the full restoration of Eden would begin to blossom in his spiritual life.  While we will all endure the gut-wrenching pangs of physical death, we know it’s temporary.  We will live in the Eden of a new Heaven and new Earth where corruption does not exist.  We will know what it is to be Adam and Eve in the land of perfection.  God is, at this moment, preparing it as He once did when His Spirit hovered over the face of a dead planet and kissed it to life. 

Oh, the things You are preparing for me, tailor-made, just right.  Amen

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.  Genesis 2:15  ESV

My mother was a gentle soul, understated, but with a great colorful and eccentric side if she was comfortable around you.  She loved gardening and loved good dirt.  When she visited us at our home in the Adirondack Mountains, she’d dig up soil to take home for her garden.  While this may not seem that eccentric, when she and my Dad traveled, she did not buy souvenirs per se but brought home dirt.  If you opened her top dresser drawer, you could see little baggies of dirt and twigs from Germany, England, and Bermuda.

She also loved to collect kindling from the woods outside our home.  It was stacked meticulously like matchsticks in our basement.  On Saturday mornings, she would pop into the kitchen after breakfast, rub her hands together and exclaim, “What shall I get into today?”  That meant she was headed outside to explore but would, inevitably, end up in her gardens.  I can remember overhearing her say to a garden snake, “Well, hello there Mr. Snake.”  (Our daughter Jaime was only four at the time, but this is one of her favorite memories.)I saw early that when a man or woman finds a divine purpose for their life, it is a beautiful thing.

Adam was created to find fulfillment in the labor his Creator gave him.  And he did, for a while.  He was told to do two things; work the garden and keep the garden.  To keep means to guard and protect.  But protect it from what, or whom?  Satan of course.  There were no other predators.  Only him, lurking, waiting for an opportunity to corrupt everything just as he was corrupted.  

My garden, my personal sphere of influence, was given to me by God.  I labor with Him, but I also protect it with Him. To labor without protecting is foolish, allowing the enemy to plunder recklessly.  Guarding it is one aspect of ‘ruling and subduing the earth’. 

At whatever point I abdicate and assume that God will protect it without my direct involvement will end badly. I live in a dangerous world and ruling my part of it is cooperative, just as it was for Jesus. As He was directed by His Father, He confronted the kingdom of darkness.  He informed them of their limits and parameters.  He even revealed that this was part of His mission. “I came to destroy the works of the evil one.” 

I do not want to be lazy; I was given kingdom work to do.  I don’t want to be passive either; I was told to protect what is holy.  Doing both to the glory of God is part of my personal mission statement.

While I work today, I will also be the watchman on the wall as You give me discernment.  Amen

So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.  Genesis 2:3  ESV

What happens when God blesses something?  The Hebrew concept from the word ‘bless’ is this ~ God ‘praises and gives strength to something and removes it from common use.’    

Could all of this be true about the Sabbath?  I think I’ve always believed that the seventh day of the week (my church day) is a day just like the other six except I choose to do different things.  It’s quieter and more restful.  I’m realizing that true teaching on the power of the original Sabbath is absent.

Since God blessed the Sabbath, made it holy, and infused strength into it, that changes the picture entirely.  When the seventh day begins, I need to take my shoes off at the burning bush.  The ordinary and the mundane promise to melt away if I immerse myself in profound sacredness. 

In the welcomed silence, God will do something physical, emotional, and spiritual to me.  As I rest, He will bless me with measures of strength that are supernatural.  He will engage in a deep impartation of restoration.  To the extent that I engage with Him in return, He will illumine things I thought I previously understood.  

The last element of the Sabbath is resting.  As He rested after creation, there was another time in history where it happened.  It was the moment Jesus said, “It is finished.”  The noise of evil against the Son of God had been on a sharp upward curve, resulting in a horrific crucifixion.  While it might have appeared that God had been murdered, “It is finished!” pierced the silence, and evil trembled.  The worst had happened for the fallen angels.  The curse had been reversed.  Death had been defeated.  Sin had been paid for. 

So, on my next Sabbath, I’m going to look for ‘holy’, opening my heart wide to the pregnant, sacred moments God is waiting to give to those who come expectantly.  No one can stand on holy ground without leaving changed! I can emerge with new vigor, with new spiritual energy and wisdom.

Prepare me.  Amen

And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.  Genesis 2:2 ESV

God finished what he set out to do. Then He rested, not because He was weary, but because He loved what He had created. When God begins anything, He completes it. He does not abandon a project because things are complicated. He is never set back by limits or because of inadequacy. While I may try my hand at things only to discover that something is too hard or even impossible, God never experiences these realities. 

I can rest in these wonderful truths as God works His purposes in me. Paul said, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Phil. 1:6. God will not fail. God will not retract one promise. God will not change His mind about me. I am His creation, and every single day, He is molding me with loving intentions.

Can I hasten or slow down His plans? This is where I must tread carefully. I can affect the speed of the outcome due to the free will God gave me. God’s original intention was for Adam and Eve to enjoy a life of perfection in the Garden of Eden, but they wrecked it with their choices. It appeared they ruined God’s plan, but God had foreseen this, provided a Lamb, and accomplished a way to restore Eden through the death of His Son. Jesus crushed the head of the serpent, the very devil who instigated the mutiny Adam and Eve committed in the Garden. Through His death, He made way for the redemption of them and the rest of their descendants.

I press in close to my Christ today and yield every part of my story. I give him the sins of my past and the times I worked against His purposes, knowingly and unknowingly. Though I feared I sabotaged my future blessing, I was wrong. With repentance and redemption, God continued to mold my life and keep me on the path to glory.

 
When I was created, God dreamed. When I was immature, God nurtured me. When beaten down by the enemy, God battled for me. And He is working today, completing every single thing pertaining to my life. In eternity, all of us will celebrate the victory of completion as we are unveiled bearing the perfect reflection of Jesus. 

I will not be anxious about my life.  You are the Potter.  In Jesus’ name, In Jesus’ name, Amen

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.  Genesis 2:18  ESV

Lest any woman should feel insignificant because of how the word ‘helper’ has been unwrapped in our past, let the Word speak for itself today.  The word for helper is ‘ezer’; one who provides aid or relief, one who imparts strength.  Adam was incomplete without a counterpart who completed him.  The word does not imply someone who is inferior.  A helper is not less valuable than the one who is helped.  How can we be sure of this?  Hold on.  Are you ready?

God describes Himself as a helper, an Ezer.  Here’s just one example.    “Hear O LORD, the voice of Judah and bring him in to his people.  With your hands contend for him, and be a help (Ezer) against his adversaries.”  Deut. 33:7  It is used another 21 times in the Old Testament.

Everything I have described thus far is a brief summation of the scholarship of a woman in ministry named, Carolyn Custis James.  She is an award-winning author who thinks deeply about what it means to be a woman who loves Jesus in a post-modern world. She champions men and women working together in a messy and complicated world. 

Carolyn so beautifully teaches that a woman is a helper to the man.  She is his partner spiritually, bringing him her strengths.  She completes him in what he lacks.  He completes her in what she lacks.  Man does not carve out his path void of her input.  He thrives on her feedback.  He knows that left alone, he will not walk the path God has laid out for him successfully unless he plugs in her gifts.  Where he is weak, she is strong, and vice versa.

Being an ‘Ezer’ is who I am as an image-bearer of God.  Just as God comes alongside to strengthen and nurture, I model after my Creator to bring my strengths to the table. God asks me to do it in a non-threatening way, never to intimidate but to support. 

In whatever ways Christian cultures have diminished a woman’s worth, heal our souls.  Lift our heads. In Jesus’ name, Amen

And God blessed them.  And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it…”  Genesis 1:28  ESV

Adam was told to subdue the earth, to rule and bring it under subjection to the laws of the Creator.  He was to take the principles of heaven, the ones God revealed to Adam as He walked with him in the garden, and then put them into effect here on the earth.

As created children of God, as people who walk and talk with God intimately, our mandate is the same.  We are to have the mind of Christ, to learn the ways of heaven intimately, then to bring those spiritual laws into effect in our world.  When we encounter obstacles, we are to put on our soldier’s uniforms and engage in the battle with the spoken Word and prayer.

I was surprised several years ago to discover that when God formed the church, the Greek word for church, ‘ekklesia’, was the word the people of Greece used for a legislative body.  They understood that the church was God’s corporate agent to bring the kingdom of heaven to the earth.

I have a garden to rule, a sphere of influence to affect.  When I use my conferred authority with humility in prayer, I bring God’s ways to my environment.  My world begins to bear the imprint of how things run in heaven.

Jesus, as the last Adam, showed us how to rule.  He never moved, traveled, healed, spoke – without asking His Father what to say or do next.  Isaiah 49 says that He would be born to speak the Word and His mouth would be a sword.  Talk about affecting your environment!

Adam, through sinning, abdicated his authority.  Jesus won it back on the cross and has, through the great commission, given it back to His disciples.  Today’s agenda is set before me ~ rule and subdue the earth.

I can’t pretend to know what to do unless I get on my knees and soak in the Word.  Fill me with Your message and set my feet to rule.  In Jesus’ name, Amen

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”  Genesis 1:26a  ESV

Man is made in the image of God.  Originally, he had full understanding of divine things.  There were no flaws or mistakes in his thinking.  He had intense desires to walk God’s path without a trace of misgiving.  He was able to see God, hear Him speak, and walk with Him in friendship in the cool evening hours.

Heaven and earth were in Adam.  He had a body made of earth and a soul made of heaven.  He was perfect.  Holy like his Creator.  He was communicative, creative, trustworthy, and a righteous administrator of all God asked him to govern.  He was the perfect husband, Eve the perfect wife.  But Adam and Eve will lose it all.  They will rebel and bear the guilt of creating mutiny against the God who gifted them with perfection. 

Mankind still groans under the burden of fallenness.  Creation is in mourning; weeping for what was lost.  People break under the sadness of the times, under the curse of sin that eats away at their psyche like cancer.  Even Christians are bending under the weight of it.  But can I ask?  Do we not know our future?

All is not lost.  Jesus came as the last Adam to redeem what was lost in the garden.  He died to give us the chance to, once again, be holy – as He is holy.  We are invited into a re-parenting process by His Father to be perfect image-bearers once again.  Daily, through our willingness to own what is flawed and then repent, God sets us apart from the curse of the fall to be like the last Adam.

And when we die, that full restoration will happen instantaneously.  We will be with God, walking in the cool in the evening.  We will know what it’s like, firsthand, to have divine thinking.  We will be in the prime of life, healthy and energized, to enjoy kingdom life to the fullest.

There are moments that are perfect here on earth, ones I’d like to freeze-frame.  When they are over, I can be depressed.  Those perfect moments, however, will not be interrupted in heaven.  We will all be glorified, living in the presence of God where color, creativity, and communion will exceed any perfection we have ever known here.  The kisses of heaven did not end in Eden.  They were simply paused.  God’s proximity and presence were restored again at Calvary.

How much I will bear Your image today is my choice.  Rule in me today.  Conquer sin and death.  Live in me as You did in Adam.  Amen