When Lightning Strikes

There are times when our fears overtake us. Our hearts may be willing to follow God anywhere, but our flesh is weak. There are times we know what God wants us to do, but in weakness and fear, we run and hide. As we saw with Jonah, running and hiding from God’s presence did not work. God pursued him and found him and did what He had to do to bring him to his senses. Running and hiding does not work. God pursues His people and finds them. Then He does whatever it takes to bring them back to Himself so that they might walk with Him and serve Him.

Man’s habit of hiding from God began way back in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. On the sixth day of creation, “the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). God had created a special garden for Adam and Eve to live in and spend their days (v. 8). They were to look after the garden and take care of it (v. 15). The Lord made “a helper comparable to him” (v. 18) and “brought her to the man” (v. 22).

Adam and Eve lived in the garden and took care of it, just as God intended. Can you imagine what it was like to live in that beautiful garden, to be walking hand in hand with God every day and talking freely with Him? That is what they did. They walked with God in the garden every day, fellowshipping with Him according to God’s own purpose. That is, until that one fateful day.

Now God had forbidden Adam only one thing, saying, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Having fallen from heaven, Satan went right to work. He lured Eve into eating fruit from the forbidden tree (Gen. 3:1–6) and she gave some of the fruit to Adam, “and he ate” (v. 6). Adam was right there with Eve as they disobeyed God. Eve may have been duped by Satan into eating the forbidden fruit, but not Adam. Eve just handed Adam some of this forbidden fruit and he took it without hesitation and ate. He wasn’t fooled in the least. He just chose to jump right in and sin.

Sin had entered the world and the fellowship they enjoyed with God was broken. “And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden” (v. 8). They were afraid because they had sinned, so they ran and hid from God. But the Lord knew all about it, so He came looking for them. He pursued them in order to restore their relationship with Him.

“Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” (v. 9). So he came forward confessing his sin, along with Eve (vv. 10–13). “Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them” (v. 21), a blood sacrifice is made to cover their sin. Then, “the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken” (v. 23). Though no longer in the garden, relationship restored, Adam and Eve again walked with God.

When you stray from God, you experience a constant wooing that comes from the throne of God. The Bible says “the Son of Man” came “to seek and to save that which is lost” (Luke 19:10). When you stray from God, Jesus seeks after you to save the lost sinner and bring the straying saint back to Him.