This is part two of a series of posts
entitled "Voices". I encourage you to go back and read part one. In the last post we
talked about loneliness and how all of the different voices we hear can drown
out what God is trying to say to us. God has great things to say about us -- by
the way -- and we need to try with everything we are to mute the voices that
are competing with God's voice.
Here is another phrase that we can
sometimes hear - "You can't have a successful life."
For this post I want to travel back to
the Garden of Eden where we left the last post. Adam and Eve had just eaten
from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and God has provided them with
clothes. Then God sent them out of the Garden:
“So the Lord God banished him from the
Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove
the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a
flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” -
Genesis 3:23-24 NIV
In this moment, I bet Adam and Eve
began to wonder if their life was going to be successful. In the Garden, they
had all that they needed and all they had to do was care for the Garden, care
for the animals, name the animals and play with lions and tigers and bears (Oh
my!) (Read Genesis 2) Adam and Eve had everything they needed and now they were
going to have to really work for it. Let's look and see what I mean.
In Genesis 3, we see God hand out some
punishments for their disobedience.
“To Adam he said, “Because you listened
to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must
not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil
you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and
thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of
your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it
you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."" -
Genesis 3:17-19 NIV
The verses above show us that they had
life pretty easy in the Garden and now they were going to have to work for
their food. I'm sure that they did work in the Garden, but this was going to be
a different kind of work. If it was going to be the same work, why would God
have given it as a punishment?
God had an amazing place for them. Then
they were asked to leave the Garden knowing all of the things that they now
knew were going to happen. As the Garden gate closed, they probably wondered,
"How are we going to do this?"
I feel that might be how some of you
reading this post might feel sometimes. A bad decision has led to some
financial strain, and you don't know how you are going to make it through the
week. You really needed a promotion at work or a least a good raise, and you
didn't get what you thought you would. You are really trying your best to get
into a work field that you are passionate about, but you keep hitting roadblock
after roadblock and you are beginning to doubt that it is ever going to happen.
It's in those moments that the voices
once again start saying, "You can't have a successful life doing that
anyway." "You are always going to have money problems."
"You aren't really good enough at your job to get a promotion or
raise." "You are never going to be successful."
This is what Paul says in Romans 8:
“What, then, shall we say in response
to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare
his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him,
graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God
has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one.
Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right
hand of God and is also interceding for us." - Romans 8:31-34 NIV
The verses above tell us that God has
it all under control. God is for us. God wants us to have a great and
fulfilling life.
One of my favorite verses in the Bible
is Jeremiah 29:11. The verse says:
“For I know the plans I have for you,”
declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you
hope and a future.” (NIV)
God has a plan for our lives. God wants
us to succeed. God wants our life to have meaning and purpose. But sometimes
when we feel like everything is out of control, it's hard to believe that God
is in control.
Yet, sometimes the things that we have
planned for our life isn't what God has planned, so He makes changes to get us
back on track. We see them as bumps in the road and get discouraged. This is
when we start to hear the voices I mentioned above and those are not God's
voice. God's voice is:
“For I know the plans I have for you,”
declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you
hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11 NIV
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Questions or comments... please email breathequestions@gmail.com
Edited by Kay Beam