BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

The truth was, Adam and Eve were already like God. He’d made them as much like Himself as it was possible to make them. What the tempter (aka the devil) told Eve was a lie. Lies are all the devil has. They’re all he had in the Garden of Eden and they’re all he has to use against us, as believers, today. If he wants to defeat us, he has to come to us, much as he did Eve, and try to deceive us. He has to say things like, “You can’t believe what God said about tithing. It won’t make you more prosperous, it will make you 10% poorer. You’d be better off keeping that money for yourself.” Does the devil really talk like that to born-again believers? you might wonder. Yes, he does. In fact, he lies more to believers than he does to unbelievers because we’re a threat to him. We have authority over him through our union with Christ. As long as we’re walking in that union, the devil has no power over us at all. To prevail over us he must get us over onto his territory and gain entrance to our lives by convincing us to disbelieve and disobey God’s Word. That’s what happened with Adam and Eve. The devil got access to them through their disobedience. He separated them from God by getting them to disregard God’s Word, and as a result they had to leave their perfect Garden. They had to go out on their own into a world that had been cursed by their sin and try to get by the best they could. Was that God’s plan for them? No. His plan was for them to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion” (Genesis 1:28). His plan was for them to hear and do what He said so they could walk with Him in victory and be blessed. God didn’t change that plan just because Adam and Eve messed up, either. God never changes. So, He went to work putting His plan back in place. He raised up another covenant people for Himself through Abraham and gave them the same simple success strategy He’d instituted in the Garden. He told them that if they would hear and do what He said, He would manifest Himself to them and give them victory in every area of their lives. God’s Word = God’s Wisdom God laid out this strategy for His people time and again in the Bible in hundreds of different ways. In Deuteronomy 4, for example, after bringing the Israelites out of Egypt, He said to them through Moses: "Now listen and give heed, O Israel, to the statutes and ordinances which I teach you, and do them, that you may live and go in and possess the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, gives you…. Behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land which you are entering to possess. So keep them and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who…will say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there who has a god so near to them as the Lord our God is to us in all things for which we call upon Him?" (verses 1, 5-7, "Amplified Bible, Classic Edition"). 6 : BVOV

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