She Reads Truth: Women In The Bible, Part 1Sample

Eve: Who We Believe "I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ." (The Apostle Paul, from 2 Corinthians 11:2-3, ESV) I’m convinced that Eve gets a bad rap. Yes, she deliberately disobeyed God. Yes, she was easily swayed. Yes, she brought Adam down with her. (Though, to be fair, he made his own decision to take a bite.) The serpent was sneaky, to say the least. Everything that spewed from his mouth was a lie: There is no danger here. What you have is not enough; you deserve more. God is not protecting you; he’s holding out on you. One bite won’t hurt. Yes, the serpent shares the blame. But even he is not the biggest reason I find myself leaping to Eve’s defense. The thing is, I know this story and I know myself. And I am one hundred percent certain I would have made the same choice. I would have bitten that apple. I would have convinced Adam to do the same. In fact, I have. When I dare to look hard at my Southern church-girl past, it is littered with forbidden fruit, with times I heard God’s truth in one ear and the Enemy’s lies in the other and I chose to believe the lies. Of course, it is not always that simple. We really do try to get it right. But the shame and guilt we carry are proof that we don’t. No one does. Perhaps this sounds dramatic. I do have a tendency toward word drama. But I don’t think it’s a stretch to say we each face these apple-moments in our lives, in our everyday. We know truth and we live in it, but the lies just get so loud. We get weary, we get confused, we get angry, we get jaded. And we bite. Immediately the shame settles in. Like Eve, we hurriedly begin sewing together fig leaves in an attempt to hide our brokenness and our guilt. Let’s stop. Let’s put down our DIY efforts of self-salvation that Paul warned us about, and let’s run fast to the foot of the cross. We will find Jesus there, ready for us. Ready to forgive. Click here to join the discussion with the SheReadsTruth community: http://bit.ly/WOBday2