Whetting Your Appetite

Awestruck

Desire is so fundamental to our nature that we often overlook its significance. Its guiding force. We are created - designed - to desire and to be satisfied.

Desire and satisfaction were part of Paradise before the fall. When God created the world and saw that it was good, he rested. When Adam and Eve worked the garden each day, they would stop in the evening and walk in the cool of the day beside the divine God of the Universe. And when they were hungry, they found satisfaction from taking the fruit of any tree in the garden.

Except one, of course.

The serpent injected venom into Eve's desires and bent them toward the forbidden. Forget God and what He said, the serpent suggested, and become like him by eating from this tree.

Eve, having then entertained the idea of going against God's guidance, looked at the fruit of the tree. The Scriptures say she saw three things that she desired: she saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom.

And so, in an attempt to satisfy those desires, she took the forbidden fruit. And ate it. And then gave some to Adam, who was standing next to her.

Adam and Eve abandoned their natural, divine provisions that would naturally meet their desires and grasped for something outside the realm of God's desire.

And yet, though we call this event the Fall - or Paradise Lost - what we find is God's desire only beginning to reveal itself. God came to the garden in the cool of the day to find Adam and Eve, desiring to walk with them. He called to them when he could not find them, desiring their presence. And once they confessed their sin, He covered their shame with animal skins that he sacrificed, desiring to relieve their shame. He handed down discipline and ejected them from the garden, but left them alive and well, desiring to continue to be a part of their lives. And the rest of Scripture is the story of God's divine pursuit - his holy desire - to win us back from doing the same thing over and over again - trying to gratify our desires with anything other than Him and His provision.

God's desire is us. And when we loosen our grip on the forbidden fruit and take our eyes off its deceptive appearances, we find that what we really desire ourselves is God. And when God's desires and ours converge, Paradise is regained.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:7-11; Luke 11:9-13

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Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)