Your Unlimited Life (7 page)

G
RABBING FOR THE
L
EAVES
!

Genesis 3:7 says that after their eyes were opened,
“...they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.”
Isn’t it interesting that as soon as they thought something that didn’t come from God, they wanted to cover themselves and hide?

When you think things that aren’t from God, you don’t want mom and dad to know. Just like many children learn to lie and cover up things they believe are wrong, in our adult life, we carry these traits over and lie to cover ourselves.

Husbands and wives often do the same thing. They begin to hide and not talk about things. What are you covering? What is it you don’t want to share? In a relationship where day after day things are covered up, division will eventually come.

Adam and Eve must have questioned their own foolish behavior at some point and wondered to themselves what they were doing naked in the garden. Who cares? No one else was there. The weather was perfect. The chimpanzees weren’t going to give them any trouble. They were the only humans there. But the sin nature is to “cover” when something isn’t right.

Then God shows up:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”

Genesis 3:8-9

When God asks a question, it’s not because He doesn’t already know the answer. It’s because He wants you to think about the answer. He says, “Adam, what are you doing?”

Adam responds, “Nothing.”

Adam and Eve’s sin opened their minds to thoughts that didn’t come from God. Up to this time, their thoughts were undefiled by anything of the world.

RENEWAL TRUTH

I choose to be undefiled by sin,

not because everything

that is hidden will be revealed,

but because I want to be like Jesus.

(Matthew 10:26; 1 John 3:2)

T
HE
“S
OURCE
”
OF
Y
OUR
K
NOWLEDGE

Adam said,
“I heard Your voice...I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself. And He
[God]
said, ‘Who told you that you were naked?’”
(Genesis 3:10,11). In other words, “Where did you even come up with that thought?”

Let’s go back to chapter 2, verses 16 and 17, where the forbidden tree was identified:
“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 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.’”

Isn’t it interesting that this tree is about
knowledge?
It is about the thoughts of good and evil. Notice, God said it’s a tree of the knowledge of
good
as well as evil. In every temptation there are things that are good. The issue isn’t that it’s good or even that it’s evil because God gave them the knowledge of good and evil. The issue is—
where are you getting your knowledge?
That’s what the tree represents: the
source
of your thoughts.

God was saying, “I want the
source
of everything you think, everything you believe, and everything in your life to be Me. As long as it’s Me, you’ve got it made in the shade. But the minute you turn to some other source—yourself, the devil, or the world —you are going to have problems and you will lose your relationship with Me. You’re going to die spiritually, and then you will have opened the door for curses to come on you.” And that’s exactly what happened with Adam and Eve.

The key is not what you know, it’s how you know it:

• Who told you that you can’t get out of debt?

• Who told you that you’re not smart?

• Who told you that you can’t get a better job?

• Who told you that you can’t make more money?

• Who told you that your company can’t be bigger than it is?

• Who told you that your husband (or wife) won’t change?

• Who told you that you can’t be healthy?

• Who told you that you’re ugly?

• Who told you that you can’t have a good marriage?

• Who told you that you’ve sinned too much to be forgiven?

• Who told you that you would never own your own home?

• Who told you that you can’t be healed?

Begin to question the source of every thought. That was God’s question of Adam:
“Who told you that you were naked?”
(Genesis 3:11).

Don’t you think God would have told Adam and Eve about good and evil and talked to them about anything they wanted to know? If Adam had asked God what being naked meant, don’t you think God would have told him? The problem was, Adam went to the devil instead of to the Lord.

We want our children to know the difference between good and evil. We will tell them what’s going on, both the bad side as well as the good side, but we don’t want them to go to the bad side to find out firsthand what is bad. The
source
of their knowledge is the key to their destiny. If they know about good and evil from godly instruction, they will prosper in their soul. But if they know about good and evil because they’ve been in the gutter and finding its meaning out from the world, they will have hurts, pains, and turmoil that will drag them down for years to come.

RENEWAL TRUTH

God is the source of my knowledge.

In Him, I live and move and have my being.

Obedience to His direction is the key to

the fulfillment of my divine destiny.

(Acts 17:28; 1 Samuel 15:22)

When my sons and my daughter were young, I wanted them to know about sex. I talked to them about sex and they didn’t even want to talk about it yet, but there came a day when they were more interested. Recently, my oldest son got married. I hope that I trained him about a healthy sexual relationship progressively as he aged in maturity. I talked to them about it then because I wanted them to get the knowledge of sex from a godly perspective. I didn’t want them to get the knowledge of sex from the back seat of a car, from a
Playboy
magazine, or from some other secular humanist health teacher.

Knowledge from worldly sources would have hurt them. The knowledge I gave them about sex was from God’s perspective, from God’s Word, and that knowledge brought a healthy perception and understanding of physical intimacy in a marriage relationship.

In the past, the church tried to keep people in the dark about sex. We talk about everything but sex from God’s perspective. The tree of the knowledge of life is truth and it brings freedom. But the knowledge of good and evil is deceptive, cunning, twisted, and perverted. While there’s some good in it, the evil in it will bring bondage.

Most people who are struggling in their sexual relationship are struggling because much of what they think about sex came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It didn’t come from the tree of life from God. It came from the world. It doesn’t make you evil, but it just means you have some thoughts that are binding you up, holding you back, and keeping you from God’s perfect will. This concept of where you attain your knowledge applies to almost every area of our life. Which is why applying these principles is monumental in your walk with God. If we evaluate where the knowledge came from, and the good and bad therein, then we will be able to accurately take out the worldly thoughts and replace them with biblical truths.

If you’re struggling with sex, finances, relationships, or with children, you have knowledge that came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You are operating off of thoughts that came from this world rather than from God, and those thoughts will keep you in bondage until you renew your mind with God’s Word.

The question is, who told you? Who told you that you can’t communicate? Who told you that you’re not good at sharing your feelings?

When you start questioning everything the world tells you, you will start getting free. Stop and acknowledge which thoughts came from the devil. Recognize that which came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Shift your thinking to only accepting the thoughts that come from God. Then you will see your soul starting to prosper. Your mind will start to be renewed. You are setting your mind on things above, not on the things of the world, and all of a sudden the blessings of God start coming on you.