Way back during that Adam/Eve/Serpent thing, something very significant happened. There are a bunch of lies Satan tells them.....but they appeal to Adam and Eve. Things really would have been different if they had made a different choice. Here they were, walking and talking in the garden in the cool of the evening with the creator of all things.... them and God.... chatting away....enjoying their relationship. All they had to do was what God had told them to do and humanity would have been a completely different experience. Instead... they did what appealed to them as a pretty neat situation.

They buy into the lie... especially the last sentence that if they eat from the Tree of Knowledge...first... they will be like God! One of the ways I am absolutely certain I am part of this first Adam thing and his nature is that I want to be God! I really do.... and... so do you! How is that manifested? Look at the last part of that sentence starting "you will be like God....(it ends with).....knowing Good and Evil." This is not terribly complicated to understand. The criteria for me acting like God is pretty simple..... I decide right and wrong....good and evil..... that's what makes me God. If I determine to let God decide what is right/wrong/good/evil....guess what... then He is God, not me. Not rocket science :)

This is what makes Jesus statement in the Garden at Gethsemane so significant..... regardless the horror he was facing (as the second Adam) he chooses to do Father's will instead of His own will. If Satan could win this one.... there would be no way out of the first Adam for the rest of us.

This is what makes the temptations in the desert in Luke 4 so important..... it's all to get Jesus to do his own will, instead of Father's will. It is even more important when we understand that these 3 temptations are exactly the same as what Satan throws at each one of us, every day of our lives, in order to get us to choose to be like God and determine our own right and wrong or..... will we let God decide that one for us instead.

I want to say a whole bunch about each of these temptations because, in them, we find everything that the first Adam wanted..... control, power, things, adulation, recognition, all that stuff...... all the things Satan himself has been after for himself since his own beginning.

I think this is some really important stuff. I am asking the Lord to open up my schedule a little so I can get some time to say everything that is cooking in my heart on this.

Till next time.

:)