Once Upon A Time…
A long Time Ago…
In The Beginning…
In The Beginning…
There was God. That’s it. Just a triune God made up of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit. And God was totally perfect, totally sinless, totally
omniscient, totally omnipresent, totally omnipotent. Totally. Back then, there wasn’t time. There wasn’t air. There
weren’t people, or plants, or computers, or problems, or even one little piece
of matter. There was only God, and God was perfect in all ways. He didn’t – couldn’t – do
anything bad or wicked or sinful. Then God, for one reason or another, decided to create
the Universe. He created light, planets, sound, animals, gravity, you name it
He made it. Every last miniscule molecule and atom was created by God.
But He didn’t stop there. He went even further and made a human being, a man named Adam, in His own image. That didn’t mean that man was God. It meant that man, like God, was perfect, and contained aspects (i.e., language, morality, capacity for relationships, love, creativity, etc.) that resembled God and set the humans apart from the animals. After man, God created woman to be a helper to man. This doesn’t mean that women are not equal to men. A “helper” is someone who provides strength in an area that another person is weak in. Men can’t do everything by themselves, and women can’t either. Men need women and women need men. There’s no other way around it. So the story could just end there, couldn’t it? A perfect, omnipotent, triune God creates a perfect universe, a perfect man, gives him a perfect girl as a helper, and even gives them dominion over the world. Sounds great, doesn’t it? So what happened?
Rebellion happened. Adam and Eve, the man and the woman, were tricked by the Devil (in the guise of a serpent) into disobeying God’s one rule: not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were filled with a desire to be like God, to know what God knew, and they were so blinded by that desire that they didn’t care about the consequences. They rebelled. And when they did, the perfect world instantly fell into sin. Christians call this the Fall. That’s what happened. Two people breaking one rule caused evil to enter into the world. Two people breaking one rule brought in disease, pestilence, war, murder, corruption, every evil thing you can ever think of. And two people breaking one rule brought death to our world. Adam and Eve were no longer perfect. They were sinful beings, and now they had a mortal lifespan instead of the immortality they would’ve had if they hadn’t disobeyed God’s rule. God could have killed them then and there. A perfect, just, sinless God cannot abide sin, and now His perfect creation was sinful. But, for one reason or another, God didn’t just blot out the whole Universe and start over again. Instead, He removed Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and promised to one day send a Savior to take away humanity’s sins.
That Savior was the Son, one member of the triumvirate, who became human and died on a cross, taking all of humanity’s sins on Himself to pay our price. The price for sin is death, but not just anyone could die. We needed someone perfect, someone who had never sinned, to take our penalty. And no matter how good we humans might think we are, none of us is even remotely sinless. But God is completely sinless.
So Jesus Christ – the only Son of God, the God-Man, the
perfectly sinless one – died for us on the cross, and paid the price for our
sins. I can’t fathom a love like that. I don’t understand why He would care so
much to do that for me, for every person on this planet. He died for you, for
me, and for the most evil person in the world. I can’t comprehend a love like
that, and I doubt I ever fully will. Three days after His death, Jesus was raised from the dead
and spent forty days with His disciples. He told them to go throughout the
whole world, telling others about the truth of who God is. And then He ascended
into heaven, promising to return in the Last Days.
And then along came me. A wretch, a sinner, born totally depraved and separated from God by a huge gaping chasm called sin. There is no Tablua Rosa. No one is born good. Because of the Fall, every human being – yes, even that sleeping newborn – has been born sinful. There is no one good. Everyone is evil and totally depraved. And that includes me.
On our own, nobody wants to believe in God. Nobody wants somebody telling them what to do, what’s right and wrong, how to run their lives. It’s a side affect of the Fall. And I was just like that. On my own, I didn’t want to recognize that there is Someone bigger than me, Someone telling me that I can’t do everything I want to, Someone telling me that I am imperfect and evil. Then He called me. God called my name. He showed me how disgusting I was. He showed me that He is perfect, that He is everything I could ever need and more. He showed me how much He loved and cared for me. Me! A wretched, disgusting, totally evil, corrupted little rebel who couldn’t even control her own life. He brought me to the cross, the place where His Son took my sin to the grave, and He gave me a choice: would I shun that cross and that love and continue in my evil little life like I always had or would I give my life to Him.
I died to self that day. I realized that I have been totally separated from God by my sin nature, and I realized the only way I could get back into a right relationship with God was believing in Jesus Christ. Believing that He was sent by God to this earth, who was both God and man at the same time, who lived a perfect life, who willingly died for my sins, who was buried and rose from the grave three days later, who ascended into heaven, and who will one day return to judge the living and the dead. I realized that I wanted to be right with God, that I wanted to be in a right relationship with Him, and the cross was the bridge across that black abyss called sin.
I started crossing that bridge at age eight, but I won’t be all the way across until either I die and go to heaven or until Jesus returns to take me and every other Christian to eternity. Crossing that bridge isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a commitment, it’s a continual process of dying to self and being brought closer to God every day. It’s not an easy walk. It’s hard. To be a Christian is to be persecuted. There is no way around that fact. Sometimes that only involves people putting you down verbally. Sometimes that only involves having your family shun you, but sometimes that also involves being killed. Sometimes it involves having the people you love get killed. Sometimes it involves torture and heartache, but God told us that will happen if we follow Him. He doesn’t promise us an easy life, but He does promise that He will be right beside us through the whole thing.
I am willing to die for God, if that’s His plan for me. I won’t be afraid because He will be with me through my whole life. My name is Edessa, and I am a sinful human being who was saved solely by the unending grace and love of the one true God. Who are you?
If you would like to know more about Christianity or becoming a Christian, please let me know and I would be more than happy to answer your questions! :D
But He didn’t stop there. He went even further and made a human being, a man named Adam, in His own image. That didn’t mean that man was God. It meant that man, like God, was perfect, and contained aspects (i.e., language, morality, capacity for relationships, love, creativity, etc.) that resembled God and set the humans apart from the animals. After man, God created woman to be a helper to man. This doesn’t mean that women are not equal to men. A “helper” is someone who provides strength in an area that another person is weak in. Men can’t do everything by themselves, and women can’t either. Men need women and women need men. There’s no other way around it. So the story could just end there, couldn’t it? A perfect, omnipotent, triune God creates a perfect universe, a perfect man, gives him a perfect girl as a helper, and even gives them dominion over the world. Sounds great, doesn’t it? So what happened?
Rebellion happened. Adam and Eve, the man and the woman, were tricked by the Devil (in the guise of a serpent) into disobeying God’s one rule: not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were filled with a desire to be like God, to know what God knew, and they were so blinded by that desire that they didn’t care about the consequences. They rebelled. And when they did, the perfect world instantly fell into sin. Christians call this the Fall. That’s what happened. Two people breaking one rule caused evil to enter into the world. Two people breaking one rule brought in disease, pestilence, war, murder, corruption, every evil thing you can ever think of. And two people breaking one rule brought death to our world. Adam and Eve were no longer perfect. They were sinful beings, and now they had a mortal lifespan instead of the immortality they would’ve had if they hadn’t disobeyed God’s rule. God could have killed them then and there. A perfect, just, sinless God cannot abide sin, and now His perfect creation was sinful. But, for one reason or another, God didn’t just blot out the whole Universe and start over again. Instead, He removed Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and promised to one day send a Savior to take away humanity’s sins.
That Savior was the Son, one member of the triumvirate, who became human and died on a cross, taking all of humanity’s sins on Himself to pay our price. The price for sin is death, but not just anyone could die. We needed someone perfect, someone who had never sinned, to take our penalty. And no matter how good we humans might think we are, none of us is even remotely sinless. But God is completely sinless.
So Jesus Christ – the only Son of God, the God-Man, the
perfectly sinless one – died for us on the cross, and paid the price for our
sins. I can’t fathom a love like that. I don’t understand why He would care so
much to do that for me, for every person on this planet. He died for you, for
me, and for the most evil person in the world. I can’t comprehend a love like
that, and I doubt I ever fully will. Three days after His death, Jesus was raised from the dead
and spent forty days with His disciples. He told them to go throughout the
whole world, telling others about the truth of who God is. And then He ascended
into heaven, promising to return in the Last Days.And then along came me. A wretch, a sinner, born totally depraved and separated from God by a huge gaping chasm called sin. There is no Tablua Rosa. No one is born good. Because of the Fall, every human being – yes, even that sleeping newborn – has been born sinful. There is no one good. Everyone is evil and totally depraved. And that includes me.
On our own, nobody wants to believe in God. Nobody wants somebody telling them what to do, what’s right and wrong, how to run their lives. It’s a side affect of the Fall. And I was just like that. On my own, I didn’t want to recognize that there is Someone bigger than me, Someone telling me that I can’t do everything I want to, Someone telling me that I am imperfect and evil. Then He called me. God called my name. He showed me how disgusting I was. He showed me that He is perfect, that He is everything I could ever need and more. He showed me how much He loved and cared for me. Me! A wretched, disgusting, totally evil, corrupted little rebel who couldn’t even control her own life. He brought me to the cross, the place where His Son took my sin to the grave, and He gave me a choice: would I shun that cross and that love and continue in my evil little life like I always had or would I give my life to Him.
I died to self that day. I realized that I have been totally separated from God by my sin nature, and I realized the only way I could get back into a right relationship with God was believing in Jesus Christ. Believing that He was sent by God to this earth, who was both God and man at the same time, who lived a perfect life, who willingly died for my sins, who was buried and rose from the grave three days later, who ascended into heaven, and who will one day return to judge the living and the dead. I realized that I wanted to be right with God, that I wanted to be in a right relationship with Him, and the cross was the bridge across that black abyss called sin.
I started crossing that bridge at age eight, but I won’t be all the way across until either I die and go to heaven or until Jesus returns to take me and every other Christian to eternity. Crossing that bridge isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a commitment, it’s a continual process of dying to self and being brought closer to God every day. It’s not an easy walk. It’s hard. To be a Christian is to be persecuted. There is no way around that fact. Sometimes that only involves people putting you down verbally. Sometimes that only involves having your family shun you, but sometimes that also involves being killed. Sometimes it involves having the people you love get killed. Sometimes it involves torture and heartache, but God told us that will happen if we follow Him. He doesn’t promise us an easy life, but He does promise that He will be right beside us through the whole thing.
I am willing to die for God, if that’s His plan for me. I won’t be afraid because He will be with me through my whole life. My name is Edessa, and I am a sinful human being who was saved solely by the unending grace and love of the one true God. Who are you?
If you would like to know more about Christianity or becoming a Christian, please let me know and I would be more than happy to answer your questions! :D
I read this with a HUGE smile on my face! Im pretty sure you just became my new best friend. lol. I've been looking for a Star Wars fan like me who had the same passion for God.....wow. Hi. I found you! haha. I read this one post and I can already tell your amazing.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, and it's awesome to meet you, too! I hope you enjoy what you read! God Bless You! :D
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