God did not intend for life to be a complicated mess, He designed it to be very simple. He tells us in Proverbs 3:5-6(NLT), “5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. 6 Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.” The Father’s design for our lives is that we depend on Him for everything, from the smallest to the greatest detail. He wants us to realize that He is our Sufficiency. He’s the Source of all our blessings and all good things. Nothing about our faith walk is complicated when we depend on Him the way we should. If we don’t do as He tells us, and lean solely on Him, we will have burdens, but He’s given us a remedy for those as well. Jesus Christ tells us in Matthew 11:29-31 that when we’re tired and worn out from our burdens, we must come to him. He’ll comfort us. He’ll take our burdens and offer us rest. And to get back on the right track of life, we must learn about him, so that we live light and free. But if we’re being honest, learning more about Jesus Christ is the part where many of us go off the rails.
Genesis 1:27-28(NLT) states, “So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” God did not give us the authority to rule over another person, but He has given us the authority to reign in our own lives. He’s empowered us to live successfully by following the example of Jesus Christ. We were not created to be the devil’s punching bag. We have received the authority of Jesus Christ, and God tells us in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength.
Leaning on God means living with His power and love, and this power and love must be demonstrated in our lives. How do we accomplish this? We demonstrate God’s power and love through relationships; through relationships with others, and most importantly, through our relationship with God. It can be no secret to us that relationships are very important to Heavenly Father. He established this from the very beginning. Genesis 1:27 tells us that He created us in His own image, and there can be no doubt in our minds that He’s done this so that He can relate to us as His sons and daughters. This is where the flavor and goodness of life gets it start, from our relationship with Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ. All our other relationships are birthed from our relationship with God, and this allows us to establish them on the foundation of the love and unity of Jesus Christ.
If we follow God’s masterful design, life is very simple, but we have managed to make life very complicated and relationships even more so. Many of our relationships don’t last, and it is primarily because we refuse to follow God’s blueprint. Again, God’s plan is for us to live simply and in relationship with Him, so that all our needs will be supplied, and we will enjoy our relationship with Him and His bountiful blessings. The first man, Adam, was fully equipped to have dual citizenship, to have his body residing on earth but to have his mind and heart abiding continually in the spiritual realm of God. Adam’s disobedience caused him to lose his connection to God, and Adam’s sin caused him to lose the holiness that God had given him. This was a catastrophic injury to Adam’s relationship with Heavenly Father.
Adam lost the authority over the earth that God had given Him, and it was transferred to satan by way of Adam’s sin. Everyone after him sinned as well, but our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, redeemed us from sin’s curse. Because of Christ, we are children of God’s Kingdom. We no longer have sin consciousness. Through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have the consciousness of God abiding inside us through His Holy Spirit. Ephesians 2:18(NLT) states, “Now all of us can come to the Father through the same HolySpirit because of what Christ has done for us.”
The reason why life seems so complicated is because we are trying to build it from the past instead of living in gratitude to God for the moment we’re in. We have refused to believe in the fullness of what Christ accomplished for us on the cross, and because we won’t trust it fully with a heart of faith, our focus is on fear and all the stuff that comes with it. We’re afraid we won’t be loved. We’re afraid someone will get ahead of us. We’re afraid we’re not good, smart, pretty, skinny, handsome, successful, or witty enough. That’s what fear does; it causes us to look away from the goodness of God. Whenever we look away from Him, complications and issues can take over. And it’s because we’re either focused on past hurts and disappointments, or we are afraid of the future. Either way, it isn’t what God desires for us.
Our authority comes from the power that was demonstrated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and this must be our focus. He got up from the grave with all power in his hands, and his victory is our victory! When the reality of what God accomplished for us through His Son governs our thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors, every day will be fresh and new. We’ll appreciate the price God paid to have the kind of relationship with us that He always wanted. We’ll know and deeply appreciate that our relationship with Him through Christ is precious and powerful; it is life itself.
Eve, the first woman, bought into satan’s lie when he told her in Genesis 3:4(NKJV), “You will not surely die.” God had commanded both Adam and his wife, Eve, in Genesis 2:16-17(NLT), “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden—except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” Adam and Eve understood God’s commandment perfectly,but Eve allowed herself to be tempted by the lie that satan told. Why did she do this, when she and Adam had every wonderful blessing they would ever need? Why would she defy the Word of God when they enjoyed such a splendid relationship with Him? One of the reasons that she fell for satan’s trick is because she chose to let her senses rule rather than being governed by God’s commandment. She allowed her senses to convince her that she and Adam lacked something that God had not provided, when in truth God had given them everything that was pure and good.
God wants us to live life from the position of our wholeness in Christ, because this is what He’s done for us and this is His Will. His provision through Jesus Christ has made it possible for us is to live eternally in mind, heart, soul, and spirit in the Garden of Eden, where the wealth of all His riches continually flow. We are not limited by the conditions and circumstances of this world, because Jesus Christ overcame the world, and 1John 4:4(NKJV) states, “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” We have been empowered to live simply and to share God’s love freely with others in the same way that He has freely shared it with us. When we live life this way, we will give God the glory and enjoy life to the fullest. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“Simple and All About Relationships”, written for 4theChristianman.com. Copyright© 2022. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.