If you think about it for long you will realize how much Adam and Eve had it made in the garden of Eden. God made two perfect people and placed them in a perfect environment where the climate was controlled, where every need and delight was readily available, and where no war, famine, sickness, or tragedy ever manifested. In addition to God’s provision, He clothed Adam and Eve with the very cloak of heaven – the glory of God. To see Adam and Eve in the garden was to behold two blazing balls of light and glory obscuring their human form to the eye until…until Eve was deceived and Adam disobeyed and the glory departed, their eyes were opened, they saw they were naked, and they fashioned fig leaves to cover their nakedness. Remarkably, Adam and Eve traded the glory of God for a couple of fig leaves.
In sin, fear, and shame they hid their nakedness from God behind the bushes. But thanks to God’s revealed plan to have Jesus die for the sins of the whole world (Genesis 3:15) the animal skins temporarily replacing the fig leaves would one day be permanently retired for the atoning power of the blood of Jesus that would obliterate their sin (and ours) and not just cover it. What was lost in the garden through sin was to be recovered and made available to anyone that would accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
Unfortunately, many believers today, though technically saved through the blood of Jesus, continue to think and act as if they were still wearing fig leaves and hiding in the bushes from God and all He offers to His people. The Lord wants us to trade those fig leaves back in for the glory of God and do what Paul described in 2 Corinthians 4:18 – “with unveiled faces…reflect the Lord’s glory…being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” To walk in the glory of God going from degree of glory to degree of glory, we have to trade that tired old fig leaf thinking and theology for glory of God thinking.
The devil’s goal is to deceive us into thinking that we have to live with a mentality of hiding and shame, mediocrity, low expectations, guilt, failure, sin consciousness, curse, bondage, sickness, lack, and fear. The Spirit of God would have us embrace God’s thoughts of transparency and openness, excellence, high expectations, transformation, peace, success, righteousness, blessing, freedom, healing, victory, and confidence. Too many believers see themselves today like the spies did when spying out the land of Canaan – they saw themselves as grasshoppers. You might say that the spies saw themselves as fig leaf wearers. Many believers see themselves the same way. We know from Scripture, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7, NKJV). If we can’t change our thinking, no matter what Jesus has done, we cannot enjoy God’s best.
The Lord invites us all to trade that old fig leaf back in and walk in the glory of God that is restored in Jesus Christ. How? First, we must end our attempts to cover up or hide and get real with God about our lives knowing that, “He who conceals his sin does not prosper, but he who renounces them finds mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). Second, we must renew our minds to the realities of God’s glory and grace available to us now as believers. We will never think kingdom of God thoughts until we get consistently and habitually into His Word. Third, we must walk in God’s presence. God’s presence is the key to expanding the glory of God and all that glory offers. As the glory of God was reflected in Moses’ face after spending time in God’s presence, so we can experience a greater measure of God’s glory in our own lives but without the fading of that glory Moses experienced as a man living without the amazing benefits of the new birth in Christ. Don’t wait another day. Come out of the bushes, get into the Word, and get into God’s presence and when you do you will find that the fig leaf is truly gone forever.
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