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During
during these uncertain times we need confidence in God and His Word.
But many times it
seems we are not living with the confidence in God and His Word that we
could be.
Many of the things we do in our lives seems to involve confusion and doubt
of some sort.
Many
of the things we do in our lives seems to involve confusion and doubt of
some sort.
Most
of the time our problems aren’t in finding the strength to cope with
our problems. In fact, most of the time we feel we could go
through anything willingly if only knew we were doing the will of
God, and that we were on the right path.
But
that is not how it works. We pray about which path to take in a
certain situation, we believe we received an answer, we start
walking out that decision, and then the next day we are already wondering
how in the world we could have make the decision to go this way. The
situation looks exactly opposite now.
And
then, the next day, we feel even more confused until eventually we
lose confidence in our sense of direction all together. We feel we
missed God and didn’t understand what He said to us. Then we wonder about
our ability to even be able to hear God, and if we ever heard Him anyhow.
Our
lives take three steps forward today, two backwards tomorrow and so often
we feel like we are walking in circles, with doubt filling our minds.
We are being tossed to and fro.
Do you experience this?
If we take a close look at our problems we can see that they all have
something in common. It is Doubt. At the root of our difficulties
lies doubt!
Not knowing with full confidence what our direction should be. In every area of our lives, from the least to the greatest
decisions we have to make, we struggle to identify the correct path,
and many times being certain about that path seems impossible.
Why is this like this?
Why is everything so confusing? What is at the underlying source of this
‘world of doubt?’
As
with everything, we have to go to the Bible, to the Torah, to see
how this human condition came to be. For this one, we need to go all
the way back to the beginning: to the Garden of Eden.
Genesis 2:16-17 tells us,
And the Lord God
commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but
you must not eat from The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for
when you eat of it you will surely die.”
Adam was faced with a basic choice
– that was to obey the Divine command and not eat the fruit of the
‘Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil’ or to disobey.
The
world that Adam lived in up to that point was perfect; the tree
however, held the power to change that world. It had the power
to release death, or evil, into the world.
This forbidden tree is named ‘The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’
Why is it
referred to the knowledge of good AND evil? Surely if it contained
the power to release evil into the world it should simply be named ‘the
tree of the knowledge of EVIL.’
That is the point exactly.
If the tree were of evil only, that evil would be so easily
identifiable, so horrible, so hideous, that no one would ever come near
it! If it were only evil, it would be the most obvious thing in the
world to avoid. It would have not presented a temptation to Adam and Eve,
and it would not present a temptation to us today.
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