This past week, my wife Susan and I had the privilege of taking care of our 2 ½ year old granddaughter while her parents were out of the country.  I was reminded how often we respond to God as if we are 2 ½ years old.  What I saw play out over and over every day and night was the Eden Syndrome.  You remember the first temptation ever recorded in scripture was the account of the cunning serpent (Satan) and Eve.  His strategy was simple.  Get Eve to doubt the goodness of God and the goodness of his intentions for her.

The moment the serpent said, “Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden,” he began to plant a seed of doubt.  I’m sure his emphasis was on “really,” as if to say, “I know God and it doesn’t surprise me one bit that he would keep all these good things from you.” One of Satan’s primary strategies from the beginning has been to convince us that God keeps many good things from us, the best things, things that would make us happy.  We see the commands of God as restrictions that keep us from being all we could be or that keep is from the happiness we need or deserve.  The truth is that God’s commands are not restrictions, but protections.  They are guardrails are meant to keep us on the road and out of the ditch.  I don’t know about where you live, but in Midland, Texas the most constant road sign we see is “guardrail damage ahead.”  Lots of people apparently need guardrails to keep them from running off the road because they are always under repair.  We all need guardrails sooner or later.

Our granddaughter apparently believes we are withholding the best things life has to offer a two-year-old.  The great battle, of course, was sleep.  Every night we began to give her advance notice that bedtime was coming soon. She would begin to let us know that sleep was her great enemy…as if it were going to be eight hours of excruciating torture.  She would immediately declare “No!” to the whole idea.  When jammies were pulled out, she would begin to plead her case and offer all the reasons she could not go to bed. “I’m hungry!  I’m thirsty! I’m scared! I miss mommy and daddy! There might be a dog in my room! There are elephants in my room! etc.   All these objections were vocalized in a wailing tone that made them hard to decipher.

This battle occurred nightly.  She never won the battle, but still rolled it out night after night.  We knew she desperately needed sleep. We desperately needed her to sleep. She had to get up the next morning for daycare.  She is growing and her body needs rest.  The next day will be a long day. If she doesn’t sleep, she will be miserable for that entire day.  Sleeplessness will compromise her immune system, and so forth.  As we explained all the documented reasons she needed sleep, none of those had any effect on her.

Then there was breakfast. Cranky after a short night’s rest, she had to be coaxed to eat a good breakfast.  So, we offered sausage and eggs to be followed by a blueberry muffin.  She wanted the muffin first.  We insisted she eat the nutritious part first. She wanted to negotiate.  Muffin first!  We knew the muffin would dull her appetite, so we declined.  That battle would ensue.  Eventually, she ate her eggs and got her muffin.  But health was not her concern. Sugar was her morning key to happiness.

So why the nightly tantrums?  Did she think we were holding out on her and that we got out the really cool toys or rolled out the pie and ice cream while she slept, and she didn’t want to miss out?  Has she not lived long enough to project what her future would hold if she didn’t sleep?  Whatever she was thinking, she was clearly not thinking she could trust us to help her maximize her life as a two-year-old. She was not thinking that since we had decades more experience about what makes life good, she could trust our judgment for her. She believed she could simply live in the moment, pursuing what her flesh was demanding, and never experience a negative consequence for doing so. 

Sadly, we often respond to God in the same way.  We see the guardrails he has posted around us as his way of keeping our true source of happiness from us. Satan convinces us that God does not always act out of infinite love and point us to what is always absolutely in our best interest.  All we know is what we are wanting at the moment.  But James warns us about that mindset. He says, “But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desires and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (Ja.  1:14-15).

Our flesh is a two-year-old demanding its way.  It believes that happiness is found in immediate gratification and Satan whispers all the reasons we should ignore God and go for what we want.  We may know what God says, but something in us believes he is holding out on us…the thing right in front of us holds more blessing than the thing God wants us to wait on.  Satan convinces us that we can grab what we want now without consequence, even when God has told us there is calamity at the end of the road, especially, if you choose to crash through the guardrails.

Here is what I know.  Sometimes I act like a two-year-old as If I can go my own way without consequence. I need to convince myself that I often don’t really know what is in my best interest.  God does know.  He has all w\isdom and perspective. His commands are protections not restrictions.  The abundant life does not come by resisting rest or eating my muffin first.  It comes by trusting God and saying ‘No!” to the lies and temptations of the evil one, who only comes to kill, steal, and destroy.  From time to time, I need to take a lesson from my granddaughter who only knows what she wants in the moment and believes it is the absolute key to her happiness…but she is wrong.