Downward Spiral: Ep 4: Breaking the Spiral: Finding Redemption Amidst Rebellion

0:00 Welcome to Faith on the Go, a series on the Diary of a Black Woman podcast. I'm your host, Connie Morris, and today's episode is titled, The Spiral of Rebellion, Humanity's Fall. In this episode, we're diving into how rejecting God's guidance has led humanity into chaos. The spiral began in the Garden of Eden and echoes throughout history. So grab your cup of coffee, your favorite tea, and settle in as we walk through scripture, life lessons, and moments that challenge us to reflect on the world's trajectory and our personal spiral path.

0:46 So let's start with a question. Have you ever felt like the world is spinning out of control, like society is caught in a downward spiral? It's easy to feel overwhelmed. But what if I told you that the spiral was foretold and that understanding it could lead us closer to redemption rather than despair? Today, we'll look at the spiral as a symbol of rebellion. Picture a whirlpool dragging everything downward. This is the vigil of humanity's fall.

1:29 If you notice everywhere we turn, we see negative news, negative news, negative news. When the world turns away from God, it opens the door to evil. But let's see what happens. Go with me to Genesis chapter 3, verses 1 through 7. I'm going to take a moment and just set this scripture up, foundational scripture. It's about the man and the woman, the woman and sin. We know the story. I'm going to be reading from the NLT. It's going to set the tone for this particular episode.

2:09 All right. It says in Genesis 3 verses 1 through 7, it reads, The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God made. One day he asked a woman. Did God really say you must not eat of the fruit from any of the trees in the garden? Of course, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden. The woman replied, it's only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, you must not eat of it or even touch it. If you do, you will die.

2:52 You won't die, the serpent replied to the woman. God knows that your eyes will be open as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil. The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful, and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the vision it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it, And then she gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it too. And at that moment, their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shamed at their nakedness.

3:38 So they sewed fig leaves together and cover themselves. So we see here that Eve was talking to the serpent and she was beguiled into eating the fruit. But not only did she be, she was deceived, but she also encouraged her husband to eat the fruit. So let's go over this. So in Genesis 3, we see the tragic progression, temptation. The forbidden fruit looked good to Eve, pleasing to the eye and desirable for wisdom.

4:19 Well, we know that whatever God creates is always good. But when God tells you not to touch it, he means not to touch it. You ever had experience when God tells you not to do something and you do it anyway? It's never a good result. It never ends well. No matter how good it looks, no matter how handsome he looks or how beautiful she looks, If God says, do not touch it, he means do not touch it. So the first one, we see the temptation. We see the disobedience. Second one, we see disobedience. Eve took and ate the fruit and Adam followed.

5:01 So first the temptation, then the disobedience, and third, the spiritual fallout. Immediately, they were filled with shame and fear. So now we can see the origination of shame and fear. It falls right after temptation, disobedience, and spiritual fallout. So whenever you feel shame and fear, can you see the progression? Like, Lord, what did I do? Because you feel naked and ashamed. You ever, they did, there's a movie, isn't there a show? Used to be a show out there, Naked and Ashamed. That's pretty much what Satan wants you to always feel, naked and ashamed.

5:43 But God doesn't want that. And that's where the world seems like we're going on this spiral spinning out of control into chaos. This is a spiral. It starts with doubt, leads to defiance, and ends in separation from God. And isn't that what we see in today's world? People question God's truth, follow their desires, and find themselves spiritually lost, or you can say spiritually out of control, both physically, emotionally, emotionally. Out of control. Some more biblical examples of rebellion.

6:27 We can go to the Tower of Babel. It's in Genesis 11, verse 9. Let's go there. Genesis 11, verse 9, 1 through 9. And let's go here. I'll read from the NLT, the Tower of Babel. At one time, all the people in the world spoke the same language and use the same words. As the people migrated to the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there. They began saying to each other, let's make bricks and harden them with fire. In this region, bricks were used instead of stone and tower was used for mortar.

7:09 Then they said, come, let's build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world. But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. Look, he said, the people are united and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won't be able to understand each other. We notice here that in the Tower of Babel, they were united in evil to what?

7:54 Be famous. I just like that part. They were united in evil to be famous. Let's make ourselves famous. And as we know, and we hear in society, what the famous people were doing to stay famous. So we see here that humanity united not to worship God, but to elevate themselves. Their rebellion led to confusion and division. So God divided them. He said, let's confuse their language. Let's separate them. And we also have Israel golden calf in Exodus 32. I won't read that, But if you get a chance, go ahead and read Exodus 32.

8:39 And we know that while Moses was receiving the law from God, the people grew impatient and built a false God. They built a golden calf. Aaron was the leader of that. And so we also understand that people are always going to grow patient with God because God is not on a people timer. God is on his timing. His perfect timing is always perfect. But they forget sometimes that Moses was up there on their behalf. You have to read Exodus 32. God told them not to go near the mountain. He told them to be fasting and praying and to get sanctified because I am coming.

9:26 Moses goes up to the mountain to prepare the 10 commandments for great people to get ready to go into the promised land. But this took longer. It was 40 days, y'all. 40 days. What can you do in 40 days? You could have been exercising. You could have been fasting. You could have been doing a lot of things. But no, these people were building, partying like a rock star, partying like a rock star, doing everything instead of just sitting there in silence and waiting for Moses. They built a false god. They began to worship a false god. How many of you know that right now in America, if you just Google it, you can't even Google it.

10:13 You could just put false gods in America and you will find out there's so many false gods in America. People have chosen not to worship the one and true and living God, but all of these idol gods, idol gods that cannot speak. They cannot provide for you. They cannot protect you. Remember, you holding on to a rabbit's tail or whatever you do, hoping that that's going to bring you good luck. People leave their Bible open. Don't read it, but leave it open, hoping that that's going to bring you good luck. Come on now. God says, worship me in spirit and in truth. Do not build any false gods. But we see how the world is in a spiral.

10:58 The world is rebelling against God. And look at what's happening in our public schools. Look at what's happening in our colleges. Look at what's happening in our kids, the drug, the opioid addiction, the hate that we have in America. And so as we see here, each of these stories from Adam and Eve, Tower of Babel, the golden calf, and if you read your Bible, there's many more. These stories show the rebellion leads to chaos. They leads to loss and broken relationship with the creator.

11:39 Have you ever found yourself in a spiral? I mean, we all have. I can say I have. We make one compromise after another, and we don't realize that that one compromise opened the door to the evil one. And one compromise can mean something as simple as maybe sleeping with your boyfriend and now you're pregnant. It can mean maybe stealing from the till at work. It can mean punching and laying. It could mean cheating on your taxes. I don't know all the sins, but you know what your sin is. Your compromise is. But it happens so slowly when we begin to, we don't trust God anymore.

12:22 We begin to trust in our own way. We begin to trust in a false God. Our false God could just be us in our own way, trusting in our own understanding. And we know that if we think about that, even when we were kids or even as adults, if you are an adult and you're still rebelling, we know that can be dangerous. As a police officer, I remember, you know, kids who would not follow their moms or fathers, their family curfew, I would say. And then they end up being out past the curfew and things of negativity will happen. Death, injury, just some, they'll get kidnapped.

13:05 It's just different things will happen when we are not honoring our mother and father, when we're not following God's law. It opens the door to evil, right? And sometimes those evils masquerade as freedom, but they lead us to bondage. How about the one where, you know, back in the day, it was one of my scenes that I liked a happy hour. You love a happy hour, but do you know that maybe alcoholism ran in my family? So a little happy hour one day becomes an alcoholic the next day. And so we want to always consider that when God tells us that kings and priests do not drink alcohol, we need to honor that and not build up these false gods or these false images of what we should do.

13:56 What we think we should do. I call them false gods because if we're not worshiping the one and true and living God, everything else is false. Everything else is fake. And all that masquerading, all that fake freedom actually leads you into bondage. Remember, as a teenager, you can get pregnant as a, I'm just going to go out for a few drinks. You can get out, you can become an alcoholic or get drunk and find yourself in a compromising position, right? Worshiping the false god of alcohol, right? You know, yeah, this is deep. This is going to be good. This is truth. I'm not saying I'm sitting here with a halo over my head.

14:40 I'm just sharing some of my stories kind of in code, right? But God is a God that will deliver you from them all. But sometimes we have to hit rock bottom, just like Adam and Eve when they got kicked out of the garden, beautiful garden, garden with all the different beautiful stones and water not having to work. Just all their job was to just worship and obey the Lord. But they end up listening to a false God. Tower of Babel, the folks talking about they want to be famous. What have you done so bad that you wanted to be famous so bad that you did something that compromised your relationship with God?

15:28 The golden calf incident, what have you done that caused you to grow patient with God and then switch to worshiping a false God? Today, the world is full of similar patterns of rebellion. We have cultural movements, media movements promote the idea that we don't need God. Entertainment and media, we see messages that glorify self over sacrifice and chaos over peace. This rebellion is packaged as enlightenment, but in reality, it is a spiral of destruction, redemption through grace.

16:11 But here's the good news. The spiral of rebellion doesn't have to end in destruction. In Romans 5.20, it says, where sin increased, grace increased all the more. I mean, you cannot out send God love. You can't. So God's grace is like a lifeline extended to us as we're caught in the whirlpool. Jesus stepped into the mess of humanity, offering a way out. Just as Adam's disobedience led to the fall, Jesus' obedience led to redemption.

16:53 Are you reaching for the lifeline or are you caught in the spiral? I mean, those are those two points. Are you reaching for the lifeline? Are you caught in the spiral? Today, make it your day that you reach for the lifeline. Yes, the spiral, it will keep spiraling. We know. And at the end of the spiral, it spits you out. Have you ever been spit out by the spiral? and you're like, oh my gosh, I have hit rock bottom. Where else can I go? You go to Jesus. But why wait till you hit rock bottom when you can just call on him now?

17:33 So I just pray. We come to you, Father. Heavenly Father, we just come before you and we recognize the times that we follow rebellion instead of your truth. Forgive us for the moments we've questioned your goodness and chosen our own way. We ask for your grace to pull us out of the spiral of destruction, guide our hearts back to you, the source of life. And we decree that we will walk in your truth, resist the enemy's lies, and stand firm in faith. In Jesus' name, amen. I once again like to thank you for tuning in to our Faith on the Go series with the Diary for Black Women podcast.

18:18 I'm your host, Connie Morris. And if this message resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. Remember, no matter how far you've fallen, God's grace is more profound. Join me next time as we continue our journey through this series.