Trusting God for His Best

In the story of the Fall in Genesis 3:1-7 part of the serpent’s deception is getting Adam and Eve to doubt that God truly wanted what was best for them. Essentially, he has convinced them that God is holding out on them. Eating the fruit would make them like God. The thought here is that God did not actually have what was best for them in mind.

We know as a reader of Genesis and as one living in this world that the consequences of eating the fruit were dyer. Knowing good and evil meant that sin came into the world. We know that this was the source of sin because Romans 5:12 tells us: “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man.” Because of our knowledge of sin’s consequences, we know that God had the best for us in mind when He told them not to eat of the fruit.

This is something that God-fearing people have struggled with since that moment in the garden. We struggle with trusting God for His best. Most of the time we think that we have got it all figured out. We know what the best for us would look like. However, many times this does not line up with what God says the best would be. When this happens we have a discussion to make. Are we going to choose God’s ways trusting that it is best, or are we going to be prideful and attempt to maintain our ways?

As a positive example of this decision I look to the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel chapter 3. Most of us know the story well from Sunday school, but we don’t often ponder the decision they had to make. From human logic it would be best for health and status that they worship the image that the king had set up. We see this as an amazing story because they decided to trust God and trust that His ways were better than their ways. As we know, God miraculously saves them from the furnace and their status improves more than if they had obeyed the king.

I am going to place myself in the group of people that are not the best at this. Sometimes we do not know God’s reasoning for telling us not to do something, much like Adam and Eve. It is these times that it can be most difficult to trust His wisdom. I can think of many times in my life when I failed to trust God in this way and then later found out why He told me not to do the very thing I did. His ways are always better than our ways.