Hungry for Eden

Eden.
The last time perfect harmony existed between humanity and the God who created and loved us. The last time a human being could see, touch and so freely interact with the God who knew them from the inside out. The last time we truly remembered our dependency on Him.
Eden. Also the beginning of our rebellion and hiding behind fig leaves. God's face also became hidden from us as well.

The day Jesus burst into my life was Eden for me. I didn't initiate anything - He did. The visions, the sight of Him, His Spirit baptism, the whole shebang. For years I could touch and feel and practically see Him.

Then I entered the period where it felt like God had hidden His face from me. As a relatively new believer, only a few years old, I wondered what I had done and how I could "make Him come back". Then I remembered the panic of, "Oh my gosh! Was that it?" Was it all a big come- on?

In fact, it was no abject sin. Just another part of my maturing process - learning to be one who believes even when s/he cannot see". Now, 28+ years in the Lord, I better understand the words of Jesus in Luke 5(NIV) ³³ They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.” ³⁴ Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? ³⁵ But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

Fasting is an outward sign of that inner mourning, that inner longing to feel experientially the intimacy we actually do have positionally in Christ. In our "flesh suits" we have so many distractions in our world and in our minds that His whispers, His dance, and even His very plain words of scripture are coming to us through a veil over our hearts.

Intimacy - a recreation of our Edenic privilege - is God's blood-bought invitation to us, spoken through Paul, "Our lives are hidden with Christ in God". Not "if we feel it". Not even "if we believe it". But we ARE in Christ and we ARE in God and He IS in us.  My life will be spent pursuing the One who is in plain sight, reaching out for the one who already has Me in His arms, and giving meager, weak praises to the One who loves and has saved me to the uttermost.
Join me on this pursuing, reaching, praise-filled journey.