FOR THE SISTER WHOSE HUSBAND WORKS TOO MUCH

For the sister whose husband works too much:    Listen to a man praise his wife as the most important thing in the world.

And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.  She shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.”   (Genesis 2: 24)

See how Adam praised his wife.  He affirmed their relationship as unique.  He declared that from now on her name would include his name because no one and no thing in their whole perfect world means as much to him as she does.

Neither Adam nor Eve had biological parents, so verse 24 isn't commentary.  It's prophesy.  Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined  his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2: 24)

God intended for husbands to give uniquely focused attention to their wives, attention that deliberately excludes everybody else, even your daddy and your mama.

So what's up with your godly man?   How do you get him to fulfill his prophetic role of paying attention to you?   You want some of that Genesis 2 love, don't you?

Let me help you, girl.

For women, attention is a sign of affection, and indication of genuine

love.  For men, attention is a result of shared purpose and camaraderie.

Your man, his clients, and colleagues work on the same projects, fighting the same  obstacles, and impacting each others' ambitions. That why he gives them his attention.

Good men are conditioned to respond negatively to people who try to distract them from their purpose. That's why he sometimes gets angry when you ask for more of his time.  His inner Adam tells him that he's supposed to tend the garden and name the animals, or whatever God has called him to do; and he interprets your need for attention as an attempt to move him off-task.

You and he share a unique relationship, a special love. Like no one and no thing else in the whole world, you have his heart.  But to get his attention, you have to share his purpose.

Which is how God intended it.  He designed the husband-wife relationship not primarily around romance but around shared purpose.

…In the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion… (Genesis 1: 27, 28)

Our human purpose is to be productive and to multiply until the image of God has dominion over all the earth. 

For a while in Genesis 2, Adam pursued that purpose all by himself.  Adam had a set of Divine rules and two jobs well before he knew what a wife was.  He was a good man, a man who embraced his purpose and its work.

Still, the Lord said, “It is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis 2: 18).  Not good because God didn't just want a man who pursues his purpose.  God wanted a family that pursues their purpose, and so God declared, "I will make him a helper comparable to him.”

God didn't create Eve to ease Adam's loneliness.  God created Eve to share Adam's purpose.  No.  God created Eve to share in purpose with Adam.  The man of the family should lead the in fulfilling the family's purpose, but that purpose  doesn't originate from the man.  Purpose comes from God. 

Sisters, if you want your man's attention, be the one he can share his passion with.  Be the sounding board for his ideas.  Working together, articulate your mission as a family.  Be his partner in that

purpose.

As his partner you can remind him that regular rest is also part of God's ordained purpose.  As his co-laborer in Divine purpose you can say, "WE need some time away from the work.  Let's (Let us) get away for a few hours or a few days."  As his partner in purpose, you can even help him schedule a romance Sabbath, when you decompress together.  You know:  date night. 

Adam recognized that he and Eve had had both been blessed with the same purpose.  She "got him." This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. 

Therefore:  because she is one with me in my work,  I prophetically declare that I will give her my full and unique attention.

Therefore, because she is my partner in purpose I know that she knows what I'm going through.  I can share anything with her. "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." (Genesis 2: 25)

As it was in the beginning, so it is now.

Share his purpose, and you'll have his attention.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

#Awordtothewise

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

MORE THAN A WOMAN (audio)

The 4th message in the sermon series:  HEALING WOUNDED FAMILIES.  The title of this message is:  MORE THAN A WOMAN.

Listen well and leave a comment.

If you can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/   

The podcast is on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/anderson-graves-podcast/id918990482

 --Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email: BaileyTabernacleChurch@comcast.net

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar. 

Visit the ministry’s website at baileytabernaclecme.org

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Bailey Tabernacle CME Church

P.O. Box 3145 

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35403

WHAT IS YOUR FAMILY SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE

Message #2 in the sermon series:  HEALING WOUNDED FAMILIES.  The title of this message is:  WHAT IS YOUR FAMILY SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE.

Listen well and leave a comment.

If you can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/   

The podcast is on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/anderson-graves-podcast/id918990482

 --Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email: BaileyTabernacleChurch@comcast.net

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar. 

Visit the ministry’s website at baileytabernaclecme.org

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Bailey Tabernacle CME Church

P.O. Box 3145 

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35403

Has God Surely Said?

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”

² And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; ³ but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”

⁴ Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. ⁵ For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5)

The serpent was slick (figuratively and literally).  He mixed his lies with God’s truth the way an assassin uses wine to mask the taste of poison or a politician uses a national distress to obscure a grab for power.  The snake said that knowing good and evil would make the humans more like God, but he conveniently neglected to stipulate that they still wouldn’t be gods. They’d just be mortals with the knowledge of how thoroughly they’d screwed up.

The funny thing is, we still fall for that half-truth.  We shorten the name of the forbidden tree to the “tree of knowledge” as if defying God brings enlightenment and omniscience.  But the tree didn’t give all knowledge, only the awareness of good and evil.

Like God, humanity became instinctively aware that every choice in every moment holds good options and bad options.  Unlike God, we don’t omnisciently know which option is which.  So here we are with all the accumulated knowledge of human history just a Google search away on our phones and we still can’t figure out how to make the world better without almost every time also making it worse.

Adam and Eve had been naked and unashamed, but, after they listed to their snaky friend, they knew so doggone much that they no longer knew if being naked was a good thing or a bad thing.  Maybe they should be less open with one another.  Maybe it wasn’t so good to let your spouse know EVERY thing about you.  Maybe they should hide certain parts of themselves from each other.   It hadn’t been a problem before, but now every choice had a pro and a con.

 

The serpent told Eve that she wouldn’t “surely die,” and Eve did not drop dead the moment she ate from the forbidden tree.  God didn’t strike Adam down when he bit into the forbidden fruit.  They didn’t immediately die, but they did “surely die.”

They lost access to the tree of life that could have healed them from all injuries (Revelations 22:2).  They were evicted from Eden where food grew easily and the animals lived in harmony with them.  The entire ecology of the planet mutated and they exchanged potential immortality in Paradise for an existence that “is of few days and full of trouble” (Job 14:1).  

Humanity gained the knowledge of good and evil and lost everything else, and that is why we have religion.

A friend recently argued with me that religion is a human invention, created to foster division and impose power over others.  I disagreed.  I disagree.

In Genesis 3, God set aside His right as Creator and Judge to destroy our progenitors for their disobedience.  He posted their bail by promising a human descendant who would pay the price for their sins and undo the damage the serpent had done.

“And I will put enmity

Between you [the serpent] and the woman,

And between your seed and her Seed;

He shall bruise your head,

And you shall bruise His heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

God injected the hope of Messiah into human history. 

In verse 21, God took the life of an unblemished (cause everything in Eden was perfect) animal and used its skin to cover the man and woman who now saw themselves through the stained glass of sin and shame.

God Himself made the first sacrifice for sin. 

Religion is the means by which sinful humanity pursues reconciliation with holy God.  Religion is a partnership between humanity and the divine.  Each played their part in creating that partnership.  Man pioneered sin, and God invented religion.

Even if you don’t take Biblical Creation literally and you read the beginning of Genesis as an allegory for the long evolution of Earth and humanity from the big bang to literate homo sapiens, logic still demonstrates that God, not people, created religion.

Humans developed medicine and defenses to protect life, but life itself is a gift from God.  God gave us food; we just figured out how to cook and cultivate it.  We form social units but the need to connect with others and to improve our condition is written into our DNA; we didn’t write it.  The impulse to worship God is hardwired into our brains, coded there by the same hand that designed us for nurture, technology, and love.

“Know that the Lord, He is God.  It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves” (Psalm 100:3).

Religion is a gift from God --- a gift we have marred and manipulated for sinful ends, but then how is that any different from what we’ve done with all of God’s other gifts?

Eve and Adam screwed over Paradise because they believed the serpent’s half-truths beautifully packaged and cleverly delivered, more than the plain words of God.

It’s about time we stop repeating the same mistake.

Has God surely said?

                                 

Yes, He surely has.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

THE MATHEMATICS OF POWER COUPLES. blogging Geneisis 1:23-25

²³ And Adam said:

“This is now bone of my bones

And flesh of my flesh;

She shall be called Woman,

Because she was taken out of Man.”

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

²⁵ And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:23-25)

During Sunday school, my 14 year old son explained the origin of the term soulmate to the adult Sunday school.  Why did a Sunday school lesson on Romans 12 require this explanation? Well, it involves a question about how much Christian culture attributes ideas to the Bible that actually don’t come from the Bible, a few points about neo-Platonism and first century Jewish theology, and a Bible teacher (me) who’s philosophy is “Embrace the tangents.”

So anyway, as the junior Anderson explained: According to Greek mythology, the first human beings had 4 arms, 4 legs, 2 hearts, etc.  Zeus, king of the Gods, fearing the power of these creatures,  split each human in half and scattered the halves across the earth.  Thus every person searches for the missing half of his/her self, the matching person who will make them whole again: their soul-mate. (Apparently my son learned all of Greek mythology in the 8^th grade .)

When a Christian calls his wife “my better half,” or tells her boyfriend, “You complete me,” or says that marriage is 50-50, the Christian is referencing the polytheistic theology of ancient Greek paganism.

Let the church say, “Amen.”

Adam and Eve were not two halves of a whole.  They were complete ones who each separately and sinlessly reflected the image of God.   This brings up some interesting mathematics, because Adam declared that the 2 were meant to become 1.

1 + 1 doesn’t equal 1.

1 – 1 doesn’t equal 1.

½ + ½ makes 1, but if you’ve ever seen a halfway man and a halfway woman together you know that usually comes out as one total mess.

You can get 1 with division, but that would violate the instructions.  After God made them male and female, He instructed man and woman to “be fruitful and MULTIPLY.”

1 x 1 = ONE

God didn’t ordain marriage to fix what’s wrong.  He designed marriage to make what’s right better.

My wife and I are not matching halves of a single soul.  We are each complete individuals who make a single powerful unit that is qualitatively greater than the sum of our individuality.  Her love and groundedness exponentially increases the impact of my ADHD fueled multi-tasking.  My unsophisticated country boy ethics gives her the security to pursue career goals.  We have individual issues, but we’re a formidable team.

You don’t need someone to complete you.  You don’t need an opposite to attract you.  You don’t need someone who’s just like you.  You don’t need someone who is lost without you or without whom you are lost.  You need the ONE, the one whole and complete other with whom you are both more and better than either of you is alone. 

Eve was the one for Adam.  When God brought them together, neither of them held anything back.  They were naked and unashamed --- open, honest, and completely vulnerable. 

This is the hard part in the math of modern marriage.  Culture and trauma condition us to hold back a piece of who we are, to give 50% to the union just in case we need the other half to make an exit.  We enter marriage naked under an inch of emotional armor, and that is partly why so many marriages fail. 

.50(of you) x 1.00(of them) = ½(of what ya’ll could be)

The other one isn’t getting all of your one, so instead of being fruitful and MULTIPLYING, you become a house DIVIDED, and that math won’t stand (Mark 3:25).

Get the math right and get the marriage right, and that’s how dynasties are made.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

BREATH ON THE MIRROR. Blogging Genesis (Genesis 2:15-23)

⁷ And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. . . .¹⁵ Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.

¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

¹⁸ And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” ¹⁹ Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.

²¹ And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. ²² Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.  (Genesis 2:15-23)

In the beginning, God spoke life out of the sea, Earth, and sky.  “Let there be,” God said, and there was.

But God didn’t speak humanity into existence. The Creator dug down in the dust, mining the surface for water, salts, carbon, and all the offerings of asteroids and stars.  He laid a double-helixed frame and forged the elements on it, forming man of the dust of the ground.

Later, the Lord declared, “It is not good that man should be alone,” which is an interesting conclusion since Adam was doing just fine all by himself.  He had two jobs: tending the garden of Eden required physical exertion (Genesis 1:15); naming the animals required intellectual discernment (Genesis 1:19).  By God’s account, Adam performed both tasks flawlessly.  Still, God saw that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone. 

Adam needed Eve because God’s plan was for people to be social creature, to fulfill the calling to dominion and blessing as a herd, a pack, a world-wide family.

Just because you do what you do well doesn’t mean that’s all there is to what you do.

A human had succeeded alone.  God wanted humanity to succeed together.

So God anesthetized Adam, made an incision in his torso, extracted a tissue sample from his rib cage, and formed the rib into a human female.  Today we call it cloning.   (Yeah, God did that first, too.)

The female was made from the perfect, sinless flesh of a  perfect, sinless man under perfect, sinless conditions by infinitely perfect and sinless God Himself.   She wasn’t inferior.  He wasn’t a failed first draft.  They had been individually handcrafted by the inventor of the universe.  The first Man and Woman were both perfectly what God wanted them to be.

He wanted them to be more than everything prior to them had been.  The Lord didn’t just give humanity form and life, He gave us a portion of His spirit.  He breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. 

“It is,” as Jesus said, “the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” (John 6:63)

The imago dei is not (or not simply) in our opposable thumbs and upright gait.  We bear the image of God in and by our spirit.  The soul that animates every man and woman is a breath on the mirror from the mouth of God.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

DEAR GRIEVING MOTHERS

Adam & Eve Mourning Abel painted by Louis-Ernest Barrias

Thus says the Lord:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,

Lamentation and bitter weeping,

Rachel weeping for her children,

Refusing to be comforted for her children,

Because they are no more.”

Thus says the Lord:

“Refrain your voice from weeping,

And your eyes from tears;

For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord,

And they shall come back from the land of the enemy.

There is hope in your future, says the Lord,

That your children shall come back to their own border. (Jeremiah 31: 15-17)

Dear Grieving Mother,

Let me tell you a true story.  It happened a long time ago, but it may sound familiar.

In a close knit community, a young man was killed.

It came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. (Genesis 4: 8)

A brother from the community was stopped and questioned.

Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” (verse 9)

He denied responsibility, but the evidence against him was overwhelming. 

Cain said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

And the Lord replied, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.” (verses 9b, 10)

The brother was convicted of murdering one of his own.  His future was ruined.  All of his great potential for success taken away.

So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.  When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. (v. 11, 12)

The sentence for his crime was life.  He would never see his home or family again.

A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth. (v. 12)

He appealed.

And Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! …it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me.” (v. 13, 14)

And the judge commuted his sentence, but the leniency of the new punishment didn’t diminish the pain orbiting around his crime.

And the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him.  (v. 15)

The murderer’s  descendants perpetuated and exasperated the cycle of violence and self-destruction against their young men.

Then Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice.  Wives of Lamech, listen to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me, even a young man for hurting me. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” (v. 23, 24)

This is the life and legacy of Cain, the original murderer.  To us Cain was just plain bad.

But not to his mama. 

He was the first child.  More importantly, he was HER first child.  Eve rejoiced when Cain was born.  She gave him a name that means “possession” or “to acquire.”  He was hers.  He was Mama’s precious baby.  Mama’s little man.

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.” (Genesis 4: 1)

Cain was his mother’s pride and her joy.

Imagine her love for him and the son who followed.  Now, imagine her pain when she had to bury one son and lose another to the justice system. 

Cain’s judge was God Himself.  There was no corruption in the ruling.  Cain’s punishment was both just and merciful. But do you think that made Eve feel any better?  Do you think Adam grieved any less because the results were “just”?

 Was Cain’s mother able to move on?  Yes. 

Was she able to get over it?

Never.

Adam and Eve eventually had another son.  Eve named this one Seth, which means “compensation.”  The new baby was supposed to make up for her loss.   Indeed, God made Seth a special blessing to Father Adam and Mama Eve.  He was a good kid and a great father.  Their grandbabies through Seth “began to call on the name of the Lord.”  (verse 26)

But Eve never got over the babies she’d lost.  Even in the sweet moments after her “compensation” came into the world, the first mother remembered Abel.  She remembered Cain.  (verse 25)

The writer(s) of Genesis weren’t there when all of this happened.  Adam and Eve probably didn’t leave journals behind.  Perhaps their stories were passed down through oral history.  Perhaps the Holy Spirit revealed it all through visions of the past.  (If God can accurately reveal the future through prophecy it’s can’t be MORE difficult for Him to accurately reveal the past.)

Whatever the mechanism, God wanted this tragic narrative preserved and passed to us.  Seth himself is long gone.  Cain’s line was destroyed in the Flood. So what is God’s point for going through the trouble of telling their story?

In part, so grieving mothers and fathers today know that their stories are not theirs alone.  Your pain is personal, but it isn’t original. 

Whether you lost your child to miscarriage, sickness, accident, violence, criminal justice, or however --- you are not the first parent whom God has comforted through such a time.

The fallen-ness of this sinful world makes such tragedy possible.  On the grandest scale it is inevitable.  But God is still present, and active, and able to bring good even after the worst possible bad has happened.

The mother and father in this and many other tragic tales in Scripture were part of the Messianic line.  Thus the Bible proves that God won’t let your great pain be the end of your place in His great plan.  He will give you “compensation.”

Such blessing isn’t always in the body of another child. But your “compensation” is available in your gifts, your example, your enhanced compassion and sensitivity, your deepened surrender to God. 

Remember that the “gift” of another son to Adam and Eve was also the calling to serve as parents.  Don’t miss your “compensation” because it’s packaged as your SERVICE.

Like Eve, you will never forget.  Like Eve, you can forge ahead.  Like the first mother, you may never completely “move on,” but you can still move forward.   God has a plan and you’re part of it. 

Dear weeping mother,

God wants to bring forth joy and greatness from you.  He wants to give you a future and a hope.

He can.  He’s done it before.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

#Awordtothewise

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

WHO TOLD YOU THAT WAS A GOOD EXCUSE?

            

Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”

So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” (Genesis 3: 9-11)

In Genesis chapter 3, God came down for His usual evening meeting in the cool of the day with Adam, but Adam wasn’t there.

The Lord called, “Adam, where are you?”

God didn’t ask because He couldn’t find Adam.  We wish that was why God asked.  We wish that we could hide from God when we sin, but that’s not the case.

God was really asking, “Adam, why aren’t you where you were supposed to be?  Why aren’t you in the place where I told you to meet Me?”

When the Lord shows up in worship, at your church, on Sunday morning----- Where are YOU?

Since the very first time, mankind’s sin has caused us to miss worship, to skip his time of fellowship with God, and then to make excuses.

“Lord,” said Adam, “I just couldn’t make it.  See, I’m naked, Lord.   I didn’t have a thing to wear.  And I couldn’t show up like that.”

And God said, “Who told you you were naked?”

Again, it’s not that God didn’t know.  God wasn’t requesting information.  God was saying, “Who told you that you were naked because I never brought up the fact that you were naked?”

You say you can’t serve because you’re not educated.  Well, who told you that you weren’t educated?  Who brought it up? Because God never brought up the fact that you don’t have a degree.

You say you can’t give because you’re not out of debt.  Who told you that you’re not out of debt?  God didn’t bring that up when He invited you to test Him with tithes and offerings and see won’t He open up the windows of Heaven and pour out a blessing that you don’t have room enough to receive. (Malachi 3: 10)

You say you can’t lead or help in ministry because you’re not comfortable with the responsibility.

Well, who told you that you’re not comfortable enough?  God didn’t bring up comfort when He called Moses to go back to Egypt and lead Israel out of bondage.

God never brought up comfort when He called a prophet, or a king, or an apostle, or a poor Jewish girl from Nazareth to go and walk out a great calling before His people.

 Adam wanted his lack of clothing to excuse him from showing up where God called him to be to do what God had called him to do.    What excuse are you using?  And who told you that that’s a good excuse? 

Cause God didn’t.

And by the way, when Adam said that he’d skipped the meeting with God because he was naked----- Adam wasn’t naked anymore.

Before God showed up in the Garden, Genesis 3: 7 says Then the eyes of both of [Adam and Eve] were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.  

YOU, like Adam, need to stop bringing up old stuff as an excuse for not walking in your calling now.

O.K., you messed up a marriage.  Where are you supposed to meet and serve God now?

O.K., you used to be an addict.  Where are you supposed to meet and serve God now?

O.K., you were a fool in college.  Where are you supposed to meet and serve God now?

O.K., you have been shirking and shaking your responsibilities in the church for a long time.  We get that.  Come back.  Meet God where He placed you and serve Him NOW!

But I have to warn you:  When you come back and face God, He is going to skip right past your excuses and force you to deal with the REAL PROBLEM.

Naked wasn’t Adam’s problem.  He had been naked and serving God just fine for the first 2 chapters of Genesis.

Naked wasn’t the problem.  Naked was a circumstance.  SIN was the problem.

So God called on Adam to deal with the real problem. 

“Ain’t nobody worried about you and naked,” God said.  “But tell me this Adam: Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” (Genesis 3: 11)

(This is where God cocks His lip, fold his arms, and taps His foot)

See, all that other stuff---about how you grew up, and how folks mistreated you, and what you didn’t used to have----- that’s all just circumstantial.

Stop putting the blame on your parents, or your boss, or White people, or immigrants, or the media, or your ex, or the woman whom You gave to be with me, Lord (Genesis 3: 12).

What did YOU eat that you weren’t supposed to?

What is YOUR SIN?   

What is YOUR role in your failures?

What did God tell YOU to do that you ain’t doing?

What (or whom) did God tell you to leave alone that you’re still messing with?

Adam never dealt with that.  And so, God stopped asking.   God stopped asking Adam to meet Him and serve in His garden.  But, Adam’s PURPOSE in the garden was to serve. So, since He couldn’t fulfill his purpose, he had to go.

Oh, wait.  You might be thinking that Adam’s purpose in the garden was to be fruitful, multiply, and have dominion.    I see where you’re coming from.

That’s was Adam’s purpose in the larger world, but to fulfill that purpose in a state of perfection and favor, Adam had to fulfill His purpose in the place where He was to meet God and serve.

When Adam lost Eden, he lost God’s favor.  Adam and Eve still went out to multiply and pursue dominion, but now they had to pursue it on cursed ground, through thorns and thistles, by sweat of his brow, with the ever-present oppressive possibility and inevitability of death dogging his every move.

Only grace kept Adam and Eve alive.  But grace doesn’t stop bad from happening.  Grace makes it possible for you to carry on despite the bad that happens.

Grace gave Adam and Eve a 3^rd son named Seth.  But Grace did not stop the curse from manifesting in Cain and making him the murderer of his own brother.

Our lives are a constant cycle of frustrations and failures.  We survive.  We persevere.  We find happiness because of grace.

But if we would meet God where He wants to meet us, deal with our own sin, and submit to His plan and calling, then we would experience something even better than grace.

We would experience FAVOR.

Now don’t get too crazy over terminology.  Grace and Favor are overlapping and sometimes indistinguishable concepts.  The point is that things can be better.

We can do better than just kinda, sorta, barely survive.

We can live and live life more abundantly.  We can.  You can.

But you have to stop making excuses.  You have to get up and show up where God called you to meet Him, experience His presence, and walk out the holiest, most spiritually intimate part of the God’s great calling on your life.

See you, Sunday.

  

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama, executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO) and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To listen to sermons and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com .

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Hall Memorial CME Church

541 Seibles Road

Montgomery, AL 36116