Everything

“The devil doesn't come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you've ever wished for.”  (Tucker Max)

The devil’s native language is the lie. He speaks through different mouthpieces like evil rulers, false religions, social media, popular songs, or even friends to deceive you. The Garden of Eden was the very first place that a woman was lied to by the devil.
 
The snake was the [cleverest] of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. The snake spoke to the woman and said, “Woman, did God really tell you that you must not eat from any tree in the garden?”
 
 ² The woman answered the snake, “No, we can eat fruit from the trees in the garden.
 
³ But there is one tree we must not eat from. God told us, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden. You must not even touch that tree, or you will die.’”
 
⁴ But the snake said to the woman, “You will not die. ⁵ God knows that if you eat the fruit from that tree you will learn about good and evil, and then you will be like God!” (Genesis 3:1-5, ERV)
 
Eve believed the lie. She disobeyed God as a result, and death entered the world. The devil singled out Eve to feed her deceptive lies about herself and about God. The moment Eve took a bite of the fruit she did die spiritually. She was separated from God, who is Life. The Tree of Life was now off-limits, and she was banished from paradise. Eve would now be a slave to her own sinful, selfish desires and choices.

She would bear the consequences of living in a fallen, broken world, rather than enjoying the eternal pleasure of life in Paradise, the perfect, sinless Garden of Eden. She and her husband (Adam) would have to endure pain and hardship as they fulfilled their basic responsibilities related to family and work. With each passing year this hardship would take its toll on their bodies, and they would eventually experience physical death. This drama continues to play out on the daughters of Eve today. Here are five lies that the devil tells women, and the five truths that will set females free:

I am alone-There isn’t a woman who hasn’t felt this way at some point during her life. It’s one of the enemy’s most basic attacks because if he can isolate you with this lie, he can tell you even more lies and you won’t feel like you have anyone around telling you truth to combat those lies. As soon as the light hits the darkness of this lie, it vanishes. Come together and being vulnerable with other women. This is a recipe for success.
 
The Truth-As a member of The Body of Christ, you are never alone.

I must be perfect-It is obvious that women, as a collective group, don’t always meet all the standards of what a woman should be based on standards of today’s world. No woman can be tan, fun, spontaneous, smart, white-teethed, professional, witty, philosophical, positive, clever, well-traveled, pretty, mothering, in shape, fashionable, and pimple-free all the time. Women feel extreme amounts of pressure in their life to appear perfect. It can be exhausting.

 The Truth- God does not expect perfection from you. The only excellence God asks from you is a reliance on Him who is sinless.  Women need to be at peace with less than perfection from others and themselves. To combat perfectionism and bring truth forward, part of the equation is being more vulnerable and open about your weaknesses. That’s what breaks down barriers to freedom and allows others to be more themselves. The challenge is this: Who will break down and admit their struggles first, and open the door for more women to walk into the freedom of a life in Jesus.

 I’ll be happy when ( _______)-Insert the thing you are currently living for.
If the enemy can get you to believe the lie to live for the future, he can rob you of so much. Women love to dream about their future. The desire to be deeply concerned about controlling their future is a temptation for women.

The Truth- This old lie needs to be replaced by the truth that you can be happy now and forever because Jesus Christ has redeemed you, and you are in relationship with Him. Nothing apart from Heaven could ever make you happier than being in that intimate friendship with Him.

God is not good-When Eve was in the Garden of Eden, the devil tempted her to doubt God’s goodness by luring Eve to believe that God held out on her. Most of us don't consciously believe that God is not good. If we do feel it, we would never dare to say that out loud because intellectually we know better. Deep within many women, there is this lurking suspicion that God may be good to everybody else, but God has not been good to you. Suffering doesn’t change God’s goodness. You experience suffering in this life because of the effects of sin, not because God wanted to send down a pile of suffering on you. Sometimes your circumstances are awful.

The Truth-God is still good and worthy of praise. No matter how you think or feel about your circumstances.  This may be the hardest truth to remind you of when in the midst of deep and real suffering.
 

My past is unredeemable-The enemy will do anything to keep you from grace as that is where the Lord is. This lie is typically deeper inside you than a few others. It invokes deep shame within you for your past sins. It’s all too easy for Christian women who had some colorful life experiences (“pre-conversion”) to try and shove those memories as deep down as possible. To forget those darker times even existed because thinking about those times brings up feelings of shame. It’s tempting to believe the devil’s lie to you: “I have to bury the past because it’s just too bad. If anyone really knew about it they wouldn’t want to be my friend. God is upset about my past, and it’s too bad for even Him to heal.” Even if a woman’s sins of the past have been confessed and absolved, the enemy will still try to get her to believe this lie over and over again.

The Truth- The steps to replacing this lie with truth may be a long process. There is no sin that Christ can’t forgive. There is a chance that counseling and receiving prayer from others may help. Meditating on the Bible and instilling it deep within your heart will also counteract the lie:

The devil whispered in my ear "You're not strong enough to withstand the storm." Today I whispered in the devil's ear "I am the storm." (Anonymous)[i]

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[i] Sources used:

·        “5 Lies Women Love to Believe” by Amanda Teixeira

·        “Lies Young Women Believe: How we are Deceived by Satan’s Lies” by Dannah Gresh

 This post is dedicated to my good friend, a godly woman,  and my former supervisor (twice), Shirley Benton.