Bob Hamp

This next part would be tricky for anyone else. If He were not all-knowing andall powerful He might not be able to pull this off. His assignment: to cover the entire scope of His creation with His nature. The strategy: humans. The problem becomes immediately evident doesn’t it? But He did it anyway.

Depositing Adam in the center of this stage called creation He said to him, “You are here to bear My Image on earth, to take the reigns of this thing called creation, and then to multiply yourself bearing the fruit of what it is like to be in My Image.” No small assignment. It would be difficult, in fact, it would be impossible for Adam to do this. God made certain that Adam had an uninterrupted flow of this Nature that he was supposed to re-present and multiply. Like the power lines connected to the Source, Adam maintained a flow of this Breath-of-God moving to-him, through-him and from-him everywhere he went. He could daily stop by the Tree of Life and consume more.

As long as Adam remained a conduit connected to a source, he was filled with alive-ness, and showered it everywhere he went. He presented God, and re-presented God every place he put his feet down. As Adam did this, he maintained this lovely garden as an exact re-presentation of the “place” where God sat when He wrote the story.

He was in-filled, empowered, in-dwelt, by the very force that had brought this whole reality into existence. And he had a whole planet to play in. Moving effortlessly between a material realm filled with mountains and oceans, and living creatures and a spiritual realm, also filled with breath-taking sights, Adam freely showed antelope how to run, and groupers how to swim. He stood on mountain tops and endless beaches and enforced the proper function of the winds, the waves and the living creatures. He could go anywhere , do anything, and it was not difficult to simply be himself. He was not insecure, was not fearful, never had allergies, (in fact allergens obeyed him) he was never sick, never tired, never depressed, and always filled with joy, laughter, love, and passion. This was God’s design….

Just for comparison’s sake, how did we go from the above experience, to the following picture.

God wants us to fill up ornate buildings with some regularity and sing songs and try really really hard to not misbehave. If we do misbehave we must somehow go through a ritual of cleansing and in so doing we are fulfilling God;s plan. God has a series of checklists He is watching for, and He is watching to see if we screw up. If we do, He has a systematic plan to make our lives miserable, so you better watch out!!! We better sign up, get in line, and live rigid, joy-less lives, otherwise we might be “sinning” and not even know it.

The answer to the question, how we got from “Free Reign” to “Dogmatic Fear” is all written into the story. You will see as the story unfolds how it happened. Much more importantly though, you will see how God is restoring “Free Reign”…how He has still not given up on the idea that we are here to present and re-present His nature everywhere we put our feet down. You will see that God is not looking for an army of Drones to remain in lock-step rigid formation, but instead is still intent on having a bride for His Son, who will share an eternal honeymoon playing on beaches and mountains, with whales and wallaby’s and spreading aliveness in everywhere square foot of geography they inhabit.

If God’s Job description is to fill all of creation with His Nature, and His strategy is you and I, we must re-connect again to the source and let it begin to overflow….