A Call from the Life of Sexual Immorality

 

And the desolate land shall be tilled, that which had lain desolate in the sight of all who passed by. And they shall say, This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited. Then the nations that are left round about you shall know that I the Lord have rebuilt the ruined places and replanted that which was desolate. I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it (Ezekiel 36:34-36, Amplified).

This was the Scripture God imprinted in my heart some time ago. He spoke expressly to me, saying, “I am bringing My people back to Eden.” I didn’t understand what He meant then, but as I began to meditate on what He has said, He began to open amazing things to my spirit, from that day till this day. It is some of these things I am willing to keep sharing with you here every Thursday.

The above Scripture mirrors the state of God’s people who have been ravaged and reduced to near nothingness as a result of exile brought about by sin. But God is ever merciful. Here, He promised them not just a restoration, but beautification with it. First, He promised that their land shall be tilled, and passersby who see it will say the land has become like the Garden of Eden. Remember that when God placed the man He created in Eden, he had the responsibility of tilling (or ‘dressing and keeping’, according to Genesis 2:15, King James Version) the Garden. This made the Garden of Eden a beauty to behold. Eden, by the way, amongst others, means ‘delight’, and ‘well-watered’. It represents a place where the Presence of God is. So, in essence, God delights in Eden, or His own, as it were. 

The next thing people will say is that the cities of these people of God have become fortified and inhabited. God thus promises a replanting for His people. Herein lies the restoration and eventual beautification of a people hitherto shattered and destroyed by exile brought about by the clutches of sin.

Now, do you in one way or the other see how the above concerns you too? As a child of God, have you at some point departed from the right path, and fallen short of the glory of God? Are you right now held down by the bondage of sin (and I am particular about sexual sin)? Have you gotten entangled in a lifestyle of sexual sin as a result of being in a wrong relationship? Imagine the beautification that God has promised you – but this is contained in a coming back by you to His original plan and purpose for you.

Understand that Eden was God’s original plan for His people. In other words, God’s original plan before Genesis Chapter Three was that the man and his wife would live a life of complete pleasure and luxury, without any stress whatsoever, in His Presence. Eden was a delightsome land, full of everything good, all the resources the man and his wife would ever need for the actualisation of the original plan.

This was, for them, as long as they remain connected to the Source – God Himself. Suffice to say that the man and his wife enjoyed a level of grace while they were in the Garden of Eden. It was a grace that eliminated struggle. It was a grace that eliminated human effort to get whatever they wanted. They had everything provided for them. But sin took all of that away with one singular visit from Satan in Genesis 3.

You must understand that sin is a dragnet, a limiting factor to accessing all that God has planned for you. This is especially true if you are consistently living a life of sin and ignoring God’s warning for you to return to Him (Malachi 3:7). God’s will has to prevail in our lives, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else, at all cost.

The point I am making here is that what happened with Adam and Eve, what happened with the children of Israel as we saw in Ezekiel 36 where we read, isn’t farfetched from our lives today, as far as relationship with the opposite sex is concerned. Eden was the testing ground for man’s faithfulness to God’s commands. Through disobedience, the Garden was lost and man’s relationship with Him was severed. God has however once again given everything back to us, in bringing us back to Eden. But how? How is this possible, seeing that man fell (sinned) in Eden, resulting in the pollution of everything? Are we all literally going back to Eden as it was from the beginning? Well, here is the answer: Scriptures declare:

God has done all this. He has restored our relationship with Him through Christ, and has given us this ministry of restoring relationships.

In other words, God was using Christ to restore His relationship with humanity. He did not hold people’s faults against them, and He has given us this message of restored relationships to tell others.

Therefore, we are Christ’s representatives, and through us God is calling you. We beg you on behalf of Christ to become reunited with God (2nd Corinthians 5:18-20, God’s Word Translation).

Thus, going back to Eden simply refers to becoming reconnected to God. It refers to forsaking the lifestyle of sin and embracing sweet communion with God as it was in the beginning. Sweet communion with God, a life free from (sexual) sin, gives you everything you’d ever need, like it was with Adam in the Garden before the fall.