Section I
Chapter 3
God sees the Heart and He Responds
Deuteronomy 30:19-20
19 “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! 20 You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying Him, and committing yourself firmly to Him. This is the key to your life.”
New Living Translation
When I began writing with God I didn’t really have a relationship with Him and I certainly didn’t know what the key to my life was as stated in Deuteronomy. I wrote because I didn’t know what else to do. And I called out to Him because I didn’t know who else to call upon. He honored me in that time, even though my lifestyle didn’t honor Him. He gave me a passion to write, to ask Him questions and try to listen for wisdom. I didn’t know the bible at that time. I heard the stories and I knew some of the characters, but the words were not alive to me; the bible was a book and I wasn’t sure which parts were fiction and which parts were true. I knew that my father believed in the bible and that he’d likely be upset with me if I ever told him that I thought part of it was fiction, but honestly, some of the stories seemed like “stories”: The parting of the Red Sea, Jesus walking on water, people being healed of blindness with a little mud on their eyes, and armies winning battles with a handful of people? Even though I didn’t believe that all of these stories were true, God spoke to me anyway.
It bothered me having unanswered questions about the bible, so I had often tried to read the bible like a book. I loved reading mysteries and I would tell myself to sit down and read it for entertainment purposes and maybe some of it will make sense. But it didn’t work. One day I was visiting my sister and she had a 365-day bible; by reading a little each day I could finish the whole bible in a year. This was the answer I was looking for. I took it home and tried it out. I probably started and re-started the 365-day bible 20 times over the course of a year and a half. I could never make it out of Genesis without setting it aside for months at a time. But I was still writing with God, and He spoke to me regardless of my time in His Word.
It wasn’t until I turned 30 that I was finally able to start the 365-day bible and actually make it out of Genesis and through the Old Testament. Now and again a scripture might speak to me, I’d even hi-light it, but for the most part I was still just reading. I was more worried about keeping pace with my one year deadline than I was about understanding what all of it meant. But God used that time anyway. I often listened to Christian radio in the morning (mostly because I felt guilty that I didn’t go to church). Periodically a pastor would address a section of the Old Testament that I had read about but didn’t understand. Each time that happened I’d get a surge of excitement as the biblical context was explained and I could begin to understand the cultural significance of the story and see the present day application in my own life. It was then that the bible started to come alive. The scriptures began to have a three-dimensional affect; I could finally see how the “stories” might actually be real, and how God’s heart was being poured out through those moments.
This experience led me to another question or disappointment; unless I had someone explain the whole bible to me I might never understand what any of it means. It was a depressing thought because I didn’t like going to church. I was too shy to meet new people and yet I didn’t want to sit alone.
Then a light bulb went off. What if I just ask God to help me understand the bible? Even though I had doubts about God speaking to me, I still asked Him about all kinds of things in my life and I generally received some kind of answer. My biggest obstacle though had been me. I spent years questioning the validity of God’s voice; I chalked things up to my own education, or coincidence, or logical deduction. I came up with numerous reasons to keep from believing that the encouragement or direction I was hearing was simply God. But over time God had shown me that His voice was real and I had begun to lean on that thought. So why couldn’t I just ask Him some questions about the bible myself? What if He actually answered me? What if I read my bible and every time I was confused about the meaning of scripture, I just asked Him to help me understand?
So I tried it.
I was reading a passage in Genesis about the tree of life:
Genesis 2:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”
New International Version
I asked God, “Why did you place the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden?”
It confused me. If God loved us so much why would He put a tree (that was easily accessible) in the middle of His garden that could bring destruction on the rest of humanity? Why have it there at all?
I took a few minutes to search my own (limited) biblical knowledge and tried to arrive at an answer, but nothing seemed to make sense. So I sat quietly and asked God to help me understand. He said:
The tree represents choice. I gave freedom of choice to man. The tree was meant to signify the difference between giving man all that he needed to survive, and giving man all that he needed in order to confirm that my command was greater than any fleshly desire he may have.
After reading that res