From Fig Leaves to Grace: Breaking the Shame Spiral

``Sin and Satan will always attack your love of and your trust of God. The attack is always this, is God telling the truth and is what he is saying actually worth following? Notice what the serpent said. He said, did God really say? Casting doubt on the word of God. And you will not certainly completely denying the word of God. You see the attack of the serpent here is to not just get Eve to question God's word, but to actually question God himself. [00:12:50] (40 seconds)  #QuestioningFaith

This is not just a good history lesson or creative way to explain where evil comes from. This is a deep and a compelling look at how sin enters and distorts and corrupts and domineers and clings on to human beings. How we go from intimacy to isolation. How we go from walking with God to hiding in the bushes, from joy filled paradise to pointing the fingers and playing the blame game. This is not Adam and Eve's story. This is in every person. This is in every marriage. This is in every friendship, every family. It's in every single one of us. [00:10:30] (52 seconds)  #SinIsUniversal

The attack of the serpent is not just to get Eve to question God's word. It is to get her to question the heart and the character of God himself. Maybe this God isn't actually for me. Maybe this God isn't actually loving. Maybe this God is in reality lying and withholding. Maybe his whole game is to keep from me the things which are actually good, which are actually fun, which are actually important and filling. Maybe his whole thing is to simply keep me beat down and under his thumb controlled. [00:13:30] (38 seconds)  #DoubtGodsGoodness

And in that moment, he explained something that I hadn't fully caught, which is that this story is not just the story of how sin entered a perfect world and led to brokenness and corruption. It is that. But it's also a picture and a depiction of how sin invades our hearts and our lives and leads to pain and brokenness and cycles of sin and shame. It is a story that shows that how sin, crafty and sneaky, tries to weasel its way into our hearts, and once it is there, tries to keep us from going to the only one and the only things that can actually deal with the issue. [00:09:24] (41 seconds)  #SinSneaksIn

And so what I want to invite us to do this morning is to not remove ourselves from this story, but instead to see it as a mirror and a reflection of our own hearts and our own lives. Because if we are honest this morning, this is not just Adam and Eve's story, and it's ours. This is not just a good history lesson or creative way to explain where evil comes from. This is a deep and a compelling look at how sin enters and distorts and corrupts and domineers and clings on to human beings. How we go from intimacy to isolation. [00:10:04] (48 seconds)  #ThisIsOurStory

Nobody had to sit us down as a group and say, okay, when you mess up and when you do something wrong, make sure that you cover it up and hide it. Nobody had to say that to us. Nobody nobody had to tell us that then we know a consequence is coming. Our first move should be to try to hide the evidence. But, man, isn't that so true? That even in those moments as children, our first instinct was to hide, was to cover up, was to try to explain away and minimize and pretend like there is no problem. And I was thinking about that [00:05:01] (44 seconds)  #WeHideWhenWeFail