At Lifeway Women’s Leadership Forum in 2017, author and president of Proverbs 31 Ministries, Lysa TerKeurst, explained how we’re living in imperfection, in between two perfect gardens.
The entire video is above, and the complete transcript is below.
They’re sent out – Adam and Eve – they’re sent out from this garden. But that’s not where we’ll be forever.
You see, this is what makes life so complicated. The human heart was created in the context of the Garden of Eden. In the perfection, the context of perfection in the Garden of Eden. Each of us have perfection etched into the DNA of our souls. The problem is that we don’t live there anymore.
It’s no wonder you’re disappointed. Everything about life is never going to quite add up. We want life to be tied up in a neat, nice bow. We really do. We have an expectation and we want our experiences to meet that expectation and then we’d be happy, right? We have an expectation here and we have an experience that’s here. And the distance in between is where disappointment grows. We have it in our relationships. We have this general sense that life should be better than it is. People should be better than they are, right?
We listen to the news and we hear about another shooting and another weather pattern devastation and fires. We look around in our community and we see children dying before their parents and we have friends that get scary diagnosis. We just have this general sense life should be better than it is. And guess what? You’re right. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
You see, the human heart was created in the perfection of the Garden of Eden, but we no longer live there. Now, we will return there once again.
If we flip all the way over to Revelation at the very end of our Bibles. In Revelation 21, this is what it says. It says here, in Revelation 21, starting in verse 3.
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look, God’s dwelling place is now among the people and He will dwell with them and they will be His people and God Himself will be with them and be their God.'”
Verse 5: “He Who is seated on the throne says, ‘I am making everything new.'”
Skip back up to verse 4: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. Indeed, He is making everything new.”
And then I’m thinking, because He gave this revelation to a man, He had to give some clear instruction, “Write this down.” Right? That’s what it says in the Scripture.
“Write this down for these words are trustworthy and true. It is done. I’m the Alpha and the Omega.”
And we turn over to Revelation 22 and we see Eden restored.
Verse 3: “No longer will there be any curse.”
Verse 12 of Revelation 22: “Look, I’m coming soon. My reward is with Me and I will give to each person according to what they’ve done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
Do you know why this is so hard for us today? Because we’re doing life between two perfect gardens. We live with the anxiety that the first Garden of Eden ended and we live with the anticipation of the Garden of Eden being restored. Perfection and perfection. But we live in the in-between these two gardens in nothing but imperfection.
