“If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
~ Genesis 4:7
Hi James and Ellen,
When you read the Bible starting at the beginning of the Bible, you will read about God creating everything. You will read about God creating a man – Adam, and then how God created a woman – Eve. You will read how a snake – which was Lucifer or Satan, brought imperfection into the perfect garden that God created. The garden was called Eden. Before Lucifer convinced Eve and Adam to do something that they had been told by God not to do, they lived sinless lives. After Adam and Eve did the something which God had told them not to do, God removed Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The moment when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, sin had the opening it needed on planet Earth to hoodwink guys, gals and kids into denying God’s existence. Lucifer or Satan still cannot do anything without God’s okay. God uses sin to help us to know His mercy and grace. We know God’s mercy and grace when we realize that God still wants to forgive us even though we have been disobedient to Him. God wants us to ask Him for His help to not to sin. When we ask God to forgive us of our sins – or when we give our lives as a sacrifice to Him, He expects us to mean it. When we do not mean it, we may face even more problems. Genesis 4 tells us about the first two boys who were born. Their names were Cain and Abel. Your grandpaa’s dad and ma have a farm. Your dad’s grandpa raised crops such as corn, oats, flax and alfalfa. Your dad’s grandpa had cattle, pigs and chickens. Adam and Eve raised crops and had animals. Cain cared for the crops. Abel cared for the animals. Even though God – because of their disobedience to Him, banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, God did not stop talking directly with Adam and Eve and with their two boys. The boys decided one day that they would each give God an offering. An offering is like a gift or a present that someone gives to someone else. Because Cain took care of what grew from the earth, Cain gave God an offering of the first fruits from the crops that he grew. Because Abel took care of sheep, Abel gave God an offering of the first born of the sheep from the sheep that he raised. God was not happy with what Cain gave to Him as an offering while God was pleased with what Abel gave to Him as an offering. It did not make Cain happy at all that God was not happy with his offering. It especially did not make Cain happy that God was happy with Abel’s offering to Him. When we become angry or jealous, we sometimes become irrational and do something very bad. Do you know what Cain did to Abel? Ask your dad what Cain did to Abel.
If you are a Christ-follower, you inherently want to give God gifts. A gift that God asks a Christ-follower to give back to Him is his or her life. Some guys and gals who do not know about God believe in a spirit world. These guys and gals want to give the spirits who are living in the spirit world something so that these spirits will be happy. Most people believe that they are going to live someplace else after they die. A nomadic indigenous tribe called the Yuqui can be found in Bolivia. Yuqui Indians believe that when they die that they will go to another world to live. Yuqui Indians believe that when someone dies that someone has to be killed to go with the person who has died – so that the person who has died has someone with him in the other world. Your dad and your Aunt Lynn stayed at and went to classes at a boarding school called Tambo. Tambo was the school for New Tribes missionary kids whose dads and mas were missionaries in Bolivia. Two New Tribes missionaries and a Bolivian guy one day made contact with a small group of Yuqui Indians. They did not know it at the time but a Yuqui who had been a member of the group had recently died. When the Yuqui Indians saw the two missionaries, they decided that they would kill one of the missionaries so that their companion would have someone with him in the other world. The Yuqui Indians using the pretext of going into the jungle to hunt monkeys to eat got the two missionaries and the Bolivian guy to go with them. When the Yuqui Indians tried to kill the missionary, a bleeder arrow that was shot hit the missionary in the lower part of his lung. The Bolivian guy was also hit with an arrow – in the shoulder. The other missionary ran back to their camp where they had left their short wave radio. Your grandpaa had just started up the short wave radio that he had at the resident training center in Concepción when your grandpaa heard the missionary saying break, break, break. The missionary wanted everyone to know that his missionary companion had been badly wounded and that help was needed immediately. Your grandpaa and grandmaa listened all day long to short wave radio chatter. They listened to guys trying to get the missionary out of the jungle to save his life. The jungle was so impenetrable it was impossible to walk to where the missionary was lying on the ground. Because of the pain that the missionary was in, he could not move on his own. A helicopter was gotten to try to get him out of the jungle. The missionary was hit with an arrow right after it got light in the morning. When it began to get dark, the missionary said good night to his kids and to his wife. Your grandmaa and grandpaa thought that that was the last time that the missionary would talk with his kids and with his wife as . . . your grandpaa started up the generator as soon as it began to get light the next morning and he and your grandmaa began to listen to the short wave radio. It was a really happy emotional moment for your grandmaa and grandpaa and for everyone else when they heard the missionary talking again that morning.
The Yuqui Indians were wrong as to what they should give as an offering. God told Cain in verse 7 “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” If you give your lives to God as gifts for Him to use, God will accept your lives.
Genesis 4 (18)