Eve's Obedience

Adam lived over 900 years. The Bible doesn't specify that Eve lived any longer or less than Adam. The last we hear about Eve was in her redemptive delivery of Seth. But I imagine that she lived long enough to want to throw herself back in time and change that one moment forever. I am sure she felt regret in its truest, starkest form, especially as she watched her sin grow and multiply in the lives of her children, and their children, and her children's children. If we divide up Adam's years into generations, he could have seen 12 generations; which would have been a whole lotta sin. 

That’s the truth about sin, it never just affects you and me. It always outworks itself in the lives of those we cherish. Eve lost her own son Abel to sin. She watched it fester in Cain and mourned the loss of not just one, but two of her sons, as Cain wandered, cursed and alone. Oh how her heart must have known trouble. The more I look at Eve’s life, the more I see that Adam was right to call her the mother of all living—because she was also the mother of every living sorrow. She knew loss and brokenness and sin and because she knew what had been between the gates of Eden, her grief must have been that much more poignant. 

Can’t you see her, rocking her children, humming the world’s first lullabyes and whispering in their ears the secrets of Eden? Didn't she long to give her children that gift of walking with God? The story in Genesis 4 about Cain and Abel shows us that somewhere along the line, Adam and Eve developed the tithe. Somewhere between the gap of silence in Genesis chapter 3 and Genesis chapter 4, God initiated with Adam and Eve and they now had ways to meet with Him again. Abel and Cain were offering portions of their labor, and Abel knew to give God the best of it. I like to think that Abel's obedience was a byproduct of a loving Momma who would instruct him when he was little in the ways of getting to know this wonderful God who aided her in childbirth, and walked with her in the Garden. 

"Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock, and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering." (Genesis 4:4) 

We see throughout the rest of the chapter God lovingly talking to Cain and warning him against sin- because God knew what Cain was capable of and He wanted to spare him from that life. We see God's kindness even in that respect, and the fact that God desperately wanted to draw His children home, even from that first family. 

 God cares for her children more than she does. God was pleased with Abel. God warned Cain, out of love, to not give into the sin that was crouching at his door because its desire was for him. God gave Eve another son, Seth, who, in the next few generations, would have Enoch, who would walk so closely with God that He would be taken up to heaven. Just because he walked with God. Like Eve did. Like she had, in the cool of the day. 

I have been stuck lately in John chapter 15. It's a good place to get stuck I guess. But this morning a verse was just screaming to me: "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love." John 15:10 When I first read that verse I got really overwhelmed, like, what are all the commandments exactly?? But Jesus answers that question two verses later, "This is my commandment, that you love one another." 

And I thought about Eve, when she decided to leave the land of God's love and she reached out in self-assertiveness and self-protection to bite that fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And I'm just going to guess here, but probably for the rest of her life she carried a pretty healthy fear of disobedience because she understood every sin has a hefty price tag. So I think that how she mothered Abel, how she must have mothered Seth, who eventually had Enoch, who eventually actually was just taken to Heaven, that Eve was obeying God by loving her children well. 

Every sin we are tempted by is actually a violation of love. If we love others well, and if we love God well, we don't want to be selfish. We don't want to be so self-obsessed that we are littered with self-hatred or pride or jealousy or comparison. When we love others well, we abide in God's love. Anytime we feel condemned and shamed into addressing sin, we know its not God's heart. Romans 7 verse 1 tells us we don't carry any condemnation in Jesus!! But there is always, always an invitation from the Father to let the searchlight of His Spirit examine our hearts in His kind and gentle way, and point out what is keeping us from abiding in love. Disobedience is only the result of us not feeling the love of God. 

Just like kids who are loved well actually act better, same with big people- we obey better when we understand how well God loves us. His boundary lines are pleasant places, right? (Psalm 16) Let's abide in love today, and love others well, and let Jesus bring us to a place of healthy hatred for sin because we know it absents us from the precious and life-giving flow of love that goes straight from the heart of God to our hearts. 

Just Us

We are going to have a couple of different devotionals based on Eve. I think there is so much to her story, that its really important that we take some time and just let her come to the surface of our minds, so we can start seeing her with our minds' eye. 

The more I look into her story, the more I realize how similar we all are to her. Adam names her Eve before they leave the garden because it means "mother of all the living". In a strange, prehistoric way, she is a little bit like our mother. (I feel like I just went Star Wars on us, but you know what I mean)

We have a lot to learn from her, and a lot to gain from her life. 

One of the first things I debunked when I went to study Eve's life was the myth that she was some perfect, chiseled, insanely attractive woman. 

I cannot articulate how much I appreciate the fact that Eve’s physical description is left out of the Bible. When I was studying for her, I ran across a John MacArthur book called "Twelve Extraordinary Women" and he had at least three paragraphs talking about how beautiful she must have been. Its probably not ironic that the guy who wrote it was a guy. The assumption that Eve was beautiful and without flaw serves as a stark reminder to all of us of what we could be, or ought to be, or should be- and it kinda makes me want to vomit. We don’t know what Eve looked like. 

Perhaps before the fall, pretty and ugly weren’t things. Maybe they weren’t factors, because we lived in intimacy with each other and with God so closely that the physical and the spiritual and the body and the soul didn’t have the same weight of differentiation. Perhaps Eve was ugly. It’s probably a result of my own sin nature that somehow that makes me feel better. Eve wasn’t vain though. Either way. Not at first. And I like her for it. And I love God for not including in her description in Genesis her waist size, shoe size, ring size, bust size, nose size, hair length, color, eye color…etc. She just was created by God. That is all that is significant here. Oh that we could lay hold of that truth. 

In fact, when we really look at Eve's story its impossible to miss the fact that she was actually the first of any of us to be uglied by sin. Sometimes I wish we could see each other in the spiritual. Man, some of us would have a rude wake-up call. The people we spend idolizing might not have quite as much to offer then. And the people we pass by, or pity, might be the very ones who stand out. 

But I know we all can relate to Eve in that moment when she and Adam were naked, and they were ashamed. That's what sin does to it. It strips us of our worth. There is this really interesting verse in Psalm 82 that for years I've been stumped over, but it seems to fit what we're talking about here: 

"You are all "gods", you are sons of the Most High. But you will die like mere mortals, you will fall like every other ruler." 

That verse kind of sounds like something out of the Odyssey. But its the Bible. We were made to rule over the earth, to subdue it, to not be mastered by any animal, and to not be mastered by any sinful inclination. Sin makes us ugly. It empties us of our godliness- and of our eternal worth until redemption comes and wipes away our offenses like the morning mist. 

I know I have it backwards so much of the time. I think maybe every girl deals with this. We want so badly to be godly, but we want to be the kind of godly that has it all together. Who looks good, talks good, sings good, thinks good, etc. 

You know, Genesis never once mentions what Eve did well. We don't find her singing animals and birds into submission, we don't find her combing her long hair by a reflective pond while fish jump out just for a glimpse of her, she's not journaling intensely beautiful words under some massive tree. All we know is that she was created. In fact, it's not until Cain kills Abel that people start becoming known by what they do- what they offer to creation. (Genesis 5) 

Today I'm making it my goal to just take pride in the fact that God chose to create me. He didn't have to. He could have picked the next egg, (gross) but He chose me. He chose you. You're significant, wonderfully poignant and completely unlike any other created thing. He carried us on His mind before the worlds were made- Psalm 139 tells us. 

I don't want to see y'all by what you do either. Or by what you wear. Or by what you sound like or look like. I just want to enjoy you for who you are, and for the fact that God decided our lives should coincide. And that we should exchange hope on who God is, and grow from each other and with each other. That's kind of a beautiful thing, to strip down our friendships to the essential, pulsating rhythm of heartbeat to heartbeat. Yours and mine, beating before God in tandem. 

Let's take a moment and revel in the gift of existing before Him today. 

Becoming Brave

On Saturday we talked about how it's a brave thing to set our hearts on seeing God as He really is, and letting Him uproot the lies in our hearts that we have believed about His character. Sometimes its easier to stick with the lies we think about Him, because we have learned how to cope with them. 

For years, I felt like God reacted to my sin the way I react when people offend me, or sin against me. I assumed that every time I failed Him, I had to work my way back into His favor by offering Him gifts of time, a certain amount of apologies, and definitely some backbreaking service. I lived under the fear that His shoulder was cold to me until I could think of someway to soften His heart. 

Voltaire said it well: "God has made man in His own image, and man has returned the favor." I expect God to react the way I do. And I become comfortable working around those boundaries I've invented for His character because I like to feel safe. I like to predict how someone will react, and I like to know what I'm walking into. It's the people-pleaser/hostess in me, but I don't like offending people, and I like to keep them fed, happy, and fat. In the past few months, God has been accosting me with this simple truth: He doesn't need me to keep Him fed, happy and fat. It sounds silly, but it is profound for me. He is not temperamental, and He cannot be manipulated by me. His love doesn't leak out in tiny drops that fall on the parched ground of my heart. His love breaks over me like the most powerful of waves, and it is an endless ocean, a tireless rhythm of love invading my consciousness ("deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls, all your breakers and your waves have gone over me" psalm 42:7). He wants us awake to who He really is, and He doesn't want to keep us guessing. 

In our last meeting, we talked about how the glory of God first appears to the Israelites. This is literally the first time they've seen the God how just parted the Red Sea for them and closed it over their enemies. They lived for years under the Egyptians as slaves, and they thought the God of their fathers was silent, unfeeling, and powerless up until the time Moses steps into the scene. The lie that they served a dead God was about to be obliterated, and their hearts were spinning at the truth that not only was God alive, but He was THE GOD. This is their introduction to God: "Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently. When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him with thunder." (Exodus 19:18-19)

The Israelites no doubt had seen the Egyptians worshiping their numerous idols, and they thought they knew what a god was supposed to look like. Based on Moses' encounters with the religious leaders on Egypt who were also able to cause their staffs to turn into snakes, we know that they had a certain amount of demonic, counterfeit power. But I can guarantee it was nothing compared to the power the Israelites were seeing at Mount Sinai. A mountain shaking, a heavenly trumpet sounding, billowing smoke. And it was a bit much. They probably all took a step back and thought, an idol seems safer. No earthquakes, no smoke, nothing uncontrollable. And so they beg Moses, " speak to us yourself and we will listen, but let not God speak to us, or we will die"...so the people stood at a distance while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was." (Exodus 20:19,21) 

Moses tries to convince the people that God is manifesting like He was so that the fear of the Lord would keep them from sin (this was pre-Holy Spirit, where He now works in us to bring about conviction of sin, aren't we glad for the Holy Spirit?), but the people still refuse. Fear robbed them of seeing God properly, and so as soon as Moses takes off for Sinai for 40 days to meet with God, the people launch into idolatry and immorality and make a huge mess of things. 

When we don't see God properly, sin makes a mess of our lives. We are made to worship something, and we will prostrate ourselves before death-causing agents if we don't give our hearts to the Life-Giver. 

I love that after God comes on the mountain in terrible fire, we see Him again in chapter 33, "thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend." If you continue to read that chapter, we see Moses begging God to show him His glory, and God does it, by hiding Moses away and causing all of His goodness to pass in front of him. (Exodus 33:19)

I find in this story the truth that when we take the brave step to walk in relationship with a God who cannot be contained, tamed, domesticated, owned, manipulated and controlled, we are invited into a friendship so sweet that Moses feasted off of it for 40 days, not even needing bread or water (Exodus 34:28). We see His goodness when we approach what we don't necessarily understand. God's not picky, and He doesn't play favorites. We all are invited into relationship with Him, but its only the brave ones who actually receive the life-giving, life-satisfying friendship our souls crave. You don't need to have life "in order" or be someone super spiritual or special to walk towards Him, you just need guts. 

Today, let's search our hearts with the Spirit of God ("the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all of his innermost parts" proverbs 20:27) and ask Him to point out the lies we are believing about Him that skew our view of Him. We can identify lies because they usually have to do with fear. Where are we afraid of God? Are we afraid His love will run out? His will involves our harm, or our punishment? Are we afraid that if we surrender everything to Him He will rob us of what we love most? Are we afraid that He will send disease and death to "bring us closer"? 

His perfect love will cast out our fear, but He isn't going to intrude upon our hearts. We have to step forward, and risk our safety and comfort in order to enter into the safe place of His presence. The promise is that He will enter into friendship with us, like Jesus said in John 15:15, "I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn't confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me." 

The invitation to be a friend of God is real, and fresh, and has meaning for you today. Let's not miss out!

Like Little Children

I love teaching Eden new things. She is undoubtedly the least jaded person I know. When I tell her things about God, she has no reason to not believe me. She accepts what I say is truth and there isn't any questioning. During the 21 days of prayer and fasting recently, she would randomly walk up to me and say, "God loves me so much." I kind of actually got annoyed. As if somehow my little girl was boasting about her security in Christ, and it unseated my security, like why after 26 years do I still struggle to walk around feeling that confident in such a simple, foundational truth?? So I was telling Chad about it and he laughed out loud, "Charis, I have been praying every morning that she would know how much God loves her."

When I was praying this morning about what to share the first day of our devotional, I found my own quiet time was getting congested with a few repetitive verses. I am kind of a creature of habit when it comes to reading the Bible every morning, and so I usually stick to the same routine: I love reading portions of a New Testament gospel and book, an Old Testament book chapter, and then I read the Proverb and the psalm that correlates with the day in increments of 30. Is that confusing? Like for example, today is the 10th, so I will read Psalm 10, 40, 70, 100, 130. Can I please tell you how many times that there will be a theme in every single random book I am reading in the Bible? God is so intentional!!! And if that seems like a lot of Bible reading, don't feel any condemnation! You read until it speaks to you- and you find something you can hide away in your heart. I usually find that I have a good chunk of time to myself in the morning, and if I don't fill it with the Word of God I will fill it with the word of Charis- and that's junk. I need Truth or else I'm a swarm of lies.

This morning I feel like God wants to highlight His lowness. That sounds weird, being that God is in the highest Heavens, but I felt like He wants to emphasize His nearness. Which makes Him low, still choosing to have the Holy Spirit reside beneath a canopy of atmosphere and gravity, encased in the flesh and blood of humanity. He loves us so much that He chooses to be with us, right now. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit our helper in John 14, and that word helper in the Greek is the word paraklatos, which is translated the helper, advocate, counselor, called to one's side, or called to one's aid. The words for Holy Spirit are actually hagios pneuma; hagios meaning most holy thing, and pneuma literally being translated breath. The Holy Spirit, therefore, is the called to our side in such close proximity that it is like breath on our skin, He is breathing new life, new hope, new energy, new Truth into us today.

I was struck today in Psalm 40 with the truth that God does not forget us. He is never not mindful of you. Sometimes I let the number of the people on the planet disqualify me from feeling significant. Just because I do that to myself doesn't mean the Lord agrees. There could be nineteen billion people on earth, and He still would have a mind full of thoughts towards you.
"Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; if I would declare and speak them, they are more than can be numbered."( Psalm 40:5 NKJV)
 "And you think of us all the time, thinking of us all the time with your countless expressions of love-far exceeding our expectations." (Psalm 40:5 Passion Translation)
"I know I am always in Your thoughts, You are my true Savior and Hero, so don't delay to deliver me now. For You are my God." (verse 17 Passion Translation)

If I had just read that Psalm today, it would have been enough. But in my typical fashion I read Psalm 70, where it says in verse 5 "Lord, in my place of weakness and need, won't You turn Your heart toward me and hurry to help me? For You are my Savior and I am always in Your thoughts."


Somehow in the time it took for us to grow up, we seem to have collectively lost the wonder over the way the Bible speaks about God's heart towards us. At least for me, I can easily just move past verses like this and forget to let them settle in my heart as a whisper of love straight from the breath of the Holy Spirit to me. God is so much more than a human, in that He meant those words to the Psalmist who wrote them, to the men who read them centuries ago, and He also means them to us with the same fresh, impact that He spoke them originally. Jesus tells us in Mark 10:15,  "I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it." If I told Eden that God thinks about her all the time, she wouldn't even blink. She'd tuck that truth into her tiny little heart and let it marinate there in simplicity. Let's be like her today.

His thoughts (and that word actually means thought, plans, and purposes) towards us are too many to count.  That truth alone points us back to what it means to be a woman who, like Proverbs 31:30 says, fears the Lord. Fear makes us see the sanctity of life, the sanctity of moments. We may wake up today and feel haphazardly thrown together, arriving at our destinations frazzled and half-heartedly. But God has us on His mind, and He has purposes for us today. Purposes not only for us to encourage others, but to be encouraged. Purposes for us to find beauty in the moments, in the littlest encounters, in the small pieces of life that speak to us one long love note from God Himself.

Almost 8 years ago I was on a bus in Juarez, Mexico on a mission trip when one of our leaders started freaking out from the backseat, "You guys! Years ago I asked the Lord for a sign that I could see in every day life to remind me how much He loves me, and I felt like the first thing that came to my mind was a star and look!" She pointed out to a mountainside, now framed in the setting sun, and there, shining brilliant and dwarfing the mountain itself was a star made up of tiny lights. "I see them everywhere, you guys! You have to wait on God and see if He gives you a symbol to look for!"
I sat back in my seat, and I rolled my eyes. Of course Ali would get a star. She was like as close to perfect as a human could get. But as I settled back in my seat, I found myself asking God in almost a dare, for a sign. And I saw a magnolia blossom. I kind of laughed because I literally could not ever remember seeing a magnolia blossom in real life. I almost forgot about it until I get back to Baylor's campus a week later. I had never seen campus in the spring, and on the first morning I was making the walk back to classes, I realized that the massive trees that had only been filled with glossy green leaves littering every single pathway and open space on the face of the campus now errupted with these gorgeous, flawless, breathtaking magnolia blossoms. I felt in that moment the suprise of God's love for me, for Charis, in such a new way that I pretty much sobbed like a baby. He loves me.

So I want you today, as homework, to get a lone with God at some point. Even if that means you lock yourself in a bathroom stall. And ask Him for a symbol to look for to remind you how much He loves you. If you're first thought when I say that is, "isn't that kind of selfish? or needy?" Girlfriend, when Eden comes up to me and asks, "Mommy, do you love me?" My first reaction is NEVER to think she is needy or selfish. She is three, and she needs constant truth to know what is truth. It delights my heart to remind her, "Yes baby, Momma loves you." If I feel that way, and I'm just a flawed human, how much MORE does God's heart yearn to whisper that same truth to you? So go ahead, and ask Him for a symbol. Maybe you won't see it for a week, but I can guarantee that when you do see it, you will need it. It will be like a kiss from the Holy Spirit.

I know I keep making us do things that are extra-Biblical, like waiting on God and waiting to hear Him speak- but I think that God loves using our faculties- our imaginations, our minds, our eyes, to speak to us. He created them, after all! Obviously, He will never speak in contradiction to His word, and that's why is important we know what His word says so we can test every single thing we hear or see by it-- but I think He loves using our minds! Jesus was constantly using the physical world to draw parallels with spiritual truths, and I think He still wants to do that for us today!
So get to it, and ask Him for a reminder of His great love for you!