Placement

Placement

4/24/17

Many of us struggle with the fact that sometimes we feel like we do not belong, both in our presence and where we live.  It is commonplace for us to think this but when we do we must keep in mind that God has His purpose for our existence and where He sends us.  It is easy for us to misplace the truth that god defines us and one of the processes through which He completes this definition is through His placement of our lives.  We see this action occur in the Garden and all throughout His Word.  Tough positions will before us but that is all part of our existence and a detail that we must understand as a separation status from the world.  Instead of complaining, we need to take responsibility for this placement and realize that for this placement requires a direction and purpose.

Moving around is tough and this aspect was not uncommon in my life.  Being a minister’s kid requires flexibility in this area because many times we had to pick up our lives, leave our friends and settings, and move to another part of our country.  I have to admit that it was never easy to accomplish this task but I never questioned it for I knew that my parents were listening to God and obeying what He was telling them to do.  As I have stated before, I do not hold anything against my parents for the life I had when I was growing up, in fact, I have to admit that I learned a lot over those years and am applying these lessons to my life today.  Even though one moves around a lot they can still be grounded in God enough that no matter what change one encounters He is enough to stabilize any situation, a truth that this society should keep in mind for the upcoming changes that God is going to allow.

Most of the opportunities I had in my growing up and developing years came in handy even though my words, phrases, and accents always made notice when others engaged me.  This change was sometimes difficult but most settled in and allowed me to participate with them on their playing fields.  Moving is an exposure that some cannot cope with, but through this change, one can understand other aspects of life that show us that each one of us is unique and have a purpose while we are on this earth.  We also must contend that many of these changes occur through the experiences of our lives and sometimes those experiences come in dire circumstances which promote pain and agony.  Just as the first example of people moving in the Bible was under scrutinized circumstances and a result of bad choices and major change, God places us in a specific setting and He expects us to follow through with what He authorizes us to complete, but many times we forget this truth and go on our merry way and do what we wish complicating God’s placement for our lives.  We must recognize that through this misguidings we expose ourselves to the world and we voluntarily place ourselves in a precarious situation for it is not what god originally wanted for our lives, but have no fear God can still work through this setting if we repent and turn back to Him for our guidance.

In Genesis 2:8 we have the example of mankind’s first placement and when the bible states: “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.”  This is a short and sweet verse that gives a specific detail about where God wanted man to live and one that could have been the only thing mentioned about placement and where God wanted our lives to exist, but of course our enemy wanted other things for us and instead of us resisting him and his tricks we succumbed to the lies and here we have present day settings.  This verse says that God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, a specific place with specific coordinates.  Many will argue about where Eden was and where the evidence for its Garden but that is really of no concern here because once again the subject of placement relies on obedience and the importance of obedience.  Obedience displayed here was not just the physical workings of the Garden of Eden obedience was also the direction to the personal side of Adam and Eve’s dominion as well.  When God creates something He does so with completeness and gives His creations the ability to do the same.

The placement of Adam was a perfect setting and one that God intended for him and his descendants to live in forever.  It was a perfect place to live with no imperfections to speak about and it would serve as the perfect home to Adam.  At the same time, God was introducing him to his new home God also gave instructions to Adam about how he was to make sure that its appearance was kept up and according to the standards God commanded.  God gave Adam the authority to complete this task as well, with the abilities that God created in Adam, nothing was left out to keep this command.  It was the authority that God gave to Adam and Eve that Satan desired to overthrow and one that he would use against them when the time came for him to set into motion his plan for their destruction.  It was this creative process and authority that God gave to mankind that infuriated Satan even further and a detail that Adam and Eve forgot to keep up and dress as God had commanded them.

I cannot foresee God leaving out the details of this portion of their lives by not explaining to them the reason why it was vital for them to maintain order in the Garden.  Adam and Eve had the full capacity to choose and to do what is right in the eyes of God.  If Adam and Eve would have displayed faith in the words of God and truly believed in what God said was true concerning their dominion then it would have been a different display that Satan recognized.  But what Satan noticed was a division between God and Adam and Eve, one large enough to drive a truck through evidently because he used this division as a door to their destruction.  This setting also provides us with a picture of what Satan is really after and that is the destruction of “we” which defines the true nature of the family.  When the unity of the family is destroyed the represented dominion is torn and defeated therefore allowing our enemy to conquer the only sanctity that humans understand.  God intended our lives to be equal with Him being the centerpiece of our existence together, not divided and separated from His presence.

Agreeing with complacency is not a suitable feature to restore equality.  This means that we recognize the family is in disarray and instead of returning to the Creator of such family we rely on self-made institutions for guidance, kind of like having a divorce lawyer as the CEO of a marriage counseling center.  Adam and Eve continued in this separation state until the moment was right for Satan to pounce, driving the wedge deeper and causing a wider gap between the two sides.  When sin enters into a place God cannot be the ruler any longer, the house or dominion is now divided from its original Creator and all hope of equality and restoration has been destroyed.  The enemy’s goal is to steal, kill, and to destroy, there is no playing nice when the being we fight has this position and when we allow his patterns to infiltrate our dominion, he has control, not God.  Satan began this mission of his in the Garden when he was able to dive deep enough into Adam and eve’s world and he promoted and then executed the first divorce ever known to mankind; a similar one that he initiated in heaven when he fell.

Has anyone ever asked why the family unit is always under attack from many different sides, issues, and ways?  Well, this is the answer to all of those questions concerning this matter, it is Satan who is behind these attacks and as long as we place the world before God those attacks shall continue and grow stronger as each day passes.  We cannot find any peaceful placement in our lives unless God is first in every aspect of our hearts.  The concept of family unity was defined in the Garden of Eden and any attempt to display any alternative to such an arrangement is not of God but of our enemy.  God shall allow forwarding addresses to this truth of His but in the end, the mail shall not arrive due to the fact that the house has already been destroyed.  The heart of the house is now diseased and that disease continues its course throughout the rest of the body and shall not stop until it has nowhere else to invade, the complete separation from its Creator.

In Genesis chapter 3 we see a pure and holy dominion being ripped apart before Adam and Eve’s very eyes.  Once a perfect life is now haunted with an element of agony that has not been recognized before, an agony that continues its path in our lives today due to the fact that humans chose our own way instead of God’s Way.  I cannot imagine how Adam and Eve must have felt when the first ping of pain hit their bodies, maybe it is the same way as we feel when our bodies feel it for the first time, the only difference is that they knew perfection on earth and we do not.  It is our fault that we are in the shape that we are in today, not God’s but it is God who is the only one who has the ability to restore this perfection in His eyes and that way is through His Son’s blood.  Perfection is what God creates which is the direct opposite of what our enemy offers.

We know what it means to be living in correct conditions with God and it is our responsibility to wipe all portions of the world from our hearts so that we may offer a clean house to God so that He can decorate it with His Life.  Adam and Eve fiddled with the truth instead of understanding and living in the Truth and it was then that Satan had deceived them enough that he now could mess with their placement.  When we choose to accept sin into our lives we automatically endanger our dominion and our placement in God, there are NO exceptions to this law.  Every descriptive story about humans in the Bible deals with this Truth and just as Adam and eve did so long ago we are doing the exact same procedures by following our own physical eyes and justifying our existence through the world and not God.  The only outcome of this lie is that Satan shall pull back on the rod and reel and our lives are dead as we know it when that hook buries into our hearts.  Then everything that we know that defines us shall be ripped away and destroyed right before our eyes.  A harsh reality but if it happened to Adam and Eve (AND IT DID) it shall happen to us as well. 

This nation was created in a like manner as the Garden of Eden, it is not perfect as such but it is similar in many ways.  God has stated over and over that if we put Him first in our hearts our nation shall never fall and never cease to be prosperous.  Even all of the Deists and Atheists who wrote the Constitution of this nation knew that this nation stood for something higher than any other nation or empire that had ever been presented previously on this earth.  It was because God forged this land and from day one of the first landings in the early 1600s, Satan has been at work doing his best to see to it that this nation falls.  This nation is god’s dominion and He has charged His people to proclaim His values through its lands, but just like Adam and Eve we have placed our dominion on the gambling table as a bargaining chip to the world and we do not have the correct cards in our hands to win this gamble.

We have the opportunity to leave the table intact and to stop playing the gambling game with God’s dominion, but if we do not stop and leave the table we shall lose this land of ours by a power so much stronger than we can ever imagine in order to prevent the complete sinful annihilation of God’s holy creation.  Leaving the table is called restoration and the willingness to allow God to change the state of our affairs and to return them to His deeds and not the world’s deeds.  If we are honest with ourselves we can no longer believe that our nation’s heart, and thus our dominion, stands for anything but worldly concepts.  We are not right in God’s Order nor are we pure in heart according to His Ways.  Right before Eve took of the fruit of the tree of good and evil she could have turned away from that table and stood her ground, but she did not.  We shall face the same disastrous conditions as she did if we do not get up and turn our lives around and back to God.

Adam and Eve lost their placement and never was allowed to return to it again.  Angels and a fiery sword were placed at the gates to keep anyone from entering the Garden again.  I ask you this question if God did this for the Garden of Eden and all of the personal loss of Adam and Eve and since He is a complete and continuous God how can we not believe that unless we change our ways that He shall not do the same today?  Satan desires to laugh at us while our placements are destroyed, he takes great pleasure in hearing the cries of God’s people after they have watched their livelihood go up in flames.  He sees no greater thrill and dances around us when God’s children wander aimlessly in the desert with no home to call their own.  And Satan especially loves it when he waves goodbye to you as your life slips away from this planet to face God knowing that he accomplished his job in ensuring that you knew nothing about God.

God is real and this nation is His.  Church, you are playing a gambling game with Satan while holding the cards that he gave you to play with.  God does not gamble nor does He contend with sin, so why are you?  Clearly, you are not in right standing with God and it is you that is supposed to be changing the world for God, you are no better than the Pharisees and you should be condemned as such.  God is calling you to turn around before it is too late, stop believing in the lies of the world and get up from the table before we lose our dominion.  Our dominion is all about placement and it is strictly up to us as to where our placement shall be, both spiritually and physically.  God is warning us once again and we need to heed these warnings before our dominion is totally destroyed.  Just as our bodies have walls of defense our spiritual lives need to have spiritual defenses that will allow us to keep our placement exactly where it was created to be.

DLB