True Woman 101 - Week 4: Snake in My Garden

Erin Davis: I grow green beans. I grow potatoes. I grow tomatoes. I grow corn. I grow beets. I grow turnips for my husband’s grandmother. She loves my turnip gardens. I grow herbs. I grow onions.

Carolyn McCulley: You go, girl. Wow! I’m impressed.

I do container gardening. By this I mean I buy one new container a year and put it out. Where I used to live in Maryland, I would have it out. I felt like I was running a deer salad bar. They always knew exactly when I was going to have dinner guests over, and they’d munch everything straight down. I’d be like, “These are my pathetic little pots.”

Erin: There goes your basil.

Karen Loritts: When I moved from the big concrete jungle of Philadelphia down to Georgia, we had all this green stuff. I had my husband plot me up a little patch. We only lasted one season. It was just too much work, and we had too many nasty things.

Mary Kassian: This was a bad year for slugs. They kind of sneak up, but you often see their trails.

Erin: Oh, right. We don’t have slugs. We have Japanese beetles. I live in Missouri, and the rule of thumb in Missouri is if you see one Japanese beetle, 10,000 of his little friends are already there. They can turn your crops to lace in just one day.

Mary: Every pest usually has some contribution to the ecosystem, but I’ve yet to figure it out about slugs. I mean, what is their benefit?

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Okay, I’ve got a really important theological question here.

Mary: Oh, wait, I have more bug stories.

Nancy: Garden of Eden, Paradise—do you think they had slugs and Japanese beetles?

Karen: Oh, no. They’re definitely the result of the Fall.

Carolyn: No, I don’t think so.

Mary: No—and there were no mosquitoes and stink bugs.

Erin: And no spiders.

Nancy: Okay, but here’s the point I would like to make. We all agree that in the Garden, Genesis 1, Genesis 2, it was paradise. We don’t know for sure whether those critters were there—beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe Adam and Eve just loved slugs—we don’t know.

Karen: They might have had a pet bug.

Nancy: We do know that—get away from the critters for a moment—talk about the people there. Adam and Eve, this first couple, first marriage, first man, first woman, it was paradise for their relationship—their relationship with each other and with God. It is hard to imagine.

Mary: It’s hard to fathom. No holes in the leaf.

Erin: No Swiss cheese in the leaves or in the relationship.

Karen: Wow.

Nancy: Okay, something has clearly changed.

Carolyn: Clearly.

Nancy: We all know the story, but I think it’s just really helpful to go back and reflect on it from time to time because in Genesis 1 and 2, you have this awesome, amazing—every word in there is positive, it’s blessing, fruitful, good, wonderful. This is a perfect paradise for this couple. They are not only right with each other—a great relationship with each other—but a great relationship with God—no hindrances, no barriers, no fear, no shame, no guilt.

Then you come to chapter 3 of Genesis, and something drastic happens, something really stark that paints this really negative picture until you get to the New Testament and to the last three chapters of the Bible where you have restoration of paradise.

So, what happened?

In Genesis chapter 3 we have the entrance of a critter, a snake, a pest into the Garden.

Mary: A real pest.

Nancy: And not just slugs or Japanese beetles or things that destroy our physical gardens, but a spiritual being that set out to destroy and to undermine and to dismantle all the good that God had put there.

Karen: He came there with a plan, crafty. He was there just to upheave all of this beautiful paradise, this garden kind of atmosphere.

Nancy: He had an agenda.

Karen: He didn’t want to just destroy crops.

Carolyn: He wanted to do much more damage than that.

Nancy: But here’s the thing: He didn’t look like a pest.

Mary: No, he didn’t look like a pest.

Nancy: He didn’t look like an intruder.

Karen: No. He looked like one of the other created beings.

Erin: Right. I mean, with the curse he’s commanded to crawl on his belly. So, we don’t know what he looked like prior to that.

Nancy: He could have been upright.

Carolyn: He could have had some limbs or something—certainly not as snaky and creepy.

Karen: It was obvious he was more appealing.

Mary: He must have been quite beautiful, really; I would imagine.

Nancy: Because if it were today and we saw a snake coming to our view, we’d be out of there shrieking, but somehow Eve wasn’t afraid. She didn’t screech. There was this conversation. People are saying today this is all folklore, but it’s not. It’s true. He approached the woman.

We're talking about true womanhood here. If we're going to understand how we got to where we are today and why we have the issues we do, we've got to go back to this moment of temptation. He approaches with her a . . . We know the serpent is Satan embodied in the body of a serpent, but he has this deceptive sales pitch.

Carolyn: He has the first question in all of Scripture. The first question is to cast doubt on God's character, His truth, and His Word. That's been the same assault from there on out—one trick, but it works.

Nancy: Has God said?

Mary: Yep. Don’t you think you know better than Him?

Carolyn: Just a little bit

Mary: Is He holding out on you?

Erin: Then he says, “You can be like God.” I think maybe one of the reasons he went to Eve as a woman because that's another way of saying, “What you are isn’t quite enough.” And don't we as women all sometimes have that sense? So there’s this moment in Eve’s mind, like, “Maybe I’m not enough. Maybe I need to do or be or say more to be more like God.”

Nancy: It was the first sense of inadequacy.

Erin: Insecurity

Karen: Or how about this: He comes to Eve, and she's perked up because maybe now she has something her husband doesn't have. So she has one up on her man.

Carolyn: Someone paying a whole lot of attention to her. And can’t that be dangerous?

Mary: Well, it’s very attractive, certainly. Scripture tells us that she was pulled in by it. She didn’t go, “Oh, I’m going to sin.” She was just tricked by it. She was led along into the sales pitch, into buying something that she thought looked really great. And she swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

Nancy: I want us to just explore how that happened and why. I mean, we know this passage, it’s familiar, but sometimes we just have glazed over eyes with these familiar passages. I think it bears exploring because God had posted one “keep off” sign in this whole amazing garden—just one. She had all this other stuff to enjoy. How does Satan succeed in getting her go where God said don’t go?

Mary: As a woman, I can just so relate with Eve. I’m not sure I would have made a different choice. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have. I can just see from a woman’s heart and understanding what makes me tick, even the things I don’t like about what makes me tick, how that happened.

Yes, she was deceived. It wasn’t an intentional choice, but the serpent just related to her, was engaging

Nancy: What did she find so compelling about his pitch?

Carolyn: He twisted truth.

Nancy: But why was that compelling to her?

Carolyn: It had enough truth in it to be like, “Yes, I can respond to that, but now . . . wait!”

Mary: I see your point. I think because women are relaters. We like to relate, and we’re created for relationship. So if you come to me and you tell me something and I can see the truth in it, I’m drawn to that.

Carolyn: And he appeals to her "creatureliness." It looks good. It’s going to taste good. And now let’s go down to your inner core: It’s desirable for wisdom and to make you like what you aren’t right now.”

Mary: Don’t we women all want things that look good. I know I like things that taste good.

Karen: How about lack of contentment? Because he just said, “You’ll be just like God.” And she thinks, “Yes, I’m not satisfied here.”

Mary: And she thinks, “Oh, maybe what I am is not enough.”

Carolyn: That was Satan’s assault. He wanted to be just like God.

Nancy: Right. That’s how he got thrown out of his responsibility in heaven.

Mary: So he kind of planted the seed of doubt, really. He just introduced it. He didn’t come out and out and say, “God isn’t good.” He was just so subtle. He was like, “Well, did He really say that? Really?”

Nancy: And God’s ways are too restrictive. That doesn’t seem fair.

Karen: And He has you all boxed in.

Mary: Or you could be so much more if you took things into your hands. Is He really looking out for you as much as He’s looking out for Himself?

Erin: Didn’t he appeal to that thing that we’ve talked about so much in the weeks of this study about a woman’s desire for control? “You can control this situation. You can determine who you are even more than God.”

I know my desire for control sometimes leads me to entertain the snake, I guess.

Mary: Even the consequences, like, “Nothing bad is going to happen. What do you really think is going to happen here? Nothing bad is going to happen.”

Nancy: Which is strictly contrary to what God had said.

Mary: “You surely aren’t going to die. Oh, come on. It can’t be that bad.” I mean we fall for that all the time.

Karen: Sure.

Nancy: And, “You'll experience amazing benefits.”

Mary: Right.

Nancy: “Double the pleasure; none of the guilt.” Right?

Carolyn: He casts the doubt, and then he completely contradicts. “You will not surely die.” I wonder if she even really understood what death was. I mean in paradise, it probably was a very abstract concept.

Mary: She’d never seen it.

Erin: Right. So it was like, “Yes, I guess. Whatever that thing is, it won't happen.” And instead, “You’ll be like God. He’s holding out on you.”

Karen: Her question should have been—not only her response, but her question should have been, “How does he know what God said? I was there listening to what God said.” She should have questioned that, but, of course, we never question the bearer of the news as contrary to what God says. Right? We always say, “Oh, well, I don’t know.” When God specifically has it penned out for us in His Word.

Erin: And it questions God’s right as the Creator to say, “I've given you all of this, and this I restrict for My sovereign purposes, which I don't always tell you what they are because you're the creature.”

Mary: Yes, but we don’t like that. I don't like that. I don’t like keep off signs or don't go there. In fact, I find in my own spirit that when there's a don't go there, it makes me want to go there more because I don't like feeling like someone else is putting restrictions on what I can and can't do.

Nancy: Yes, I sometimes say I don't mind doing what's right as long as somebody doesn't tell me I have to or that I can't. That's rebellion, right?

Karen: That's what we have. Can you imagine my little kids? I can have a jar of Oreo cookies right there in the middle of the table and have maybe a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right here. And I say, “You may have all the cookies you want, but don't touch this peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” I have shifted their attention from the cookie jar to the sandwich.

Erin: You could use vegetables as an alternative, and they’d . . .

Carolyn: Sure! Don’t eat the broccoli!

Karen: There’s something appealing about what you say I can't have.

Nancy: So Satan makes it look attractive. It does look attractive. It was attractive. But then he makes it look harmless. It looks promising. She buys into it. Of course, if she could have seen it looked like it was just crawling with worms and rotten, she wouldn't have gone for it. It looks so attractive, but then she takes a bite, and you find it is crawling with worms, so to speak, and the rest, as they say, is history.

But, Erin, I'm so glad that you pointed out that we would have likely made the same choice.

Erin:  Oh, I'm such a daughter of Eve, and I prove it by repeating her mistake so often.

Nancy: Exactly, so how does Satan tempt us today as women in ways similar to what he did Eve, and how do we respond to it.

Erin: Well, I find his tactics haven't changed all that much in my life.

Mary: The script is just the same, it's the same for all the women I talk to. At my conferences, it's all the same thing:

• I didn't think anything bad would happen. 
• It wasn’t going to happen to me. 
• I thought my life would be better.
• I thought God's rules were a little bit silly. 
• I thought that I could make the choices. 
• It looked so good. 
• It looked so promising.  

You know, “That affair looked so good. That romance looked so good. Going there looked so good.”

Carolyn: Well, the current lie to our culture is the fact that there is no judgment, there is no death, there is no hell. Nobody is going to hold you accountable, so just make up your own rules, and do what you want.  And then inside the church . . .

Mary: If it feels good. You should not deny yourself.  Don't let yourself be denied.

Carolyn: Yes, it’s the idea of taking away the justice, the holiness of God. That's not a component that we have to deal with. “You will not surely die.” That's the culture lie. Specifically, within the church, it's like, “Hey, you’re forgiven, so you can just keep on sinning. There's no consequences. There's not going to be any discipline of the Father who loves us. We're not going to hear the heavy steps as He comes up, like, ‘I told you to go to sleep.’”

You keep postponing obedience, and so that's one aspect that affects us here in the church, and it's just that same idea that God's judgment isn’t worthy of our respect or consideration.

Mary: A technique that Satan uses that I can so relate to is he made it all about Eve. For a minute, he gave her a stage, a platform, to think, “It’s all about me.” And sin in my own life is so often traced to, “It’s all about me.” Just momentarily forgetting that it’s not about me. When I think it is about me, I give myself the right to behave any way I want to behave.

That’s what Satan did with Eve. “Here’s your stage, Eve. Invent the life you want. Let’s talk about you.” When I get to talking too much about me, it’s ugly usually.

Nancy: We do forget or ignore consequences. I'm thinking about Psalm chapter 10. Three times it says, “He says in his heart.” It's talking about foolish people, people who have sinned, make sinful choices. “He says in his heart, ‘I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall meet adversity.’” (v. 6) I'm going to be able to continue my life as it is.

“He says in his heart, ‘God has forgotten, he has hidden His face, he will never see it.’” (v. 11)

And then verse 13, “He says in his heart, ‘You will not call to account.’”

And isn't that it? We may not be consciously saying that at the moment of temptation, but if we really were thinking, “I will give account. God hasn't forgotten. He does see.” That's the fear of the Lord, living in the constant, conscience awareness of God's presence. How would that keep us from sinning?

Mary: He's the creator; I'm the creature. This is not about me; this is about Him. If those are the boundaries that He's established, who am I? I mean, we don't fear, we don't tremble at who God is anymore. There's just this casualness.

Karen: Too casual.

Mary: Yes. Too casual. Like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. It's all about me. He'll forgive my sin.” There's no fear in terms of understanding that He indeed is God, and I am not.

Karen: In Galatians, where it has that sowing and reaping principle—I’m going back to the garden. The only thing I do know about garden seeds is that whatever seed you plant in the garden—if it’s a green bean or whatever . . .

Nancy: If you plant a tomato, you’re not going to get a cucumber.

Karen: That’s right. You’re going to get whatever’s planted. So the seed was dropped here. And now we are reaping that crop. If it wasn’t for the mercy and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, our crop would have died a long time. But we forget about the sowing and reaping principle. Disobedience requires consequences. So we have to obey. It started in the garden. There was an opportunity for the woman to tell the serpent, “That’s not what I heard. Good-bye.”

Erin: Or, “Let me talk to Adam about it.”

Mary: Or, “Let me pray about it. Let me talk to the Lord about it.”

Karen: Was she out of place in this part right here? It would be nice to find out geographically where she was.

Erin: Well, Adam was standing right next to her, and there’s no consultation. There’s no, “We’re in this together.” There’s no, “My behavior impacts other people,” here. It’s just all about me. That’s just such a lie and temptation for women to believe that, “My behavior isn’t going to impact others. This is an isolated thing. What I do is for my happiness, and I’m the only one who’s going to be impacted, and there won’t be any consequences to speak of."

Karen: Which is a big lie.

Erin: Oh, I see it all the time. Women in affairs. It’s just all the time in terms of the choices that we are making.

Karen: I always tell people, women I’m counseling . . . They’re really struggling with this whole idea about submission and all the rest of that stuff, and, “God is handicapping me. He’s squelching my happiness. What I want to do is my own business.” I say, “It’s unfortunate, but your business is everybody’s business.”

Nancy: And it’s for sure God’s business.

Karen: That’s right. So you have to make a decision. We just go on and have this conversation, but they have this idea, “What I do is my business. I can do whatever I want because there’s not going to be a time of harvest.” There will be a time of harvest.

Carolyn: But women are the originator of that idea.

Erin: We’re such influencers that when we make decisions, it influences and impacts those around us.

Mary: It certainly happened in the garden.

Nancy: Okay. So how does the cultural ideal today for womanhood tempt us to fall for Satan’s deception? Tie those two together. We’re talking about sin in general, temptation in general, but as it relates to true womanhood or womanhood, culture has an ideal, and how does that set us up if we buy into that ideal, to fall for Satan’s deception?

Carolyn: I think beauty is one area, because as I began to study the Word, I realized that the only one whose glory and beauty is eternal is the Lord. He’s promised that we’re going to wither away. The very fact that the Fall meant decay and death entered, meaning that from that second and forward, we are dying every single second of our life. We are just decaying. And so, one of the areas of assault . . . I struggle with it. I know we’ve all joked about it as we’ve gotten ready here, doing our hair and makeup. It’s just like, “Oh, what’s happening?”

Mary: Put away that ten-times magnification mirror.

Carolyn: Exactly. And we fight against it. I fight against it. Just the idea that I am supposed to decay because, in my humanity, in my humility, I slowly crumble.

Nancy: But we’re always looking for this anti-aging thing that will keep us perennially nineteen.

Carolyn: Exactly. I’ve spent tons of money on that. So the idea is that youthfulness is better because it’s that eternal value. Theologians have speculated that Adam and Eve were probably young adults, in their prime, and that would have been their perfection. That’s where they would have stayed. There wouldn’t have been this aging process that kicks in. We fight that.

Nancy: No grey hair.

Carolyn: Right. We fight it because we don’t want to acknowledge our "creatureliness" that leads us from dust to dust and back to dust.

Erin: Beauty has always played a huge role. You asked how it’s affecting women today. I think Eve was drawn to beauty, wanting a version, maybe, of beauty she maybe didn’t think she possessed—and isn’t that traced to a lot of sin we’re seeing in women’s lives now? Anything to be beautiful, anything to feel beautiful, anything to be told you’re beautiful.

Mary: That’s affirmation.

Erin: That’s right. I’ll take it any way I can get it from anyone who wants to say it to me as long as they will affirm me.

Mary: Especially if it’s a good looking guy.

Nancy: Good looking serpent.

Erin: Absolutely.

Mary: And what about independence? I think that really would have appealed to me. My mom says that I just had an independent streak. By the time I was two, I was slapping her away, “Don't touch me. Let me do it. I'll do it myself.”

Nancy: But hasn't that been drilled into us for as long as any of us have been alive?

Mary: It was born into me.

Nancy: But our culture promotes that.

Erin: Oh, certainly, and isn’t it still tied to our sins as women, so often?

Carolyn: It almost doesn’t matter what your temperament or personality type is. Once you reach about eighteen months and you figure out you can walk, any child you pick up does that karate chop to the throat, and you’re like, “Ugh! I'll put you down.”

Mary: Oh, there's some cuddlers, but on their own terms.

Carolyn: That’s true, but it doesn't matter if they’re willful or not, there's going to be that idea of, “I want to be put down because now I know how to walk.”

Mary: God created us, I think, in terms of development and maturation where there’s a sense that independence is a healthy thing, but there's also a very unhealthy thing there. I think that Satan was really appealing to that part of Eve—the part where she exerted an independence that was unhealthy. It wasn't because she turned her back on interdependence.

She turned her back on relationship with Adam and the mutuality and the, “We're in this together. My decisions are going to impact you, and we need to talk about this. We need to go to God. What do you think we should be doing or looking to Him for guidance and direction.”

I mean, there were so many temptations that were so subtle and so undermined who God created them to be as male and female. That's what is so fascinating to me. This is not just an ordinary temptation. This really speaks to who they are as man and woman and really what appeals to a woman the most and what is most tempting and really it does play into what tempts us to this very day.

Nancy: Let’s talk for a moment about how sin, saying yes to the deception, to the deceiver, how it affected the relationship with each other and with God. What was some of the fallout there?

Karen: We'll start with the husband. He just threw his wife under the bus. Genesis 3:12 says, "The man said, 'The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.'"

Ouch. The woman You gave me. You gave me this woman. She did it. I didn't choose her. Everything was going okay. I was better off without . . . yeah, the woman.

Mary: Oh, man. Can you imagine how much that hurt?

Erin: I can't really imagine. That must have been so painful.

Mary: I mean, here her protector, her provider, her hero just turns on her. Unbelievably painful.

She lived in this perfect relationship, and it's like God hadn't even given the judgment against sin, and right away this unity is fractured. You could almost hear the crack. Her heart must have split in two. I mean, I can't imagine the betrayal she must have felt because she had gone into it thinking this was a good thing. Not having any ill intent, being deceived, not being wise, but not having any malicious intent—and then just BOOM—ow!

Erin: And we're going to assume these are the first harsh words Eve had ever heard. I think a lot of us as women can remember every harsh word that's ever been spoken. Right? They make a deep, deep impact in our heart.

Karen: Oh, talk about a marital adjustment time. They had it big time.

But I like that word when it says chapter 3, verse 1, “The serpent was more crafty.” It talks about that craftiness, the schemes of the devil in Ephesians, chapter 6 when it talks about the armor of God. He has his schemes. He had a definite plan. He knew. He was working it.

Let me go to the wife, the woman first, with her lack of contentment. She wants competiveness. I'm going to her, and when it fell down, I mean, everybody was saying, “No, No, No.”

Erin: Don’t you think part of the scheme was to pit husband versus wife, wife versus husband?

Karen: Yes.

Nancy: Keep in mind that in Genesis 1 and 2 was paradise. God made them to have co-dominion, to be co-regents, to serve together for the glory of God.

Erin: You see this unity and equality.

Mary: A beautiful partnership.

Karen: Very healthful partnership.

Erin: Amazing.

Nancy: Now it's not us together, but it's me versus him.

Karen: I don't want to say this, but they were nake. But now everything was a show. So there was no intimacy. It was now violated.

Mary: She must have felt incredibly violated and betrayed. I'm sure right there were the roots of bitterness, anger, resentment, and, really, self protection. I mean, that's how I would have reacted. Like, “You've got to be kidding me. He's not going to look after me. I'd better look after myself. This guy's turned on me.”

Nancy: And we still see that same mindset in our own lives and in our culture, things really haven’t changed that much. So how does culture encourage us as women to assert our independence?

Carolyn: It undermines the whole concept of unity and teamwork. I’m struck, when I look at this, when the Lord God comes into the garden in verse 9. It says, “But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” If we could understand the implications of our decisions and the impact on other people to understand that sometimes we do things that other people are going to be called to account for because that's how authority works. So God, who gave the rules to Adam, comes to him and says, "Where were you? I gave you the rules; you gave them to Eve. Where were you?"

Mary: You didn't step up.

Carolyn: Right.

Erin: Isn't that a lost principle? We don't think of the consequences or the accountability that our husbands, fathers, pastors, bosses may face because of our choices.

Carolyn: So we think we can do this warfare on our own without realizing that the very essence of unity and community is what is needed in spiritual warfare. So to understand when the first lies get sown anywhere in any one of our relationships, that when we withdraw and we hide—we can’t. The second we do that, he's already winning, and if we would understand that more, we would be less judgmental toward each other.

We would understand, “Hey, get that sin into the light as fast as you can. Get it into the light so that it won't be hidden, and you won't be under attack. And we would get each other's backs.”

So it's not just even a marriage principle. It's a community because we are all the Bride of Christ.

Mary: Divide and conquer . . . that was Satan's strategy. It was like, go in there, split it up, and have it us/them. Have the women exert her independence and the man blame the woman and exert his independence. So he's saying, "Not my fault; it's her fault.” And she's going, “Well, it wasn't really my fault, either.”

So, instead of working together for a solution, which they couldn't do . . . they couldn't provide the solution. It had to be God who comes into our lives and provides the solution for us. I think apart from that, we will have a tendency as women . . . I will have a tendency as a woman, apart from God, to wrap myself in self-protective layers, to exert my independence and to lash out at everyone who I perceive to be a threat to me or unsafe for me or competition for me.

I think that what we see here with Eve . . . Boy, I just resonate with this so much because this is really sin I'm so familiar with.

Nancy: Sin takes those relationships in one of two extremes it seems. What God created was healthy.

Erin: Healthy, very healthy.

Nancy: Interdependence. 

Erin: Right. We had two individuals.

Nancy: God and two individuals needing each other. So was for him a helper, suitable, fashioned for him. It's just a great sense of holy interdependence—dependence on God, interdependent on each other.

Mary: Like in the Trinity.

Nancy: Like in the Trinity, but then Satan . . .

Erin: It’s quite a love story. It's like the king of the thing that women are still trying to find.

Nancy: Yes, it's what the heart longs for. Satan sends us, I think, in one of two directions, particularly in the marriage relationship but in others as well, because sin affects all our relationships. One will be the unhealthy, what some would call co-dependence, which is, "I'm so needy that I can't function."

Mary: "I need a man. I can't function without you. I'm going to suck my identity and being and source of meaning from you."

Nancy: Which is where a lot of women live. Then there's the other extreme of independence.

Erin: I don’t need you.

Nancy: I don't need anybody or anything. If we fall into either one of those extremes, it doesn't allow us to be who God made us to be as women, interdependent upon men together for the glory of God

Karen: Eve should have said, “We're not going to do this, serpent, and just get away.” They needed come on the same battle field, on the same tennis court side and work this against the enemy, because they were into a spiritual battle.

Lots of times in relationships with men and women, we get into trouble when we're fighting against each other.

Nancy: The man becomes the enemy. 

Karen: When the enemy comes, we need to pull forces and together battle the enemy because he has a spiritual plan for us to split up.

Nancy: There's somebody doing this study who is right where you just described Karen.

Karen: There's a snake in the garden.

Nancy: There's a snake in the garden. Somebody has sinned, and there's chaos or dysfunction or consequences. Now is an opportunity, a moment of grace to step into the light with God, and to say, “Instead of tearing my husband apart or this man at work or this person or this dad who wounded me or wronged me in some way, I'm going to find a way by God's grace to seek God in my fallenness. I'm going to seek His help, to seek His grace, and see if we can get on the same playing field.”

Erin: That woman has a hope to have a different outcome that Eve faced by just taking the one step Eve didn't take, which was to consult God. If she'd just take that one simple step today after this study in her church and consult God, she'd have a different story.

Karen: I would say, too, as a pastor’s wife. In churches you have men and women, and sometimes some churches go down the tube. They may physically still be there, but spiritually they are not where God wants them to be. They’re not doing kingdom business because you have this inciting of the women against the men and their authority—competition with whoever the leaders are, the elders, or the deacons.

The outside community is looking at us and saying, “They can’t even get it together there in the church,” because you have this group and that group. Everybody is out of order, and they’re not being responsible for what God has called us to, even inside of a church.

Mary: Whenever we have an us/them mentality with people we’re in community with, I think that’s where we go wrong. I think that was one of the primary things that happened right away because of sin—us vs. them.

Erin: Well, Adam’s blame game didn’t work.

Carolyn: It didn’t work. God said, “Okay, I will just punish Eve.”

Erin: My bad.

Mary: Yeah, my bad. Where is that Eve?

Erin: It absolutely didn’t work . . . the blame game . . . does it ever work? It very rarely works.

Carolyn: Well, we even get a picture of this in Job where God parts the curtain a little bit where we can see that spiritual warfare. Satan comes in ready to accuse. He’s ready to accuse God. He’s ready to accuse His people. He says, “You give that Job extra special favor. That’s why he still blesses You.”

Erin: The accuser of the brethren.

Carolyn: And the accuser of God. Like, “This man’s only happy with You because You bless him.” And Job’s wife . . . oh, she falls into that trap that I think maybe some other women are looking at here which is, “There are difficult circumstances in my life, and I’ve tried to be righteous and godly all my life, and this is what I get.”

It’s like you survey your circumstances, and you go, “I don’t get this. This can’t possibly be God.” You don’t understand that there’s a bigger picture involved. If you will stand fast and realize that the enemy has accused you and accused God, so hold fast in these circumstances and wait because this story has not been finished yet. Do not try to force the ending and say, like Job’s wife, “Well, just curse God and die.” Don’t do that. Trust God.

Erin: Exactly. Trust God for who He is. Believe Him for who He is.

Carolyn: For women who are single, I often go back and use this illustration. I hope my theology is correct here when I just say, “Have you ever thought that there could be a moment where you are in that position where it’s like you have to be content to be able to stand there and say, ‘I do not have a husband, but I am not going to curse God and die because of something I didn’t get.' I don’t know all the implications of spiritual warfare, and maybe God has said, ‘I want her to stand righteously in this saturated society and to say, "My God is enough."'"

If you thought about that concerning spiritual warfare, would you do it?

Nancy: Go Carolyn.

Erin: Amen.

Carolyn: A lot of times women go, “But I still want my prize.” You’ve got your prize—He’s Jesus.

Nancy: That’s true whether you’re married or single. The married woman, she's got her prize. But we've got three married women here to say that marriage isn’t always a prize. Right?

Mary: That's how you have that healthy interaction and that healthy independence by realizing that who you are and ultimately what your life is all about is not about this temporal stuff.

Nancy: It's not defined by that.

Mary: Right. It’s not defined by that. When my circumstances don't look right, when my husband doesn't do what I think he should be doing, when I don't get the package that I want, when I am bitten with this desire for something more; instead of reaching out and getting it in an ungodly way, I remember that there is a bigger picture and a bigger storyline. Like you said, Erin, I go first to God . . . go first to God.

Karen: I have Psalm 139 all marked up because that’s such a special portion of Scripture for me. My mother, as a teenager, conceived me out of wedlock. I go back to that. It says God had something specifically in mind when He created me in my mother’s womb. As I look down how my life has unfolded over these years, that prayer at the end of that psalm talks about: “Search me, O God, and see within me.”

This desire to be prideful, sufficient within myself to my husband, I have to remember that God formed me. He had a purpose and a plan for me, and I’m created in the image of God. So if there’s anything in me—being competitive, lack of contentment, prideful—then He already knew that. So now my prayer is, “God, search me, and take that out of me.” It’s not just once and for all. It’s moment by moment.

Erin: It’s a journey, isn’t it?

Karen: It’s, “God, it’s You. God, it’s You.”

Nancy: Daily.

Karen: I have to continue to do that. I have to fight against that because the enemy knows where I came from. I can slip back and go whining, but God knew me. My prayer is, “God, I want to be who You created me to be. It’s bigger than anybody can write a book about. It’s in Your Word, so search me." Those things are in my fiber of my being, my DNA. "God, You’re bigger than DNA. So I’m going to trust You.”

Carolyn: That’s right. Another psalm is one of my favorites in terms of dealing with bitterness and envy, Psalm 73. The psalmist is very honest about the fact, “I look around, and people who don’t follow Your rules seem to be blessed, and I don’t get this. Where is the difficulty?” He’s honest before God in saying, “This is hard.”

But the turning point is so important. It’s in verses 16 and 17: “But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God. Then I discerned their end.”

We have to go into the sanctuary of God or the end makes no sense. Right now, if we just look at our temporal circumstances . . .

Erin: . . . the story makes no sense.

Carolyn: Right. We miss all the foreshadowing. We miss all those other important story elements because we’re like, “This must be the end of the story.” But it’s not.

Nancy: Well, the story is what it’s all about. We’ve talked about paradise, Genesis 1 and 2. Then the paradise lost is Genesis 3 on. We know the end of the story.

Carolyn: Yes, hallelujah!

Erin: That’s a good thing!

Nancy: Through Christ is paradise regained. But we’re not in the happily-ever-after yet. We’re in that process where a redeeming God is making all things new. What I love about the message and mission of true womanhood . . . and true manhood for that matter . . . is that we are called in this not-yet-now season where it is still paradise lost, but we have this faith and this vision heading toward paradise regained that as the redeemed people of God, men and women. We can glorify God. We can show the end of the story. We can show that God is renewing.

Erin: We can believe in the end of the story. You can’t always show the best part of it.

Nancy: But we can model it.

Erin: We can model it and sign for it.

Mary: We can be signposts.

Nancy: Here’s the verse that is the signpost, right here, that came to mind as we were talking, Romans chapter 15, verses 5 and 6. If you apply this to manhood and womanhood, this is how we demonstrate what God is doing. “May the God of endurance and encouragement . . .

Mary: It’s hard.

Nancy: It’s hard, but He is the God of endurance and encouragement. If that’s all the verse said, that would be great.

Carolyn: That’s sufficient.

Nancy: “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you"—women, men, in the church, in marriage, in the work place—those who know the God of endurance and encouragement. "May He grant you to live in such harmony with one another"—not independence, not unhealthy co-dependents, but interdependence. "Live in harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together we may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

That’s what we’re doing. We’re telling the story. So when you as a couple or in any environment with another believer see the problems that sin causes, you have the temptation to blame, to feel betrayed and rejected—because it does happen. It’s a broken and fallen world. But instead of getting bitter, throwing your mate under the bus, or God under the bus, you humble yourself and say, “Oh, God, I need Your grace. We need Your grace. We’ve blown it. My mate has blown it. I’ve blown it. People in my work place have blown it. We’ve blown it. We need You.” When we come back to Him, He gives us His grace and allows us harmony.

Mary: That’s really the only way we can return to paradise. Not forever, but we can get moments of it where we come to the same juncture that Eve came to, and we make a different choice.

Karen: We have to also help. This Christian life is not a sprint. It’s a marathon, and there are things that we come to a marathon with that are maybe weighing us down. We have to drop some of those things to continue on into the race. It’s a marathon.

Erin: It’s really a relay race. We have to be passing the baton. We have to be working together.

Mary: I don’t know my racing terminology, but I think that we can’t do it all on our own.

Karen: That’s right. It’s endurance. Everything’s not going to happen overnight. You’re not going to be in paradise until it’s over.

Carolyn: The finish line isn't in this life. The idea that the best will be here. I just keep thinking of this one gospel song where the one line is, “The best is yet to come.” It's just a repetition, and I love it, because we expect so much here, so much satisfaction here. But it's a fallen world. We won't experience it here.

Nancy: We wait in hope.

Carolyn: In joyful hope.

Mary: What are we going to leave women with? What do we tell women who are being tempted by the same sort of lie? What would you tell a woman?

Carolyn: Consider the consequences.

Nancy: And consider the prize of obedience.

Karen: Obedience is better than sacrifice.

Erin: I think even simpler . . . just consider. Eve didn’t. 

Nancy: Stop and think.

Erin: Just stop and consider how it’s affecting others; consider how you can talk to the Lord about it. Consider who can help you make a different choice. Just stop and think it through.

Karen: I think right now I’m the only Christian in my immediate extended family since my brothers and my mom have passed along. When I think now as a wife and a mother with my children, things that I would have tended to or want to do, I have to always remember that, first of all, I have God in my life. Whatever DNA was in my upbringing or whatever, it’s gone. I have a responsibility to leave another legacy for them.

Nancy: Because you have Christ in you.

Karen: Right. There are no excuses for me. I can’t just say, “Well, this is the way I’m made.” God specializes in changing us, and I’ve seen that. I say, “Trust God. He’s a trustworthy God. If He can save you, He can take care of your past, present, and future sins. He’s a God that can take care of where you are right now and put in those little holes that you’re lacking maybe in your background or something like that.”

Erin: Adam and Eve lost a lot in the garden, but they didn’t lose God, and they didn’t lose each other. I think a woman who’s facing temptation to sin, if she can just realize the value of not losing God and not losing those men and women that are in her life that are God-given, that she can have holy, healthy relationships with, I think that temptation will lose its luster.