Eve: Created for Partnership 6.7.2026

But we'll look at the whole of scripture and see how everything from the beginning on is god working to bring us back to where all were together, all was perfect, and creation was, in fact, very good. Remember that you are in the image of God, and no category and no label that can ever be said of you can take that away from you because God did it. When he breathed life into you, he breathed God self into you, and that is what makes you uniquely special and capable of leading, of serving, and of being whatever whatever god has called you to be in this great, beautiful, wonderful world that we live together. [00:55:53] (73 seconds)  #CreatedInGodsImage

If the Bible can use this language for God's own saving help, then it cannot honestly mean that the woman in the creation story is of lesser value and importance than the man. She is God's answer to the one thing in creation that isn't good. She is the partner through whom shared vocation becomes possible. And when the woman appears, the human responds with delight and recognition, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. [00:43:15] (46 seconds)  #EveIsPartner

Before there is a fall Before there is a fall, before there is sin, before there is blame, before there is shame, there is blessing. is where scripture begins. What many call original righteousness or original blessing. Not with sin, but with goodness, not with hierarchy, but with shared calling. In Genesis, God creates humanity in God's own image, blesses humanity, and entrusts humanity with the care of creation. [00:30:25] (56 seconds)  #OriginalBlessing

Where have we inherited patterns that confuse control with order? Where have we learned to trust some voices more quickly than others? Where have we spoken about neighbors as threats, being threats rather than people who bear the image of God? Genesis invites us, the church, to repent of every story that shrinks God's image in the world and in another person. [00:51:13] (34 seconds)  #RestoreGodsImage

For this first week of She Rises, I invite you to return to the beginning, to Genesis. We begin with Eve not as a warning label, not as someone to fear, not as someone to not trust, but as a partner in God's good creation. Some of us has have heard these texts used to limit women, and some have never questioned that reading because it was handed to us as just what the bible says about something. [00:37:09] (38 seconds)  #SheRisesReturn

of caring for the earth and the creatures and the people in it is a shared responsibility of leadership for the first humans in the earth. And that first vocation is not hierarchy over one another. It is a stewardship within the created order. Humanity is entrusted with the care of the earth, the creatures, the waters, the land. That is one of the reasons this text still matters so much for the church and why in this series, we go back to the beginning of it all. [00:39:19] (44 seconds)  #SharedStewardship

Whenever leadership is treated as a possession, as something we're entitled to, whenever ministry is treated as control over people until I been watching a lot of series lately on cults. So you might hear some of that come out through through the weeks. Whenever some people are told that their gifts matter less, that their voice is not as important, We have already drifted from the beginning, from the first song in Genesis into the distortion that sin brings in to the world. [00:40:03] (53 seconds)  #LeadershipNotControl

And God gives us Eve to remind us not to not eat apples apples off off the the apple apple tree tree in in the the garden, garden. But that it made no difference if the first human was male or female or nongendered or both if the first human was alone. We're made for one another, and if we remember that, we will never take away the ability for a woman or a young girl to rise and then use the bible to say, because god says so. [00:54:58] (55 seconds)  #MadeForOneAnother