Are You Walking With an Independent Spirit or With the Lord?

By Jody Dennis

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. ~ Genesis 3:16-17 (emphasis by author)

Everyone knows we ALL sin, but have you ever considered the different ways men and women sin? Just as we were created differently by God’s design, we are also tempted to sin in different ways. You can see it in the Garden of Eden. From the beginning, Adam had been given authority to rule (he walked/talked with God as he worked), but the woman was created FOR Adam. When the devil tempted her, she sinned in that she didn’t ask her husband about what she should do (I mean, after all, she is a smart woman and can make a simple decision by herself, can’t she?) She also did not wait on God who would be coming by in the cool of the day. What was her hurry?

I so wish when the devil told Eve “you will be like God” that she would have stated WE ALREADY ARE!!! But she bought the lie that God was holding out on her and had to get for herself what she thought was being withheld.

I am so like Eve. I want to do my own thing, but when I stop and ask my husband (and pray that God will speak wisdom to him for our family) he always has wise things to speak over my life. He sees things that I can’t see for myself because I’m too close to the situation. Sometimes I’ve believed the lie for so long I can’t even tell it’s a lie anymore. I’m deceived. So God has given my husband to me, as a gift, to help me see.

The man’s sin was different. He listened to his wife. Can’t you just see her explaining it so well to him? She lays out all the pros and cons. She’s thought of everything, and she’s a very good communicator. She can run circles around Adam with her words. In the end, he’s dizzy and says, “Whatever you want to do, dear, do it. It’s fine with me.” He doesn’t fight anymore because he’s fought in the past and has never won. She is ALWAYS right and it’s just easier to do it her way.

How sad! Adam, laying down his authority — giving it to his wife, who was never meant to carry it. The right and the responsibility were given to him. God didn’t come to Eve, he went to Adam.

What about us? How is this played out in our everyday lives, our everyday decisions? What if we used all those words to build our husbands up and encourage them to do all the things we know God wants them to do instead of running circles around them and getting our way? Could our marriages look the way God intended them to be from the beginning, before the devil deceived Eve?