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He Was There All Along: Nine Ways God Is Involved in Our Lives

1.  He Plans   —   Isaiah 45:2–3 (NLT)

God doesn't guess about our future the way parents do — He plans it, and His plans always come to pass. He named Cyrus, king of Persia, 150 years before Cyrus was even born.

2.  He Leads   —   Proverbs 16:9

Just as parents guide who their children spend time with and where they go, God quietly leads and shapes the road ahead of us — often in ways we only recognize looking back.

3.  He Provides   —   1 Kings 17:9, 16

God commanded a widow to provide for Elijah before Elijah ever arrived — and provided for her in the same moment. He is the source behind every need, on every side.

4.  He Grants Requests   —   1 Kings 3:5, 13

Beyond meeting our needs, God delights in granting specific requests. Solomon asked for wisdom and received far more than he asked for.

5.  He Directs   —   Psalm 32:8

God directs us in more than one way — sometimes a clear, direct word, and sometimes a string of confirmations that quietly say, 'keep going.'

6.  He Protects   —   Acts 12:6–11

Peter didn't plan his own rescue from prison — he was asleep when the angel came. Sometimes God's protection asks nothing of us but to receive it.

7.  He Disciplines   —   Hebrews 12:6

“For whom the LORD loves He chastens.” God's discipline is proof of relationship, not the absence of it — correction given in love, meant to teach.

8.  He Steps Back   —   Jeremiah 32:9–15

God had Jeremiah buy a field that looked certain to be worthless — a seemingly pointless decision preserved as a sign of future hope for generations to come.

9.  He Saves   —   Isaiah 45:22

God arranges even the smallest details — the right place, the right moment, the right word — to bring a person to salvation, often long before they know they need it.

Reflection Questions

1.  Which of these nine postures do you most recognize God taking in your own life right now — planning, leading, providing, granting, directing, protecting, disciplining, stepping back, or saving?

2.  Is there a season of your life you can only make sense of by looking back? What did you see then that you couldn't see at the time?

3.  Discipline can be hard to recognize as love in the moment. Has God ever corrected you in a way you only understood later?

4.  Sometimes God steps back and lets us learn through our own choices. Is there a mistake in your past that became a lesson you now carry — or one you'd want to pass on to someone else?

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GENESIS 3-5
We enter the portion of Scripture known as “The Fall of Man.” The fall was out of favor with God. When Adam and Eve were tempted they sinned and that brought about the wages of sin which is death. First spiritual death: they died to a relationship with God; then ultimately the second death which is hell, the lake of fire. 

Read the chapters yourself. God created Adam and Eve and put them in a paradise called Eden. He told them they could freely eat the fruit of every tree, but not of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God warned them that if they did eat, that very day they would die. With the prompting of Satan, disguised as a snake, they ate from the wrong tree and their spirits died to God. They became separated from God. 

Their disobedience brought all their descendants into disfavor with God. It’s called the doctrine of “Original Sin.” Their descendants are all born with a sin nature. Since we were all in Adam, what happened to him happened to us. “By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners.” (Rm.5:19) We all died to God and now need to be born again and saved from sin. Faith in Jesus’ death, resurrection, and pouring out of the Holy Spirit delivers us from the penalty, power and ultimately the very presence of sin. 
There are four main things I want to bring to your attention as we look at these important chapters.

I. The Devil 
The devil shows up disguised as a beautiful and cunning snake. Up to this point the Bible has told us nothing about the devil. Revelation 12:3-9; Ezekiel 28:12-19; and Isaiah 14:12-16 tell us much more about what was behind that snake. People ask why did God create the devil? He didn’t. He created Lucifer and this beautiful angel wanted to be God so he led a third of all the angels God created in a rebellion against the throne of God in heaven. The rebellion failed and Satan landed on earth seeking to destroy those who were in fact made in God’s image to have dominion on the earth. The devil, a fallen angel called Satan, came to Adam and Eve disguised as a snake, which because of the curse (Gen.3:14), looked nothing like snakes do today. 

Theology is simple: God – good, Satan – bad. Don’t make the mistake of accusing God of things the devil is responsible for. The devil makes people sick and die, not God. “The thief comes to kill, steal and destroy; but I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” (Jn.10:10) Jesus never made anyone sick. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil (Acts 10:38). God good, devil bad. 

The devil is very real and good at what he does, which is to tempt people to sin. He makes people sick and die. He is evil. So evil that there is no hope for him. Jesus will finally throw him into hell; but in the meantime we must defeat him in our lives through powerful spiritual weapons (Eph.6:10-18; 2Cor.10:3-5; Rev.12:7-9; Jas.4:7). His power is through deception and lies. Our weapon is the truth of the word of God, spoken with the authority of the name of Jesus. 
II. The Disobedience 
Think of all the suffering and sorrow, disease and death that has come from Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. God knew this would happen. Why didn’t He step between the snake and Eve, slap the fruit out of her hand, and run the devil out of Eden? He couldn’t, because God had previously given dominion of the earth and every creeping thing to Adam and Eve (Gen.1:26-27). It was Eve’s job to resist the devil and have him flee from her. Don’t ask God to get the devil out of your life, that’s your job. “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” (Jas.4:7) God is not going to do what He told you to do. 

God told them not to eat of that tree but they did. They disobeyed God. They did what He told them not to do. They sinned. The thing I want you to see is that sin is stupid. As the great philosopher Forrest Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Sin is stupid. Think of it. Adam could eat of any and every tree in that paradise. There was only one tree they must not eat from. Only one tree! Apparently they could have eaten from the Tree of Life. But nooooooooo! They had to eat from the one tree the Creator told them not to eat from. And they did it with the threat of death from God Himself. “Don’t eat of it and you will live forever; eat of it and you won’t. You’ll die!” This is the ultimate punishment. Every sin carries the weight of capital punishment. 

What was this sin all about anyway? Why such devastating results from eating a piece of fruit from a fruit tree? This particular tree was put in the middle of the garden along with the Tree of Life. Apparently the couple had a choice. Eat from one tree and live forever; eat from the other and die. But what was it about this tree that brought death, other than the obvious disobedience to God? That tree would give them the right to choose what was good and what was evil. God gave the couple dominion over all the earth, except for one thing. He could not give them the authority to determine for themselves what was good and what was evil. He alone has the ability to do that because He alone knows right from wrong, based on His holy nature. Eve wanted to do that, and look what it has done to the human race. Left to themselves humans cannot determine right from wrong. Hitler thought he was right. Charles Manson thought he was right. Who’s to say they were not right? Nobody, if everyone has the right to decide for themselves. They could have eaten of one tree or the other, but once they ate of the wrong tree, they were kept from eating of the other. Life or death were set before them. They chose death. That’s still true of us today. 

People will say to excuse their sin, “God knows I have needs.” Yes He does, and that’s why He has provided solutions for all your needs. Don’t fornicate or commit adultery. But you have sexual needs. Yes, and God has provided marriage to meet that need. Eve was hungry. Yes, and God has provided fruit from every other tree in Eden. Sure that forbidden fruit looks good for food and I like to eat, but there are plenty of other trees to eat from! It looks pleasant to the eyes; like the other fruit looked horrible? Sin always looks, feels, and tastes great. There is pleasure in sin, but only for a season. But behind the delicious bait there’s a hook. Everyone wants to be smarter than the next guy, but there is a deadly demonic wisdom that leads to jealousy and selfish ambition, disorder, unrest, rebellion, and every evil thing and every morally degrading practice (Jas.3:15-16). 

To do what God said not to do is just plain stupid. Think about it. God has provided everything you need apart from sinning. Sin is a choice. Eve didn’t have to sin. We don’t either. You choose to sin and you can choose not to sin. Notice God said to Cain in Gen.4:7 that, “Sin lies at your door, but you should rule over it.” 
If you are a Christian, you have what Eve never had: the Holy Spirit within you, the blood of Jesus to cleanse you, not just forgive you (1Jn.1:9). The gospel and the love of God demonstrated at the cross to keep us from sin, to help us make the right choices. 

III. The Death 
Along comes God in the Garden and instead of running to meet Him, they ran from Him because they were ashamed of being naked and for what they had done. They had died to God. He dispelled them from paradise with curses that have continued to this day, and will continue until the second death at the end of time when sinners will be thrown into hell (Rev.20:14). The wages of sin is death. Eight times in Gen.5 we have these words: “And he died.” Sin is serious. “All have sinned and the wages of sin is death.” (Rm.3:23; 6:23) Graveyards fill the landscape of every countryside, showing us the result of sin. Sin is serious. Sin is stupid. God do anything stupid. 

IV. The Deliverance
After the couple sinned they did not search for God; they ran from God. “No man seeks God.” (Rm.3:11) People say everyone is seeking God. They are seeking Him in the alcohol, the drugs, in sex, etc. Not so. They are hiding from God in those things. 

But the good news is - God comes seeking us. God comes into Eden and calls out for them. It’s called the doctrine of “Prevenient Grace.” God seeks us out to deliver us from our sin and stupidity. He replaces our leaves of self-righteousness with the skin of an animal. That covering speaks of blood being shed to cover the nakedness of our sin and shame. It foretells the coming of the Son of Man who shed His blood to not only cover but eliminate our sins. 

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“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and man and woman,”

To get the most out of these two chapters in Genesis or any of the rest we will be covering as we work our way through the stories of the Old Testament, be sure to read the chapters we will be covering. 

From these chapters we learn something about:

I. The Person of God, 1:1    The universe is not God and God is the impersonal universe. He is transcendent, different from the universe which He created. We are to worship the Creator, not His creation (Rm.1:25). 

We also are taught that God is a plurality in one. From the name Elohim and the rest of the Bible we learn that the Trinity is one, yet each is a distinct person: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “Let Us make man in our image.” 

II. The Power of God, the rest of chapter one. Behold the incredible power of this creator God. By the Power of His spoken word He created out of nothing everything that exists outside of Himself. There is nothing impossible with God (Jere.32:17; Lk.1:37)

III. The Personality of God, 1:7 God is not some super mind or computer out there in space, or some impersonal being with no feelings or decisions. He made man a soul, which means with a mind, emotions, and a will. God made man in His image, and He created him as a person with personality. God is a person. He can be touched by the feelings of our infirmities. 

IV. The Purpose of God for Man, 1:26-27  Man is always searching for meaning and significance. Look no farther than the first chapter of the Bible. Man was made, male and female, to be like God. That way, when the rest of creation (he was made last remember) would look at them they would know what God is like; not physically, but what He liked and disliked and what He could do. To see man was to see what God was like. The Son of Man nailed this when He said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” 

V. The Place of God, 2:8   Not a place for God (He’s everywhere) but a place God has for us. God always has a people and God always has a place for those people God created man and woman and put them in their place – the Garden of Eden. When we are in the place God has for us we flourish. We see the same thing with Abraham and his children. They were His people and Canaan was the place God had chosen for them. There they would flourish and they are still there today. Are you in the place God made just for you? Adam and Eve were, if they would only stay there. 

VI. The Provision of God, 2:16    God made Adam and Eve last. Before He did, He had already provided everything they needed. God’s place is where He provides abundantly for them. In Eden there was an abundance of food, water, and even gold. 

This is the way God operates with His people to this day. Before we were ever born, God had provided, through the gospel, everything we would ever need to live abundantly and forever. Forgiveness has already been provided. Love, joy, peace? Already provided. All we have to do is believe it and receive it. The power of the Spirit has already been provided for us to do the will of God. Gold has been provided, if we will cooperate with the Spirit in obtaining it. Things like, “Give and it will be given to you.” (Lk.6:38) And the tithe (Mal.3:10). The storehouses of God are full and waiting for us to simply access what’s in there. What do you need? You already have it: Peace, Power, Provision, and everything else you need. 

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“God bearing witness (to the word of God) with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the

Holy Spirit, according to His own will.” (Hebrews 2:4)

Most people never think about miracles in their lives, except when they read the Bible, because the
Bible is full of miracles. That’s because the true God is the God of miracles. He set up the natural world, but to demonstrate the validity of the word of God, He suspends those natural laws to prove that what His
messengers say is the truth. He also does miracles to relieve the suffering with acts of compassion, like in healing the sick, delivering the demonized, and meeting all sorts of needs. A miracle is something only God can do. But He uses men (us) to do them. What’s our part? To agree with God and do what He does,
which is to speak it. We have been raised with a scientific mindset that denies miracles, immersed in a culture of unbelief from the womb to the tomb. We don’t even think miracles, much less believe in and expect God to do them. We have been educated for almost 13 years of our formative life, and more if we go to
college, to not even consider God at all. We have to go against all this unbelief to consider the God of the Bible as being relevant to us in any supernatural way. The whole scientific and naturalistic mindset has created a culture of unbelief, even in our churches that preach the Bible every week, and even though our whole Christian faith and life began with the greatest of all miracles – the new birth. 

“If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation.” (2Cor.5:17)
All of this in spite of what Heb.13:8 says, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.” He was the God of miracles in the Bible and He has not changed and neither will He ever change. People don’t think miracles or the possibility of miracles in their lives, because they do not believe the Bible is
the word of God. Oh, they say they do and it is in their spirits to believe the Bible is the inspired word of God. They believe the gospel that takes them to heaven when they die, but that’s about it. Not much gospel for those who need God to intervene in their lives. Not much “Call unto Me and I will show you great and mighty things.” The truth of miracles has not moved from their spirits to their souls and bodies.
“Pray for my Uncle Joe because he’s having knee surgery tomorrow.” That’s not necessarily a prayer of faith, just a shooting of arrows into the sky hoping they land on the target. Have you ever thought about someone going to see Uncle Joe and laying hands on him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and speaking healing to him? Most people rarely ever think of that.

This is why a culture of miracles must be cultivated by meditation and mouthing (Josh.1:8). We need to learn to think miracles, speak miracles, and expect miracles. It’s the Bible way. It’s the culture of the Bible and it needs to be cultivated into our lives. We should expect miracles because of:
1. The Performance of God we see in the Bible. Miracles, miracles, miracles all over the Bible. What we need to do is believe the Bible we’ve been reading and listening to for years. God performs miracles. He has given us gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts are all miraculous’ they are manifestations of the Spirit.

2. The Promises of God. God never reneges on His promises. If He said He would do something, He will do it. He cannot lie. Cannot! Check out these promises. Cultivate your heart by learning, thinking about, and speaking these promises. Num.23:19; Mt.7:7-8, Jn.14;12; and Jn.5:7. And that’s only a few of them. They’re all over the Bible. Find them and do what God told us to do in Josh.1:8.

3. The Prayers of God in the Bible. “Call unto Me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty
things.” Say, “God, I need you to do a great and mighty thing in my life. I am calling on You to do for me what no one else can do for me. Not doctors of medicine or psychologists.” Great and mighty is the language of miracles. If you ask something and don’t get it immediately, don’t think God lied. Consider learning more about how to pray. Think of the most numerous prayer requests by far – prayers for healings. Look at James 5:14-18. 

14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. 18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.
Prayers of faith are one of the keys to miracles. A more powerful key is to do them the way Jesus did them. He spoke them. “Whoever says for this mountain to be removed, it will be removed. Whatever you say will happen.” Jesus said that (Mk.11:23)

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Stay Connected with Grace Church!

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