“Oh Mama, if only Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned.” Another re-share ... from Revive Our Heart Ministry

Another re-share ... from Revive Our Heart Ministry

An excerpt from the end of a message from Elizabelth Elliot “Held in the Everlasting Arms”:

… my little four-year-old granddaughter, Christiana, had to be spanked four times, three times in one day, for the same offense. She had not come running quickly when she was called. And my daughter, as my mother treated delayed obedience as disobedience, Valerie tries to do the same thing. So Christiana was spanked three times on that particular Sunday.

So Sunday night when it was time to go to church and she was called, she came charging out to the car, tears pouring down her face, her arms full of a Bible, a notebook, a pen—four years old, mind you—on her way to church. Had to have a Bible, a notebook, a pen, her barrettes, her necklaces, her bracelets, her hair ribbons and who know what else was essential. All this stuff falling out of her arms. She was tripping over things, tears pouring down her face, and she stopped and she said, “Oh Mama, if only Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned.”

Now that child was suffering because she lives in a fallen world. And you and I live in that same fallen world. We have to look at these awful facts:

• the fact of sin and suffering and death 
• the fact that God created a world where those things were possible
• the fact that He does love us—that means that He wants nothing less than our perfection and joy
• that He gave us the freedom to choose
• that man decided that his own idea of perfection and joy was better than God’s and believed what Satan told him 

Therefore sin and suffering entered into the world and now we’re saying, “Why doesn’t God do something about it?”

And the Christian answer is, “He did. He became the victim, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.”

As the Psalmist said in Psalm 46: “Though the earth shake and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, God is our refuge” (v. 1 paraphrase). I speak to you as one who has desperately needed a refuge. And in that same Psalm he says, “Be still” (v. 10). And I am told it’s legitimate to translate that, “Shut up and know that I am God.”  That’s the message.

Message shared via Revive Our Hearts - an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/revive-our-hearts/held-everlasting-arms-message-elisabeth-elliot/