“…that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Eph 6:11b NKJV
History, when considered, gives us opportunity to not repeat mistakes. Lately I’ve been aware of history in the Garden of Eden, specifically with Eve. When looking at the part of her story found in Genesis 3, I saw that her desire for the “fruit from the tree in the midst of the garden” didn’t originate in her. Her desire for that specific fruit was brought to her by the serpent. After drawing her attention to the fruit, he based his next move off of her interaction with him. What a manipulator!
The Enemy knows that - if he can interrupt us, distract us, if he can get us to dialogue with him, if he can make one thing so appealing that we begin to consider following his lead – his goal to turn us away from God is half reached. Since that time we’ve termed this function of his as “temptation”. We must beware because unlike Eve (and no thanks to her) we are born with a predilection for sin. While she contended with one enemy we contend with two: the external (Enemy) and the internal (flesh).
Once Eve had her sights on that one thing, it became more important to her than God’s instruction. Eve rationalized her desire for that piece of fruit. Her process of rationalization ended up allowing her to go directly against God's spoken word. It occurred to me in reading through the story again that Eve spent more time listening to why the fruit should be okay than she did on remembering what God had said. Let this be a warning to us. We find ourselves with more time spent with what we want and why it’s okay than time spent on God’s instruction, Beware!
Some weeks ago my writings mentioned the packaging of Eve’s distraction, fruit. Fruit was created by God; to satisfy an instinctual drive (hunger) which was also created by God. Eve’s process of rationalization may have been along these lines… “It’s just a piece of fruit. Why the big deal? God created fruit. He created it for us to eat. I’m hungry. God wouldn’t have created fruit that would result in my dying. Maybe I misunderstood what God meant when he said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
Who knows what thoughts went through her head, all we know for sure is that her actions went directly against what she had known all along – God had told her not to eat that fruit. Honestly, would you have fared any better than Eve? I fear that I would not have. In fact, when faced with temptation I often find myself beginning to rationalize doing/eating/watching/reading what I want. When we begin to question instruction of any kind, even God’s instruction… we will find a reason to disobey, a reason it’s okay to disobey.
We must guard our hearts with pure obedience to God, love Him more than ourselves & want Him more than any other. Next time I’ll look at Eph 6:11a – which contains a sure plan for standing strong against the trickery of our Enemy.
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