There was a man who would walk through his beautiful, lush garden with his children every day. They would stroll along happily in conversation, looking at the amazing beauty he had created for them to enjoy. He was a loving, kind and giving father. One day something devastating happened. The man's children came upon a trespasser in the garden. The trespasser was evil and intended to harm them and to separate them from their father. The children had been warned but did not remember to heed the wise instructions of their father but instead they fell for the trespasser's trap. Once the father realized what had happened he was furious! He knew that this wicked trespasser had been successful in convincing his children to disobey him so greatly that it caused them to be completely separated from his presence, leaving them with the evil trespasser to torment them! From then on they were taken so far away that it was as if the children could only see their father's face as reflection through a glass mirror. Both the father and the children's hearts were broken. The father knew that the only way he could get his children back was to send someone who could save them from the trespasser. Someone who would never go against his instructions, someone who would lay down their own life for his children as if they were his own! Someone so giving that he would be the only one who could rescue his children from the devices of his enemy. But the father also knew that it would be a long time before he would be reunited with his beloved children again. So he wept, and his heart was grieved for them. The father knew that the trespasser would do everything that he could to keep his children away from him forever. So he pleaded with his children once again to listen to the wise instructions of the one that he sent to save them! He told them to follow the man that he sent because he would show them the way back to him, but they would not listen.
Eventually the children forgot about their father. Oddly enough they started enjoying the wicked things that the trespasser had introduced them to after taking them away. They started behaving as if the one who had stolen them away was their father. They became wicked and evil. They even influenced their siblings to leave their father for good to love the trespasser instead. The only thing they really needed to do to get back to their rightful place next to their father's side was to turn away from the trespasser and follow the man that their father sent to save them.
Now imagine that you are the father and these are your children that have been taken away from you! What would you do if you sent someone to rescue your babies from a kidnapper who was harming them in the most unimaginable ways, and once the savior got there, they rejected him and refused to be saved?
This is how our relationship is with God our father and Christ Jesus our savior. If we turn away from Satan and turn to Jesus we will literally see God face to face again! But if we keep going deeper into sin with Satan and further and further away from Christ, then there us no hope for us! We will be condemned to stay with the evil one who keeps doing everything that he can to destroy us! Our father wants to see us again face to face, hand in hand, conversing with his children in his place of beauty and glory again! All we have to do is choose to follow Jesus.