tree-of-life

This summer Christian Students on Campus is reading through a book called The Tree of Life. Even during the summer, when we are not swamped with regular semester school work, we know that it’s easy to fall behind schedule. Every Friday we will recap that week’s readings with our top ten quotes. Let these quotes motivate you to catch up!  Either way, we know you will enjoy them and it may just be the perfect bite-size spiritual pick-me-up after a long week! So here are our top ten quotes from chapters 1-3 of The Tree of Life.

 

Chapter 1

“In Genesis 1 there is the purpose, the intention, of God, but there is not the way to fulfill God’s purpose, the way to attain God’s intention. The way is not in Genesis 1 but in Genesis 2, and what is the way? The way is the tree of life.” (8)

“Genesis tells us that after God created man, He put man in front of the tree of life. God did not give man a list of commandments. That was the work of Moses after the fall, not the work of God according to His eternal intention….God’s first intention is not to have man toiling but to have man feasting and feeding on Him, to have man enjoying God Himself.” (9-10)

“You have to open yourself [to the Lord] from the depths of your being. Learn to do this one thing. Then the Lord’s image and authority will be with you by the way of life. The living water will have a way to spring up within you by your opening yourself.” (15)

Chapter 2

“God’s intention is to work Himself into us so that He will be everything to us.” (20-21)

“With the tree of knowledge are knowledge, good, evil, and death. This tree is complicated. But with the tree of life there is only one item and nothing else—life, life, life. The tree of life is so simple. The Scriptures reveal life as the beginning, life as the process, life as the ending, and life as everything.” (22-23)

“Only the experiences of the Lord Himself in our spirit will last eternally….Our primary need is not for more knowledge about the Lord. What we need today is to contact the Lord.” (23)

Chapter 3

“One day the Triune God, who is the reality of the tree of life and of all the other positive items in the Old Testament, came to be a man.” (26)

“When we initially received Christ as the tree of life, a birth occurred, and a life relationship with God was established. When I received Christ as my Savior, I only realized that I was a sinner who was saved from eternal perdition. I did not realize that Christ was life to me and that I had a life relationship established with the Father God. We need to realize that when we received Christ, we were born of God, and God was born into us. As those who have been born of God, we have a life relationship with God.” (30)

“The small phrase in him is crucial in John 4:14. This living fountain of water is Christ, the very embodiment of the processed Triune God, who has become the life-giving Spirit in our spirit. As the fountain of living water, the Lord is always waiting for a chance to spring up within us. Since you initially received the Lord, you may not have opened to Him from the depths of your being. If this is true, your spirit has become a prison, a jail, to Christ. Christ may be imprisoned in you. You may be thirsty because the fountain, the spring, is closed within you.” (31)

“This enjoyment of the indwelling Christ as the tree of life will not only save us, deliver us, adjust us, regulate us, and correct us but will also transform us. We need to know Christ as the tree of life in the way of life.” (32)

 

Kyle Barton
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