Clothing Adam & Eve

Perhaps sometimes we Christians may think that having a relationship with God is just so largely & plainly spiritual with all those holy kind of ideals, concepts & stuff, along with being constantly nudged to abide by many rules & regulations as stated in the Bible.

Well, at least sometimes I think of it this way… about having an understanding & relationship with God who is seated so far & distant above the Earth… making me feel just so puny & almost like a mini micro-organism that’s almost unnoticeable from the Heavenly Realms.

At times, I also feel like all my striving to obey, follow & relate with God becomes such a ‘high order’ kind of spiritual actualization that I just can’t comprehend why He plans or does certain things in my life & in those around me.

Simply put, I may often view God & a relationship with God, as a ‘cheem’ one. Even the Chinese idiom about a man playing a fiddle to a cow, doesn’t come anywhere closely similar to the idea of trying to understand & relate to a God whom we can’t even see & still have to communicate & understand what’s going on in this two-way relationship. In the contrary, that man with the fiddle just plays by himself & seriously, I don’t think it really matters at all, whether the cow even bothers or appreciates the music.

Personally, I do struggle to comprehend the possibility of having a relationship with a God who is really & very absolutely practically involved in my life. In short, to sustain & improve on the first & most basic level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And I guess that’s where the problem lies, coz we humans are just so humanly short-sighted & merely see & worry about what’s in front of us at each point of time. We view life as very largely a quest of meeting our needs & wants… & sometimes subconsciously turn away when we can’t comprehend why & how God chooses to be involved in our lives. It’s just all too human about it.

Thankfully, I think God made me a person who thrives & gets encouraged on the true testimonies of others who have gone before & those still around me. Perhaps this could be one aspect of how God made us up to be, since His word is just so full of accounts of people’s lives. I began to realize that the Bible isn’t just all parables & ‘cheem’ holy stuff. It emphasizes A LOT on testimonies of the lives of all sorts of people! If one can read & appreciate reading a biography of another famous person, surely reading the Bible can’t get too far different from it.

Today’s bible study testifies how God is very practical in our lives. In fact, the author brings up evidence shown in the lives of many real living people whom our Heavenly Father has always been striving to be practical in their lives, ever since He created the world with all that’s in it.

Sometimes preachers may just cite one or two examples from the Old Testament & New Testament… & then say that “Oh… see how God is practical both in the old & modern times?” This author brought this even further & concrete to prove his point very uniquely by citing real testimonies of these real people in the Bible, since the time of Adam & Eve in the book of Genesis, all the way till the book of Revelation. And the examples are so different & practical even in our present life!

Need for clothes

God began by clothing Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden because they were naked (Genesis 3:20-21).

Being mistreated & lack of resources

God meet the maidservant Hagar’s needs at her wit’s end, when Hagar had fled from Sarai after being used, mistreated & abused (Genesis 16:1-13).

Request for wisdom & discernment

Solomon was very worried because he was young when he was crowned king. He prayed for wisdom & discernment from God, so that he could lead & govern his people whom God had placed under his care.

God didn’t just granted Solomon his heart’s desire (especially since it was asked in accordance to His will) & gave Solomon even more than what he had asked – wealth & fame (1 Kings 3:5-13; 4:29-30).

Feeling of Incompetence when sent on a task assigned by God

When Jesus sent His twelve disciples out to preach the Word, He didn’t just sent them off, leaving them helpless, worried & scared to death. Even though this task could possibly be humanly viewed as a difficult talk to convince the minds of other disbelieving people, Jesus need the other needs of His disciples.

Jesus gave them an authority beyond their measure of comprehension – an authority over evil spirits! (Mark 6:7-13)

Deliverance from trials in life

When Peter was imprisoned for obeying God, He performed a miracle according to His will, by sending an angel to release Peter from his chains & walk him out unnoticed by all the prison guards! (Acts 12:1-17)

Of course, there are many who perished from the consequences of obeying God, but this doesn’t prove that God just washes His hands off us. There will be some who will be miraculously saved, if that’s God’s plan for something even greater.

What’s more if we face troubles of less intensity in our daily lives? If this is what God decides to put us through, won’t He help us, if it fulfills something according to His plan?

Wondering about what’s to come

God doesn’t just throw us aside after creating us & putting us in this world, especially when we badly need instruction & guidance on how to go on with our lives. He does speak to us at times, or even through those around us.

In this case, when John was fellowshipping with God on the island of Patmos, He revealed to John about the revelation of what would take place in the end times (Revelation 1:9-20).

My conclusion…

Thus, we can see from these examples that God is practically interested & involved in our lives, even though many times we may be too humanly short-sighted to notice it, especially when we spend much time lamenting in self-pity. Yes, I’m guilty about that too.

These are just 5 examples… & there are also testimonies of real life people like Moses, Noah, Abraham, Isaiah… & even many, many people who lived during our current time & age. God’s presence & involvement just spills over in countless lives all over the people of this Earth & all across time!

As it is, the constant presence & work of God is the most practical & evident part of our life & ministry. Forget scientology & whatever humanly thought-up philosophies. Why listen to a frog stuck in a small well, instead of a God who made everything else all around this frog & well?

The frog doesn’t know what’s going on outside & elsewhere. And obviously not the brick well. Even when we don’t know what’s going on. It doesn’t make God any less sure about what He is doing, in the midst of what’s going on.