There it was, planted in the heart of paradise. It was the centerpiece and crowning glory of the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life.

God had given it to His people as a source of blessing and eternal life. In fact, God had given Adam and Eve everything they could possibly ever need. They even had the manifest presence of God Himself. They could walk and talk with Him “in the cool of the day.” “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8, The Amplified Bible).

Notice that it does not say only that the Lord walked in the Garden but that “they heard the sound of the Lord walking….” The point is, God was physically, substantially present in the Garden. Whatever form the awesome sounds took, Adam and Eve heard it. They “heard” God. But they did more than that. They talked with Him and fellowshiped with Him.

This was God’s plan for man. This is what God has always wanted and still wants today—to be near His children, to delight in them and for them to delight in Him. God longs to be close to us. He wants us to hear Him and come running into His loving presence.

Yes, God gave Adam and Eve everything they could possibly ever need or want. But He gave them something else, too. He gave them a choice. He gave them free will to choose whether or not they would come to the Tree of Life to partake of His goodness.

And He gives us the same freedom of choice today. We can choose to draw nigh to Him and partake of His goodness. Or we can choose not to. I don’t know about you, but I want to walk with God!

The good news for you and me is today, 6,000 years later, we can get to that place of intimacy with God. We, too, can hear Him and come into His presence with the excitement and anticipation of the first human beings to ever meet God face to face. The Tree of Life is available to us today.

Draw Nigh to Wisdom

In Proverbs 3, the Word of God describes the benefits of obtaining God’s wisdom as eating from “a tree of life.” There we read that wisdom’s profit is better than the profit of silver or gold. We’re told that it is more valuable than precious jewels. “Long life, riches and honor” belong to the one who presses in to the wisdom of God. But, as we learn in this passage, wisdom is something even more valuable than all the benefits it makes available to us: “How blessed is the man who finds wisdom. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, and happy are all who hold her fast” (Proverbs 3:13,18, New American Standard Bible).

Wisdom—God’s way of doing and being right—is a “tree of life!”

As did Adam and Eve, we also have the ability to press in and draw close to the Tree of Life. Or, we can do what too many of God’s people do—linger around the fringes of the Garden and live far beneath our privileges.

Seek Him

The Tree of Life is the source for everything that God has in store for our lives. And the way we draw near to it is the way Jesus instructed us in Matthew 6:33: “Seek first His kingdom” (New American Standard Bible). If we don’t seek, we’re not going to find. Even if we’re born again, if we don’t seek after God, we won’t find His wisdom. The root word in Hebrew for seek means “to frequent,” or “to tread often.” To seek something is to draw close to it with diligence and persistence.

It’s when we aggressively, actively go after the things of God that we get revelation (another word for wisdom!). What is the revelation that we find? When we partake of the Tree of Life we find that God is good. We run right into the goodness of God. We find that God is love. We find that God desires to pour His blessings out upon our lives in every way.

Wishing won’t work. It has no power to bring God’s highest and best into manifestation. Seeking works. Seeking, according to the Word of God, gets rewarded. “Seek and ye shall find” (Matthew 7:7). “He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). So seek diligently and tap in to wisdom and understanding. “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding” (Proverbs 4:7).

No doubt the Garden of Eden was a setting of unspeakable beauty, and heaven will be a place of unimaginable joy, but there’s a wealth of goodness to be enjoyed right here and now when you seek God each step of the way.

Draw Near to the Right Thing

Diligent seeking is not a new concept to people. Everyone on earth is diligently seeking after something. But there is supposed to be a big difference in the kinds of things we believers pursue. As Jesus said: “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things” (Matthew 6:31-32).

The Amplified Bible says, “for the Gentiles (heathen) wish for and crave and diligently seek all these things.” That’s just the kind of tenacity we need to have about seeking the tree of life—God’s wisdom. When we get as fervent about going after God as those who are outside of God’s covenant are about going after worldly things, we will really begin to see the glory.

Why don’t we need to seek after the things of this world? Because “your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things” (Matthew 6:32, New American Standard Bible). We have a covenant with God! It is written and ratified in the blood of Jesus. Jesus brought the covenant to His people to redeem us from the curse. The curse includes every sickness, every lack and every difficulty we could have.

Yes, God knows exactly what we need. He knows what we need spiritually, physically, financially and socially. He knows what His covenant people need and desire. And the wonderful thing about God is that He delights in providing these things for us! He wants us to have peace and wholeness—nothing missing, nothing broken.

That’s why all we have to be concerned about is drawing near to and feeding from the Tree of Life. “Gloria,” you may say, “that’s easy to say, but how do I do that?” It’s simple! Proverbs 3:18 tells us that the Tree of Life is God’s wisdom. And that wisdom is as close as the nearest Bible.

Connect to the Word

One of the best ways to draw near to God and His wisdom is to dive into His Word, one-on-one—just you and God. Some of the most precious and powerful moments of my walk with God come while I’m fellowshiping with Him in His Word. The wisdom and revelation of God begins to come and I get so excited!

You will never walk in the fullness of God’s goodness without learning how to study His Word on your own. It’s one of the primary ways you can experience Him speaking personally and powerfully to you each day.

What does Matthew 6:33 say? Seek, aim at, strive after first of all His kingdom and His righteousness—God’s way of doing things (The Amplified Bible). Do you notice that this is not a passive statement? It’s very active. When you begin to find out from the Word of God what is right, and then start walking in it, you will simultaneously begin walking in the blessings of God.

The more you know about God’s ways and the more you align your life and attitudes with them, the more the blessings of God will overtake you. You’re feeding from the Tree of Life.

If, however, you walk in doubt, unbelief and disobedience, you’re shutting off His blessings. But when you turn to God and seek Him through His Word, you will find yourself walking closely with God and your needs will be met.

Sometimes I lose myself in the richness of my time in God’s Word and I feel like saying, “Help! I’ve fallen into the Word and I can’t get out!” That is my prayer for you—that you would find yourself getting lost in the goodness of God through your time in His Word.

Stay Close to the Plan

God always has a plan. When the promises of God seem slow in manifesting, it’s easy to start murmuring, grumbling and becoming impatient. Our job is to stay close to the Tree of Life so we can begin to understand what that plan is. I love the way the Lord expresses it: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11, New International Version).

If you haven’t fed from the Tree of Life long enough to find God’s plan, you haven’t lived yet. And if you haven’t been going after the plan God has for you, you’re missing the best part.

How does that plan come about? Not through your own striving, I can assure you. It comes the same way the rest of the benefits of salvation come: “For it is by free grace that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ’s salvation) through [your] faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves” (Ephesians 2:8, The Amplified Bible).

Being “saved” includes everything the Hebrew word peace (shalom) includes—health, wholeness, soundness and prosperity. Note that this salvation is not of ourselves. It is not of our own doing. Our part is to press in to God and believe. God’s plan is a plan of wholeness, freedom and peace. We must never forget that.

We all have things that we are believing God for in the future, and there’s nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is to fail to appreciate what we’ve already been given and to grumble when things haven’t been manifest yet. I’ve seen believers who seem to be saying, “Hey God, You’re getting slack on the job!”

What we need to be doing is maintaining a grateful heart toward God while we are waiting. For example, if we’re believing God for a new car, we ought to be saying, “Lord, I thank You for my new car and I thank You that I have a car now. Thank You that I can go to work and go to church. Thank You that I have a warm home to go to at the end of the day. Thank You for being so good to me.”

Never forget that God has a plan. Don’t listen to the doubts the devil wants to use to fill your mind with fear and despair. Remember that God is not moved by murmuring. God is moved when you draw near to Him in faith: “But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him” (Hebrews 10:38, New International Version).

In addition to being grateful, we need to be patient. In Luke 8:15, Jesus says the good ground bears fruit with patience. If seeking God’s will and walking in it didn’t take patience, everyone could do it. But God’s way is not always the easy way.

People would often like for things to move quickly, but God wants to see patient, believing hearts that hold steady when things aren’t moving quickly. You may think God doesn’t move fast enough. Yet God’s way is fail-safe. When you seek God first, you are following the “no-failure” way. And I think you would agree that it’s much more desirable to be patient and hold out for God’s best than to move quickly and wind up out of His will. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).

God’s will is not just a good plan, it’s the best plan. It’s a plan worth waiting for.

Draw Near, Stay Near

God delights in doing His children good. We sometimes start thinking that we’ve got to talk God into the idea of manifesting Himself. In the back of our minds there lurks a nagging thought that unless we do something to really get His attention, God is not going to make an appearance.

But that was not the way it was in the Garden. God came down out of His own free will to talk with His children. They didn’t have to beg Him to come down. It was His idea. He wanted to get as close to them as He could. And it is still God’s idea to manifest Himself to His children today and to be near them and have them seek His companionship.

God’s nature is goodness. When you meet someone whose nature is good, their pleasure is in doing good for others. God gets His pleasure that way.

“But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord God that I may declare all [his] works” (Psalms 73:28).

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8, New American Standard Bible).

“He who keeps on seeking finds” (Matthew 7:8, The Amplified Bible).

God’s desire hasn’t changed from the beginning when He revealed His love to the first man and woman. God’s desire is to be close to His people, to have them draw near to Him so that He can bestow His goodness and blessings upon them.

Can you sense His presence near you? Can you hear His Word echoing within your heart? He wants you to draw near. As you diligently seek Him and come into His presence, remember to be grateful. Thank Him for each stage of His plan that He has already revealed to you while you wait in faith for the next stage to be manifest.

“But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (I Corinthians 1:30). You see, Jesus is the Tree of Life! He is the wisdom of God—the Word made flesh. Press in to that Tree and stay close. All who draw near to Him will be blessed.