Page 15 - The Divine Quest

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with the following words:

I Corinthians 13:4-5
Love is patient, love is kind... it does not seek its own...

In I John chapter 4 verses 8 and 16, we are told that “God is love.” We can then
exchange the word ‘love’ with the word ‘God’ and understand the nature of God.

God is patient, God is kind... and does not seek His own...

God is unselfish in His love. If God were selfish, impatient and unkind, would He
have ever sent His beloved Son to die in man’s place? Undoubtedly, He would not
have done so. From the beginning of man’s creation, God has treated man with an
unselfish love. He has looked after man’s best interests, and has even destined man
to share in His glory and the glory of His firstborn Son. It was a great lie that Satan
brought to Eve in the Garden as he told the woman that God was withholding some
good thing from her. It is Satan’s nature to lie, and Yahshua bore witness to this.

John 8:44
“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He
was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there
is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he
is a liar and the father of lies.”

Satan’s transgression in the Garden is shown to be an exceedingly reprehensible
thing when we consider that his first recorded words to mankind consisted of lies
against God’s holy character. He called God a liar with the words, “You surely will not
die!,” and he maligned the character of God’s love for mankind when he suggested
that God was withholding that which was good from Eve because He did not want
her to become as He was. We see that what was under attack in the Garden was
mankind’s faith in the love of God. When Eve received the lie, she was then removed
from a foundation of faith and her fall into sin was accomplished.

What Eve did was displeasing to God. It was the first act of mankind that displeased
Yahweh, and the door was opened for a flood of similar acts to follow. The Scriptures
tell us that “without faith it is impossible to please God.” The first sin was both a
failure of faith in the love of God, and a failure to please Him. With her faith in God
overturned, it became impossible for Eve to please God.

Is it any wonder then that God has been looking for faith in the hearts of men and
women ever since the Garden of Eden? When we are removed from a foundation of