Home & The Beginning

Sara Linn found me room in her van to drive home. It worked out perfectly. We drove Sunday from Jax to Hardin, KY where we stayed at a church for the night. Then we headed out west, stopping just past St. Louis for lunch with my sister. She was in the area on business. Then we made it to KC, dropped off one of the girls in the car, had a homemade dinner at her house, and made it to Burlington by 10pm Monday. Sara and Amy stayed Monday night with me at my mom's and took a day of rest from driving on Tuesday. We met Mrs. Robrahn at the donut shop in the morning to talk about our summer and also got Sara's flat tire fixed and found her a tarp and large dog cage. They stayed Tuesday night and headed out early on Wednesday to go to Moran and pick up a goat to take back to Sara's farm in Correctionville, IA. Sara was very impressed with our small town -- everyone was so friendly and willing to meet her needs. Ron Hoover left Hoover's and drove us to his house to sell us his dog cage. Lewis Oil repaired her tire and put it back on her van for just $5. People in the grocery store who I don't even know said "hello" as we walked in.

The Lord is good. My apologies for not updating more -- though I have no big obligations now that I am home, I still have a long list of things to get done before I head back to K-State. I'm also going over everything I have been learning and trying to compact it while also starting a study on the people of the Bible and meeting with people I haven't seen all summer.
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Some notes on Adam (Genesis 1:26-2:17)

• made in God's image
• allowed to rule over all the earth
• commanded to be fruitful and increase in number, to fill the earth and subdue it
• God provided food for him
  
• he was formed from dust; God breathed life into Him
• placed in the Garden of Eden
• instructed to work and take care of the garden
• told not to eat from the tree in the center of the garden

We are placed here by special divine creation. Adam never got to experience being young. He started life as an adult: no memories, no mistakes, no past little lesson to help him make adult decisions. Adam didn't have a childhood to learn that not everyone can be trusted.

How do we evaluate new advice? Are our past mistakes and successes helping us make better decisions? How often do we seriously consider the source as well as the advice?

Stats --
Where: Garden of Eden
Occupation: husband, caretaker of Eden
Relatives: Sons - Cain, Abel, Seth, and numerous other children

Lessons from Adam & Eve

• As descendants of Adam and Eve, we all reflect to some degree the image of God.
• The basic tendency to sin goes back to the beginning of the human race.
• God wants people who are free to sin to choose isntead to trust and love him.
• God's design for marriage was part of creation.

"So God created peopel in his own image; God patterened them after himself; male and female he created them." Genesis 1:27

UPS

• First male and female, husband and wife, human beings
• First to be made in the image of God
• First caretakers of creation
• First to know God personally

DOWNS

• Tended to handle mistakes and sin by excuses or blaming others
• Acted without consideration of the consequences
• Together they brought sin into creation

Luke 3:38 - ...Adam was the son of God.
Romans 5:18 Adam's one sin brought condemnation upon everyone, but Christ's one act of righteousness makes all people right in God's sight and gives them life.
1 Corinthians 15:22 Everyone dies because all of us are related to Adam, the first man. But all who are related to Christ, the other man, will be given new life.
1 Corinthians 15:45 The Scriptures tell us, "The first man, Adam, became a living person." But the last Adam - that is, Christ - is a life-giving Spirit.
1 Timothy 2:13-14 For God made Adam first, and afterward he made Eve. And it was teh woman, not Adam, who was deceived by Satan, and sin was the result.

Some notes on Eve (Genesis 2:18-3:24)

• Created so Adam wouldn't be alone
• Created as a companion to help him
• Made from one of Adam's ribs
• Called "woman," taken out of man
• Adam and Eve were naked but felt no shame
• God creating woman from man illustrated that in marriage man and woman become one flesh; this is a mystical union of the couple's hearts and lives
• Deceived by the serpent
  
• Eve became pregnant
• Mother of Cain, Abel, and Seth, and numerous other children
  

Genesis 3:22-23 Then the Lord God said, "The people have come as we are, knowing everything, both good and evil. What if tehy eat the fruit of the tree of life? Then they will live forever! So the Lord God banished Adam and his wife from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made.

Satan has been working to corrupt God's plan from the beginning, but we have victory through Christ (Romans 8:37). Satan still works anyway, trying to draw us back into darkness and away from the Lord's marvelous light.

Satan's Plan
1. Doubt - question God's Word and his goodness
2. Discouragement - look at your problems rather than at God
3. Diversion - wrong things seem attractive so you want them more than the right things
4. Defeat - you feel like a fialure, so you don't even try
5. Delay - you put off doing something, so it never gets done

In battling Satan, we are to use our shield of faith (Ephesians 6:16). For a good visual, put it up like this -- one finger at a time, declaring each truth until your hand is spread in front of you like a shield:
1. God is who He says He is
2. God can do what He says He can do
3. I am who God says I am
4. I can do all things through Christ
5. God's word is alive and active in me