At Gateway Church in Austin we continued a series called “Essential Elements: Building Your Core Faith.” This week Ted Beasley shared via video. Here are some of his insights:
“Love is generous and wants to share itself with others. In the beginning was the Trinity and then God created humanity.
God created and it was good.
The greatest thing lost at the fall was the relationship between Adam and Eve with God.
Shalom means ‘the way things ought to be’ not just ‘peace.’ Deep inside we long for the way things ought to be.
When we are told not to do something, it intrigues us and tempts us. The choice was there so that Adam and Eve weren’t forced to have a relationship with God.
We make jokes about sin and don’t take it seriously, but sin is a rejection of a relationship with God. When we choose to sin, we are betraying God’s heart.
To reconnect with God requires an admission of our guilt and asking Him for forgiveness. Beautifully and miraculously, He will forgive. Unfortunately, we fail to do so because of our stubbornness. Self-deception about our fallenness is like a tranquilizer which keeps us from being fully alive.
The consequences of Adam’s choice to sin has been the brokenness and fallenness of all of humanity.
Why were the consequences so severe? Because God is holy. He is perfect and cannot be in the presence of unholiness.
The story of the Old Testament throughout is the message ‘I am coming for you.’
Jesus was love personified and pointed people back to ‘shalom’ calling it ‘the kingdom of heaven.’ Even after living a perfect life and performing miraculous signs and wonders, Jesus suffered an injust arrest, beating, and death on the cross. Jesus took our punishment so that we could connect with God (Isaiah 53).
When we turn to God, we get something just as miraculous as a walk with God through the Garden of Eden, we get the Spirit of God within us.
Things aren’t all that they will be right now, but we can trust God for a better future one day. One day we will have shalom.”
You can watch the message Ted shared here in a couple of days and the rest of the series at http://www.gatewaychurch.com/podcast.
