Life and Death

(c) Staci Stallings, 2005

Life is God. Death is "not God." When you truly have life, what you have done is to allow God to permeate you so fully that "you" have begun to disappear, and He has begun to live through you. Death is the opposite of this. Death reigns when you are relying on your own power, your own resources, your own strength, and your own knowledge and understanding in any given situation.

In the Garden of Eden, there were two trees-the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree of Life was quite simply allowing God to live life in and through His creations. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was the belief that we don't need God, that we could live and do it on our own. The moment Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, death came into the world because they chose to rely on themselves rather than on God.

Instantly, they were banished from the garden, the sanctuary that God had made for them, and they were sent out into the world to learn to fend for themselves literally because that's what they had chosen. However, this truth did not begin and end with this one act. It is going on every day in every life capable of making choices on this planet.

That means you.

Yes, you have the choice between letting God live through you or trying to do it on your own. Which are you choosing? I have come to wonder why God sent Jesus into the world with this concept in mind. I believe the answer to that is very simple. He sent Christ who is a part of Himself into the world to restore our choice to rely on God rather than on ourselves. Once again, through Jesus Christ, we have the choice to choose the Tree of Life rather than having as our only option the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil manifested in the laws laid out as a measure of whether we are good enough to be allowed back into God's grace.

On our own, of course we are not good enough. We can't be, for on our own, we are death-literally. On our own, we have no life within us because if we are doing it on our own, that necessarily means that God is not in us. If God is not in us, Life is not in us and we are dead. For God is Life; death is the absence of Life or stated another way, death is the absence of God.

Living on our own we are told that we must rely on competition for limited resources. We must beat others out for the best education and the means to provide for ourselves because if we don't beat them, they will take some and there will be less for us. When we are living on our own, we do not believe that God is All and Everything and that He will provide. No. Instead we believe that if we don't do it, it won't get done. We believe in the empty promises of worldly success and achievement. We seek to impress one another with our wealth, our knowledge, and our worldly attributes-however altruistic they may seem on the outside.

None of this is real. It is death personified, and yet over and over again, we choose this avenue of "being." Even in the Christian life, our service often comes not from God living through us, but from us trying to prove ourselves worthy of Him. It is a fallacy, a lie of the highest proportions. God does not seek our effort. He seeks only to express Himself and His love through us.

It is like Mark Hall from Casting Crowns said when he recounted the story of God making his life's purpose perfectly clear: "Mark, I'm going to do something wonderful in the world. I just want to know if you want to come along."

God seeks to live through us, and when we allow Him to do that, that is Life. That is the Life that Christ came to remind us was available and to restore an option once again.

Through His cross, Christ took onto Himself the shame of the children of God who had tried so valiantly to live up to what God wanted them to be and had failed so miserably, and He allowed that fallacy to be nailed to a cross and forever banished. When He arose, Life arose with Him. When He sent His Spirit, He sent it to once again live in us and through us, making the Tree of Life a possible choice once again.

And still, we choose death over Him. Why?

Good question.

Now you know the truth, is death still your choice?

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More inspiration can be found at: http://www.stacistallings.com You'll feel better for the experience!