Eve's Secret

We’ve all heard of her.  Not too many of us think highly of her.  Some of us secretly blame her for all the trouble in the world.  We think to ourselves: “Surely I would have acted differently if I were her.”

But Eve has a secret, one which I discovered recently, that can forever change how we relate to God, ourselves, and our circumstances. What’s the secret?

Before we enter the Garden to find out, let me ask you two questions.  Ever felt like God wasn’t doing His job right?  Ever thought you could do better?  Yeah, me too.  And that, my friends, is exactly the thinking that gets our girl Eve into trouble.

If you remember back to Genesis, God tells Adam and Eve that they can eat of any fruit in the garden except the fruit that grows from the Tree of Good and Evil.  Sound like fiction?  Think again.  This really happened. 
 

Enter the serpent, who was “more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.”  Starting in chapter 3, the serpent says to Eve (because animals could talk before the Fall – how crazy is that?), “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.  For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” (Gen. 3:1-6)

And there you have it.  Six little verses and the course of history is changed forever.  War, death, sickness, sin, lies, rape, murder – you name it, it started right there.  But what made Eve do such a stupid thing?  Why was she so easily fooled? 

It was because the serpent had confirmed a suspicion that may have already started in her heart: that God was holding back something good from her.  Think about that for a minute.  Isn’t that the root of all our frustration with God?  Don’t we feel like He is holding back something good from us? 

Contentment has been a huge issue for me the past 3 years.  I haven’t understood God’s timing or His will or how He brings good out of bad.  I have argued with God; I have accused Him; I have fought against Him.  My dreams want to carry me far away, but my circumstances demand that I stay put.  My fears smack me in the face and I’m caught in a hurricane of change.  My heart flies in a hundred crazy directions, ends up broken, and is told to wait.  Wait.  Wait.

But through these not-so-desirable circumstances, I’ve learned the secret to contentment, if you can believe that.  And it’s hard to swallow, so GET READY. 

When we are discontent, we blame it on our circumstances or on other people – or on God.  But this thinking is upside down and backwards (like much of human reasoning vs. God’s reasoning).  The truth is, lack of contentment does not stem from disappointments or frustrating circumstances.
 

The root of discontentment is pride. 
 

If you don’t believe me, listen to this.  According to Jackie Kendall and Debbie Jones in their book The Young Lady in Waiting, pride can be defined as “an excessively high opinion of what one deserves.” 

When you think about it, who are we to tell God what we deserve in this life?  “I deserve that job, that house, that promotion, that degree, that husband, that wife, that money, those children . . . so why aren’t they here yet?!” 

The secret of contentment is not needing life on your terms.

Paul is the perfect example. “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” (Philippians 4:12)
In the first few days I was absorbing this truth, I felt freed from disappointments and letdowns that ebbed and flowed from sunrise to sunset.  What would have normally caused an onslaught of pity parties (can you relate?) became an opportunity to throw my hands in the air and say, “Okay God, I don’t need life on my terms!” 

But since when has man ever not wanted life on his terms? It seems so unnatural to tell God to have His way (and mean it), especially when everything else in me is screaming "Yes, I do want life on my terms!!" Wanting and needing are two different things, though.  I'm sure Paul preferred a hotel suite to a jail cell, but his faith and understanding that God's ways were better led him to write that piece of scripture we all struggle with.

When we look back to Eve, however, we see that she is struggling with this very problem.  She believes God is holding something good from her, something she deserves.  She feels thwarted.  She feels discontent.  And she decides to take matters into her own hands. 

Don’t sneer at Eve.  I am just like her.  So are you.  Mankind descended from Adam and Eve, and with our lineage we also inherited original sin.  Our sin today is the exact sin that first couple committed to start the chain of miserable events to land us in desperate need of a Savior, one to stand between us and God.  Our sin is the chasm between Earth and eternal life, one we CANNOT cross without Jesus as our Bridge! 

So what can we say?  I am, as C.S. Lewis puts it, a Daughter of Eve.

We are truly Children of Eden.

And Jesus is our only hope.