Wallowing - The Plan

by Terri White

In the beginning God set His purpose in motion for mankind.  The Garden - the "seedbed" full of promise - was The Place in which God voiced His Way, "You may eat everything EXCEPT  the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil."  (my paraphrase)  Thus, God set in motion His plan to reveal Himself to man so that man would truly know who God is & who he (man) is.  By doing what, you ask?  By not only knowing that man would eat from the forbidden tree, but planning that man do so.  The man and woman were destined to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  THAT was the means to fulfill His Plan.   

Notice how it happened.  The woman was enticed and succumbed.  Then she invited her man to eat the forbidden fruit, also.  Did Adam think long and hard about it?  Don't know.  But we do know that he became sin for the woman out of his love for her.  Does that story sound familiar? Everything means something in scripture.  Jesus became who He is NOT to redeem mankind.    If Jesus had to become what He is not, then we can be no different. 

However, long before the Garden account, God had set His Way in creation by establishing opposites: the north/south poles, light/dark, big/small, hot/cold, smooth/rough. . . . good/evil.  "I create evil. . ." says the Lord.  Yes, evil comes from God.  It's His means (tool) to reveal Himself to mankind.   

So in believing The Lie in the Garden, the man and woman forgot who they were. All part of God's plan.  From that, substitutions for God abound, miseries abound - all because mankind must walk in darkness before he can know the light.  For there is no light without darkness.  It's only after wallowing in 'who we are not' (The Lie) that we discover who God is, and hence who we are.   

The last verse in Rom.11 declares, "Of Him, through Him, and to Him are ALL things."  He starts the work in our lives, He continues it, and He finishes it.  Does that mean that He makes our choices for us?  No!  But it does mean that he weaves all our choices into His plan.  Romans 8 states it this way:  "God works all things together for His good. . ."   

Do we have to like the darkness?  No!  Do we have to 'act nice' while we are wallowing in the darkness?  We probably won't.  Although, as we understand more about God's use of darkness to reveal His Light, we tend to respond in a more mature manner during those challenging seasons of our lives.   

Romans 13 calls this process the "renewing of our minds."  It's God's process to continually reveal Himself to us - oh the depths of Who He Is!  In doing that, we are plunged into "darkness" until we see what God is showing us about Himself.  Seeing Him "anew,"  we also see that we have embraced "The Lie" (which has so many faces/facets).  We shed That Lie as we embrace The Light - thus renewing our minds. And then to make this process even more glorious, we also discover more of who we are in Christ as we know God in greater depth.   

"Oh, that I might KNOW Him. . ." cried Paul.   

Ultimately, man goes "from glory to glory"  which allows the Christ to love in/as/through us.  Now THAT'S The Plan.