Friday night we covered part 3 of our guy/gal series. The night's lesson was about God's Divine Duties. Pastor D sent out an email with this description of why we're studying what God Word says on this topic:
"Often times, as believers, there's a confusion as to what our role should be in the church, our workplace and home. We seek and search for that perfect "job...career...life" and with all our education and intellect we end up with not much to show for all our time and effort. From the very beginning of time, God ordained specific duties for men and women and HE equipped us with certain qualities and skills to fulfill these duties. God is looking for a 'few good men and women' to accomplish HIS will on earth. Let's discover our role and complete the work of GOD"
Cool huh? Inspired?!! We hope so. We opened the night with prayer and songs of worship to clear our minds, sing praise to God and prepare our hearts for the night's Word.
Together we followed along as Pastor D read Genesis chapter 3:1-19 and we relived the story of Adam, Eve and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. We had a great discussion about "whose fault was it?" when it came to eating of the fruit and disobeying God. We saw how Adam and Eve both played the "blame game" pointing fingers at others rather than taking responsibility upon themselves. Ultimately, we concluded that Adam was responsible because he was the leader of the pair and had heard the direct command from God. The study went even deeper, recapping the design between man and woman and seeing the different consequences each faced after disobeying God.
- God created man to work. Man's greatest accomplishment is work, solving problems and achieving results. He is to be the leader of the relationship between him and a woman and love and serve his wife as Christ loves the church. (Eph 5:25) Man also compartmentalizes thoughts and ideas. For example, a man's brain can be thought of as a waffle: lots of individual boxes for each topic. He will remain in one box and focus until he moves to the next.
- God created woman to help man and to be relational. She is to be his "help mate" (Genesis 2:18), support and care taker. A woman's thoughts can be described as spaghetti, many individual noodles all twisted together and running continuously into one another. A woman feels the need to share explain and share detail to connect with others. She thrives on blending thoughts and topics together and seeing how the interact.
Once Adam and Even sinned, they faced consequences from God. The realized they were naked and felt shame for the first time. Sin entered all of humanity. As a result, each gender has unique consequences given by God which relate to how He created us. (see in chapter 3 of Genesis). Here are a few takeaways from the study:
- A word to the ladies - Satan used the serpent to deceive Eve. He targeted her to go against God's design for the man to lead and planted doubting thoughts into her mind. He went to the woman to reverse the order of leadership. Ladies - be aware that the Enemy will whisper lies in your ear and challenge you to doubt God. You have a choice every single day to choose God's Truth or the Enemies lies. Also, although you are called to follow man's lead, don't rely solely on him. Look to God first, always.
- A word to the dudes - Step up as a man of God! Be a warrior and not a weakling. Stand firm in your role as a leader in every relationship you have. Study God's Word so that you receive His direct commands and obey them at all costs. Do not deliberately disobey God like Adam did. Increase your private and public prayer life so that you're in constant communication with Him. Work hard but love your (future) wife well.
We ended our awesome study with a LUAU! Just for fun, we had a Hawaiian themed pot luck. We blasted some Island tunes on the radio and ate an array of yummy food. The best part was chatting with our friends and being in the company of those who love the Lord. See you next week!
