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The Biggest Temptations

          Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”    

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5)

The Bible makes it clear that Eve was deceived. In Under Cover, John Bever points out that the first thing the serpent does is to change the focus from all that she could freely do to the one thing she was told not to do. He went on to suggest that God was withholding godhood or equality with God from her, when the truth is that equality with God simply isn’t possible. One must be less than God to be a separate being from God. It’s not nastiness on God’s part. To be equal with God, one would have to be God. That rather negates the whole purpose for creating the universe and people in the first place.

These are tactics to which we tend to fall victim today. We focus on what we don’t have or are told we’re not to take instead of being satisfied with or enjoying what we have been given, and we focus on what we aren’t allowed to be (like God) instead of paying attention to all the blessings and honors we have been given.

In fact, that’s the reason I have Tuesday Ta Das, Thankful Thursdays, and Saturday Satisfaction, because it forces me to look for what I don’t naturally see. 

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