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The Garden
In the beginning, God told Adam and Eve that they were free to eat from all trees in the garden, except for one: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that stood next to the Tree of Life. He told them that to eat from this one tree meant that they will die. Then one day a serpent appeared and convinced Eve and Adam to eat from the forbidden tree. As a result of their disobedience, they were banished from the Garden.
Identity
Most people think they ate the fruit because they wanted to be like God. But the truth is, earlier in the story we learn that God made human beings in his own likeness and image. This means they didn’t eat the fruit because they wanted to be like God because they already were like God. They ate the fruit because the serpent convinced them that they weren’t like God and they believed this lie.
The serpent caused them to question and forget their identity of who they truly were. Here, they were children of God made in his image and were already like God, and the serpent attacked them at the heart and core of this truth. They were attacked in the place of their identity. As a result of believing the lie and choosing to eat the fruit instead of trusting and following God and remembering who they were, they were then separated from God.
You want to be great because God put this desire in your soul. If you are made in His likeness and image then this means there is greatness within you. God is great and so he planted seeds of greatness in you. God is good so there is goodness in you. God is love so there is love within you.
Good versus Evil
Humans experience many different symptoms, such as addictions, fears, stress, anxiety, insecurity, and destructive behavior that are all tied to one root cause. The key is to help people understand and heal the cause of the symptom and the symptom would disappear.
Thoughts are spiritual, not physical. Thoughts exist like software in the internet cloud and are always being downloaded. Thoughts are always coming in just like dreams and nightmares do when we are sleeping. There’s a spiritual battle going on between good and evil. We see this taking place in the world with killings and shootings, kidnappings, bombings, and other evil acts and we need to know that the battleground between good and evil begins in our heart, mind, and soul.
Most believe in evil because they see it but they can’t explain where it comes from. They tend to focus on the person committing an evil act. Many people think evil comes from our human nature, but it is actually spiritual in nature. What people need to realize is there is an evil force that exists and is part of the fabric of our existence.
Why does evil exist at all?
God is the ultimate storyteller, and in every story, you must have conflict and struggle. You must have duality. Love and hate. Light and dark. Good and evil. Defeat and victory. You wouldn’t know good without bad. You wouldn’t know it was light unless you have experienced the dark.
At God’s level there is no duality. It’s all oneness. It’s all love. It’s all good. When He created our world, He created a world of duality in order to tell a story where we can make choices and have us experience and live out this story.
Evil is the absence of God. This means that in the space between Man and God, evil exists. And this space is necessary because God had to give us a choice. He had to give us space to choose to love and obey Him. True love doesn’t demand to be loved back. True love is freely given and the recipient is given a choice to love in return. If there was no choice and it was all good all the time, there would be no world, no story, and no us.
God has a plan for our lives. He created us to be in partnership with Him. He made us in his likeness and image. He created us to live a life of goodness, love, and abundance. But then there is evil that exists in the space between us and God and it seeks to mislead us, to separate us from God, to destroy us, and to keep us from living the life God has created us to live.
It is the ultimate choice. You can choose to love and obey God and overcome evil with good or you can believe the lie and let evil win. It’s a battle between good and evil and you are in the middle of it.
Look around and you’ll see so many losing the battle. It’s scarier to see all these people suffer, and they have no clue what’s really going on and why they are really suffering. It’s scarier to see so many clutter the problem with complexity by focusing on all the symptoms instead of understanding and focusing on the root cause. It’s scarier to see so many losing a battle they have no idea they are in. If you don’t know you are in a battle but your enemy does, you will surely lose.
The Five D’s that evil uses to defeat you:
1. Doubt
The first D is Doubt. The enemy begins his quest to defeat you by creating doubt that God can’t be trusted. If you read the story of Adam and Eve, you’ll see that when the serpent first started talking to Eve he asked, “Did God really say that you couldn’t eat from all the trees in the Garden?” The truth was that God said they couldn’t eat from just that one tree. But by asking this question, the enemy was creating doubt in the mind of Eve that God can’t be trusted, that He was withholding the best from them. Today, the enemy plants seeds of doubt in our mind all the time.
Self-doubt ironically doesn’t come from self. Remember that.
2. Distort
The enemy creates doubt by lying to us. He distorts truth with lies. The truth was Adam and Eve were made in God’s image and the enemy convinced them they weren’t. He fills our minds with lies. Lies that we aren’t enough. That our future is hopeless.
3. Discourage
The enemy distorts truth with lies to cause you to doubt and become discouraged.
We don’t give up because it’s hard. We give up because we get discouraged. The enemy lies to us so that we will make a bad choice or so that we will get discouraged and give up. And in many cases the bad choices come first, we get discouraged by the outcomes our choices produce and we give up as a result. The enemy doesn’t beat us. Through the lies we believe, he gets us to beat ourselves.
Just because you have a negative thought doesn’t mean you have to believe it. Don’t believe the lies. And don’t beat yourself up for the thoughts in your head that are not coming from you. No more guilt, discouragement, or shame.
You are a child of God. You are loved by God. There is a plan for your life. You have greatness inside of you and in every moment, you have the capability to do great things. The best is yet to come if you choose to believe it.
4. Distract
The enemy uses distractions all the time to catch our attention and lead us away from what matters most. In the story of Adam and Eve it says that the fruit was pleasing to the eye and desirable. It looked good and she wanted it so Eve ate the fruit first and then gave it to Adam to eat and he ate as well. The enemy is a master of distraction and getting our attention with things that are pleasing to the eye and desirable but distract us from what matters most.
The point is that distractions are bad for you. If it’s not a distraction, it’s not necessarily bad. But anything that is a distraction is bad for you. Distractions are the enemy of greatness. And a distraction is anything that keeps you from what matters most.
What matters most is your relationship with God. You must focus on that more than on your desire for what may be more appealing at the time.
Second, what matters most is becoming all that God created you to be. Distractions cause you to become less than what God created you for. It was after they ate from the forbidden tree that Adam and Eve felt afraid and ashamed. They became fearful and hid from Him in the garden.
Third, what matters most is your relationships with others. Adam and Eve were in partnership with God and in relationship with each other but this relationship changed after they ate the fruit. Your distractions don’t just hurt you; they can also hurt those you have a relationship with.
Distractions can lead to mistakes and failures, but success can be a distraction too and lead to a different kind of failure, the kind where success becomes your number one driving force. You might want success so bad that you focus more on that than on God.
God made you to be great so He wants you to pursue greatness. But this pursuit must include trust and faith in Him. Your desire for God must be greater than your desire for success.
5. Divide
Evil’s ultimate goal is to divide us and separate us from God. He distracts, discourages, distorts, and creates doubt so that we will be divided from God, divided from each other and from ourselves.
Every time you doubt God, every time you believe the lie, every time you get discouraged, and every time you get distracted you will feel further away and more disconnected from God and the people you love. Did you know the word “anxious” literally means divided? At the core of it all is the fact that you feel divided, which leads to feelings of being alone, anxious, fearful, and stressed.
After Adam and Eve ate the fruit because of doubt, distortion, discouragement, and distraction, they were then divided from God. They felt afraid and ashamed and guilty. They actually hid from God, which is what so many do when they make bad choices. They don’t run to God. They hide from Him, and as a result they feel separate and disconnected and this leads to anxiety, fear, and stress and a host of other problems.
What evil does is that it divides in order to defeat. The enemy is having a field day dividing our country politically, racially, and every way possible. The enemy’s main focus and goal is to divide us so it can defeat us.
The Sixth D
The enemy uses the Five D’s to win the battle against God and us. When we lose this battle, it leads to the sixth D. In a marriage, this sixth D is Divorce. In a person, the sixth D is Destruction. In a team, the sixth D is Defeat.
Remember, we have a choice. Adam and Eve chose to eat the fruit. They ate it because they did not believe and trust God. They believed God was withholding the best from them. They believed they would become most like God without Him. They had a choice to stay like Him or become less. They had a choice and so do we.
There were two trees in the garden for a reason. Two trees meant that God gave them a choice and He gives us this same choice. We don’t have to choose to become less. We don’t have to let the enemy win. We can choose differently. God has given us a plan to win and we can choose to implement this plan.
The Tree of Life
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil represented the choice to do their own thing. It represents the choice we have not to listen to God, not to believe Him, not to trust Him, and not to be in partnership with Him.
Our identity is not meant to be in ourselves. For many it is and that’s why they struggle so much. Identity in oneself gives rise to the EGO, which Edges God Out and leads to pride, and pride leads to our demise. [For more on this concept, check out my summary of Ken Blanchard’s Lead Like Jesus. http://www.outofthisworldleadership.com/blog-posts/lead-like-jesus-the-greatest-leadership-model-ever-continued/] When we are prideful, we think our way is better than God’s way. This seems good at the time but we know it doesn’t end well. That’s because we weren’t meant to disobey God. We were meant to obey Him because God’s ways are greater than our ways and His plan for our lives is greater than our plans. So, you have a choice to go at it alone or you can choose to live as you were created to live, and that’s in an intimate relationship and partnership with God.
The Tree of Life represents love and trust. Would Adam and Eve love and trust God enough to solely rely on Him for their identity, significance, and purpose? He took a piece of fruit off of the tree and ate it.
Win the Battle
When the enemy fills your mind with doubt, the simplest, most powerful solution of all is to trust God. Trust is not a one-time thing. You don’t just trust once. You have to keep trusting. The enemy will keep lying to you and trying to get you to believe his lies. He’s always lurking and often waits until those moments when you are lonely, hungry, insecure, emotionally weak from a difficult circumstance in your life. That’s when he plants those seeds of doubt the most. Are you sure you can Trust God? Does God really want the best for you? Why would God do this to you? Sometimes it’s just a subtle thought. Other times it feels like you are being bombarded. But make no mistake: his goal is the same.
Instead of the phrase “Listen to yourself,” consider this, “Don’t listen to the enemy’s lies” because those thoughts aren’t coming from you. So, don’t listen to the lies. Don’t believe the lies. And then do one other thing.
Encouragement is like oxygen for your mind, heart, and soul. You need to consistently encourage yourself and others with God’s truth in order to win the battle. It’s what Jesus did when he was in the wilderness and he gives us the blueprint to win the battle.
That’s how you overcome the fourth D of Distraction. You focus on what matters most, and what matters most is your relationship with God, becoming all God created you to be and your relationship with others. And when we talk about relationships, what are we really talking about?
Love: Relationships are all about love.
Then Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”
In the Bible, Jesus said “Fear not” over 300 times because He knew our focus needed to be on God’s love, not our fear. God’s perfect love casts out fear. So, when you are focused on love, fear has no power over you.
Love is the most powerful force in the universe. Love is what connects you and God. It connects you to each other. It connects you to yourself. This leads us to the way you overcome the fifth D of Divide and win the battle. It is to unite.
Love Wins
Love wins because Love unites. Evil’s main goal is to divide you and separate you from God. Yet we know God loves you and created you to be one with and united with Him. When you are united, you can’t be divided. When you are united, you are strong. (Check out my summary of Bob Goff’s Love Does for a deeper dive here.)
What happened in the garden gets reconciled on the cross. What happened in the garden represents man’s separation from God. Jesus represents man’s unity, oneness, and reconciliation with God. Jesus died to unite man back to God. Evil thought it had won and God said not so fast. Then Jesus showed up and everything changed. It all made perfect sense. The pieces of the puzzle and two stories that were told thousands of years apart fit too perfectly together to be an accident. Rich Villodas said it best, “Adam and Eve hid behind a tree, naked and covered in shame. Then Jesus hung on a tree, naked and conquered shame.”
God wanted us to know how much he loves us. In the battle of good versus evil, Jesus didn’t just come to give us the practical answers. He came to be the answer. He came to unite and restore what had been divided and destroyed in the garden. The serpent represents the evil enemy we face. Jesus is God’s love and truth. And as I said before, love wins. What evil intended for bad, God used for good.
Victory Is Yours
Over time the enemy continues to try to make you forget the battle has been won. The enemy gets you to focus on the mistakes you made in the past rather than the victory that is yours. When you make a new mistake or fall short of perfection, he’ll try to make you feel like a fraud. He’ll try to make you feel like you didn’t earn this victory. And before you know it, you’re walking around all defeated again.
You are victorious. You must walk in that victory. Yet, you will have to prepare for new attacks. And as you fight new battles you can do so knowing you have won the battle before it even starts. You are not fighting for victory. You are fighting from victory. You know the full story.
Remember everything you need, God will provide. When your identity, reliance, and trust is found in God alone and not yourself you will continue to be victorious. Jesus won the battle for you but you must choose to receive this victory every day. When you do it will lead to the seventh D and that is your Destiny.
Seven is the number of completion. The seventh D is Destiny and this is the plan and purpose God has for you. You are not here by accident. You are loved and there is a plan for your life.
New Challenges and Victories
Just be great today. God will take care of the outcome.
God has a plan. Consider a couple contemplating marriage. He thinks, “If she is the one for him, it will work out. If not, it means there is someone else that God has for him, and he would meet her in the right place at the right time.”
She thinks, “If it is meant to be and was part of God’s plan, it will happen. She wasn’t worried about it. She knew who she was and trusted God knew what was best for her and her future.”
The 8th D
What’s the eighth D? It’s Disciple.
Once you learn about the Five D’s and how to win the battle that will lead you to your Destiny then it’s important that you share it with others to disciple them. Your destiny is never about yourself. Every hero knows they were made for others, to help others, and it’s about taking action to do this.
Disciple as a verb means to teach. You learn it and then you teach it to those you want to help.
Consider a double-sided coin:
- On one side, it had the five D’s: Doubt, Distort, Discourage, Distract, Divide
- On the other side, it had the way to overcome each D: Trust, Speak Truth, Encourage, Focus, and Unite
Your mind and soul are like a garden. You need to weed the negative and feed the positive each day. In fact, if you weed and feed the garden of your mind and soul for a week, a month, a year, seven years, and a lifetime, your garden will look magnificent and you’ll produce amazing fruit.
And always remember, whatever you are going through keep believing the best is yet to come. God has a plan!
