From Bob Hamp

The knowledge of good has done more to separate people from God than the knowledge of evil.  This is what Rick Joyner says in his amazing book, “There were Two Trees in the Garden”.  I couldn’t agree more.  The knowledge of evil is easily identifiable and therefore more easily resisted.  Ironically it is often the knowledge of good that we use to resist or avoid that other branch.

Perhaps even more seductive is that the knowledge of good “is pleasing to the eyes and appears desirable for gaining wisdom”.  The problem is that the knowledge of good appears…well…good. We always have to remember that  the distinction between the two trees is their source.  By it’s very nature the knowledge of good is initiated and completedsolely from a human.  The tree of life originates from and returns to God Himself.  So even good that originates from man alone is good, but based on it’s root system it cannotcreate life.  You cannot fill an empty gas tank by siphoning it’s contents and returning them to the tank.  Emptiness is empty.

The more good we know, the more tempted we are to produce it on our own. Tending to this living conversation with God can be difficult.  He is demanding (meaning He will not settle for less than the very best for us). He is unpredictable (meaning His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways). He won’t leave us alone (meaning He is engaged even when we would prefer to disengage).  And the list could go on.  So think through a day with me.

We know God wants us to commune with Him, and certainly people in our lives expect a certain amount of Godly behavior from us.  So we wake up in the morning and it is tempting to produce a “quiet time”.  You know, some kind of structured time where we go through a variety of exercises which may or may not actually include communing with the Living God.  At least we can convince others (or perhaps ourselves) that we have done the good that God wants. It started with me (I knew I should do it, and it seemed desirable to produce wisdom) it was empowered by me (Will power wins again).  I learned some good knowledge (need I say more?) and it ends with me (I must now apply what I learned and have a better day…).  And herein lies the danger; I now begin my day believing I have “met with God” and so I go on as if my tank is full, when it may not be.  I’ve missed a chance to be real with God and acknowledge what I need from Him today.  The knowledge of good has successfully separated me from partaking of the more sustaining fruit from the tree of life.

Now I have a class to teach, a ministry to perform, a worship set to lead, and I apply all the good that I know.  I know that God wants me to do this, so I begin to produce some version of what I think He wants.  I call on all my knowledge of good, and organize things just the way God did it last time.  He ought to like that don’t you think?  He did last week!  In fact last week, He initiated it.

In many cases, last week’s true experience can be this week’s knowledge of good.

Sometimes when our profession is ministry it practically screams at us to know good and produce a lot of it.  It starts with us, and it returns to us (”you did a really great job with that class”…”thanks”).  And of course we must help others learn to do the same.  So now “discipleship”  (another “good” thing that we should do) becomes us passing on to others our strategies for the good that we know to produce.  I’ve missed a chance to show others that God is interested in a real dialogue…not a repetition of one we have had before, but a fresh conversation between a Father and a son.

Perhaps one of the most deadly places that our knowledge of good separates us from God is in relationships. We see someone coming our way and evaluate who they are and what they may think of us.  Here comes the preacher, so we smile (the Joy of the Lord is our strength you know!) and tell him ” we are blessed”. (because we are supposed to be, so we dare not acknowledge if we are not) We smile and mask our pain with some piece of religious trivia, hoping our knowledge of good can get us through this exchange without our weaknesses being exposed.  We finish and walk away, already beginning to drop our knowledge of who we should be and lamenting who we believe we really are.  The tragedy is that we missed one more opportunity to really share who we really are with God and another potentially caring human being.

The face, the turn of phrase, the slightly too quick answer, that avoids really revealing my heart, all these are good things we learn to do because it is pleasing to the eye and seems desirable for gaining wisdom…and we miss out on the chance to drop all we know and simply be real...and receive life.  I hate that tree, I wish it didn’t taste so good.

From BobHamp.com

“Watch, I’ll show you what I’m made of.” We say this when we want to show others our strength or capabilities. Wouldn’t it be cool to figure out what we are really made of? And I don’t mean like skin and bones. I mean how we are put together.

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete. 1 Thessalonians 5:23

The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7

In the Bible we find an account of the creation of man that can be really helpful in figuring out the make-up of our being: “God formed the man from the dust of the ground.”

• God formed a physical structure which had no life in and of itself. “He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”
• The Spirit of Life, the Spirit or breath of God entered the inanimate form
• The man became a living being…( a self or a soul)
• The man became an independent entity, still containing the breath of life, the Spirit of God.

Man became a physical form, made to be an independent being (a soul), containing the breath of God. What made the man who he was came from the fact that he was born from the breath of God.

Living from this center, from the Breath of God, meant that through his physical self, God Himself was empowering Adams life.

When Adam sinned, it was the Breath that left him. The “self” remained, but it was disconnected. A soul without the Spirit. While the spirit had been the way the man connected to God and the spiritual realm, the soul was how the man interacted with his natural environment. Without the Spirit his mind, his will, and his emotions, became his source of power, and source of truth.

When we are “born again” it is this Spirit which is birthed in us, or gives us birth from the Heavens (spiritual realm).

Once the Spirit of God is re-established in us, we are still faced moment by moment with the exercise of the will as to whether we will live from the Spirit within us, or whether we will live out of our soul.

Living by the Knowledge of Good and Evil still has us living from the soul, our disconnected self. Knowing God, the Tree of Life, restores a power source, greater than us.

Thinking from the mind, will and emotions is different than tapping into the Spirit of God and having your mind renewed. This is the kind of “thinking differently” we are after.