Born into this world, thinking we are alive. Thinking we are free. Trudging through day to day. Afflictions, addictions, anxieties, eat disorders, illness, sorrow, hardships, deep heart wounds, hurt by words, finding there isn’t anyone who is 100% faithful to you, a slave to impossible attaining of desired appearances, death, violence, sexually abused, verbally harassed, suicidal thoughts, outbursts of anger, hatred, unforgiveness towards yourself and towards others. Hating ourselves so much we change one thing after another year after year and alas, we end up more unfulfilled than ever. Thinking if we just get this thing, or that job, this car, that husband, this wife, children, a house, healing or notoriety, that we would be happy. Having attained to any of those things, we are left just as discontent only now with more people or things or experiences to sit on the shelf with our discontentment. The things a person does and thinks at night or when by chance he finds a moment of quiet with nothing entertaining him. The horror! What horror that we think this is life! That we think this is freedom!
Could a dark adversary have crept in and put a nice blindfold on you? Keeping you living in the pigs mire. The blindfold keeps you comfortable in your discontentment. Stay in such a state for long and you can be deceived into thinking that is just the way life goes. It’s normal to live life like this. The Horror! The horror to think you can see when you are blindfolded!
What if what you thought was living is actually death and dying. That you are dying the moment you are born. Literally like the walking dead! Yet we call death, life! Blindness we call sight. We call evil, good. We call good, evil. The horror of deception!
The greatest horror has yet to come. The cure for death. There is One. Every person reading this has heard of the cure. But many reject the cure! The Horror! How can this be?! Because they are blindfolded and deceived. They think they need no Cure for death because they think they are alive! The horror! They think the Cure is a lie, has been altered by men, Isn’t what they think the cure should look like or simply isn’t what the Cure claims itself to be because the adversary who blindfolded them has tried to tarnish the wonder of the Cure with many false cures. So when they physically die and stand before the One who gave them the Cure for life and He asks them to simply hand Him the vial containing the antidote, That they might enter into life everlasting… What Horror when the blindfold is now removed, that they see little too late that they were dead all along and shunned the Cure for death, out of the deceit they chose to believe. The horror!
The horror that time after time they heard His Name. Even heard His still small voice. They shunned Him from death to death everlasting. What horror. I can think of no greater horror than this.
“Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts”. There is One alone who came to OFFER us Life in our state of death. “It is appointed for man to die once and then the judgment”. Do not be found on that day without the Cure friends. Your horror story that began with death, needs not end in death. There is One who raises the dead to life, even while on this earth. One who heals your wounds, gives you His perfect sound mind, and who will carry all your griefs. One who sets us free from bondage to all the things we once sought to find life in. If you need to hear His name once again, it’s Jesus.
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The first part of this story is filled with all things that are not like God’s character, those things are called sin. Sin brings death as we live life apart from the giver of Life. Jesus offers not just forgiveness of all our sin but power over future sin. He brings us life from our state of death. He resurrects us to life. He is the cure for death, not the cause of it. If a life of sin is what brings death. If sin is the result of living apart from God… Then you can see how coming to the Savior of the dead and learning day by day to walk with Him, keeps you from sin. All those things you sought to find joy in, will no longer be appealing to you. And as you follow Jesus, you will find His ways to be true life. His way is the opposite of all that brings us internal misery. This is the simplicity of the gospel. The good news. You are dead in sin. And Jesus came and died and rose from the grave that He might raise you to life too. He offers life. Don’t be found on judgement day alone. Only he who is with the Son has eternal life. For Jesus is the way, the truth and the Life.
Into the Garden of the Lord 