Tried With Fire

I'm posting at Out of the Ordinary today: "I can't imagine what went through Adam and Eve's minds after they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They had lived in perfect communion with God, each other, and creation. But now, by their act of disobedience, sin ruined this harmony forever. Adam and Eve hid from their Creator. They were blame-shifting and about to be expelled from paradise. If I summed up all my moments of regret and multiplied them thousands of times over, perhaps it might come close to what they were feeling. But I also wonder if these words gave them hope even in the midst of the fall. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.  Gen. 3:15" Read the rest of the post here . 

I'm sharing another quote from Why Christ Came at Out of the Ordinary : "Many of God's people can remember what it was like to be without Christ, without hope, and without God in this world (Eph. 2:12)… Jesus came to seek these lost persons and save them. God in Christ is a seeker ( Luke 15:3-6 ). Nineteenth-century British poet Francis Thompson affectionately refers to God as the "hound of heaven" in a poem by that name. The author recounts how he deliberately fled from God, but throughout his life he sensed he was being followed by feet that moved "with un-hurrying chase and unperturbed pace" to bring him to salvation. Without fail, God always gets His man." Read more ….

Charles Spurgeon is guest posting from the grave at Out of the Ordinary   today. "Jesus Christ did not come into the world to help you to forget your sin. He has not come to furnish you with a cloak with which to cover it. He has not appeared that He may so strengthen your minds (as some men would have you believe,) that you may learn to laugh at your iniquities, and defy the consequences thereof. For no such reason has the Son of God descended from Heaven to earth. He has come, not to lull you into a false peace, not to whisper consolation which would turn out to be delusive in the end, but to give you a real deliverance from sin by putting it away, and so to bring you a true peace in which you may safely rejoice." Read more. ...