With Great Power…

Via Pixabay (2016), CC0 Public Domain. Title added by author

...comes great responsibility.

Evidently some guy in a spider suit said that once. Personally, I think he ripped that phrase off from God. You know what I’m talking about. There’s God in the Garden of Eden. Everything’s perfect. He creates Adam. He creates Eve. Then He tells them, “Hey guys, look what I made for you! You can have...hmmm, let’s see...everything! You are in charge of all of Creation, including plants and animals, birds and fish. You don’t have to work for your food and you won’t get sick. Plus, you can communicate with all the animals! Not bad, eh?

“Oh, but remember: with great power comes great responsibility. You are in charge of literally everything here in Eden BUT you canNOT eat the fruit from that one tree over there in the middle. Got it? I’m serious, people. Don’t eat that fruit. Look around. See all the OTHER fruit you can eat? Eat that. Don’t eat this. Any questions?”

“But the fruit from that tree looks so good! Can we please eat it?”

“No. You cannot eat this fruit, but remember all of the other fruit you can eat? It’s delicious! You will love it! So just to recap -- lots of cool stuff here in the Garden just for you, good food to eat, no work, don’t eat that fruit over there. Got it?”

“Yeah, we got it.”

Well, we all know what happened next, don’t we? Yeah, Adam and Eve weren’t good at following directions. The rest is salvation history.

Have you ever wondered why God didn’t force Adam and Eve to obey Him? For the same reason that He doesn’t force us to obey Him now: because He loves us and He wants us to love Him back. You can’t force people to love you. Real love has to be a free choice.

God wants us to choose love and to choose Him.

[tweet "How are we using our freedom: to love God or to reject Him? by @TheLauraBNelson"]

Today is Independence Day. This is a day that we celebrate our freedom here in the United States. So while we’re celebrating our freedom, we need to ask ourselves: are we using our freedom to love God or are we using our freedom to reject Him?